Chapter Twenty Four

Even more surprising she never forgot each language she learnt, so much so that when she received a little publicity for becoming the youngest child ever to receive a Degree at University, it was for Modern Languages and she had received a First Class Honours Degree with an almost perfect score. She had been marked down one point because in her excitement at taking the exam with all the adults she had put the wrong date on her paper. The hyper-excited eight-year-old had put Tuesday instead of Wednesday and the exam board had been crucified in the Media for marking her down that one point for her innocent childish mistake. It has not detracted her from her education, her love of languages had blossomed and she was so gifted they allowed her to take a degree in any language course she chose. Juliette could speak, write and understand every European language as well as most South American, she could speak Russian, Polish and some other Eastern European languages as well as Japanese and Chinese, although both those languages had so many variations she was still learning them. This had brought her to the notice of the British Foreign Office who had approached her adoptive parents with a view to their taking over her education at sixteen. It had not been a request, her intelligence level had not gone unnoticed by the British Government and the plan had been to remove her from her elderly parents, by force if necessary on her sixteenth birthday. Unfortunately for them, the Mafia had a ‘family’ member working deep within the British Government and when they received word that their little protege was about to be snatched from them they had initiated her removal back into their clutches. The circumstances that followed had only enabled them further, her birth mother's cancer had been the perfect excuse to remove her so they had.       

Juliette was surprised at how easy it was to slip away from Romero’s huge fortress of a villa, he had not bothered to post Guards because he mistakenly believed that she would want to stay with him. The minute he had set eyes on her again he had fallen head over heels in love and knew she would be the only woman for him. Their first kiss as adults had cemented that fact to him and he knew she felt the same way but she was not as experienced as him. Desire had burned deep inside him because his instincts told him she was still pure and that aroused him like nothing else could, he would be her first, and if he had anything to do with it, he would be her only lover.                                                                                                         Slipping out of the villa's gates past the two sleeping guards,                                                                    ‘Boy would they get into trouble for that.’                                                                                                     She grinned walking quickly away from them, her natural instinct was to run as fast as she could but she did not want to draw any undue interest from passersby. Sicily was quite a small island and she had been living there for almost a year so it was not too difficult to find her way back to her mother's villa by keeping to the shadows and hiding her face and hair. The villa was locked up, her father had ensured it would not be disturbed before he had ‘disposed’ of his only daughter in the way he wanted to. Juliette knew how to get inside without a key, it was one of the first things her Mother had taught her making sure she was not seen she had picked the lock on one of the widows and slid inside. Picking up a holdall and a backpack from her bedroom she moved silently through her what had been her home with her biological mother. She only took what she needed, essential paperwork from the secret safe her father's men had not found. Her original birth certificate, not the fake one she had been provided with for her adoption, her passport, her mother's Will, and the file her mother had provided gave her all the evidence she needed of her father's crimes. She had also picked up the bank books, old fashioned though they were her mother had put money in them weekly saving for the day she could give them to her daughter to show she had never forgotten her. Juliette stopped and looked out of the window briefly, she was her father's only living relative too even though she had been the one to end his life under Mafia Law everything he had owned she had inherited on his death. Shaking her head to clear it, that was something she would worry about when she had the luxury of time for now she needed to concentrate on the task at hand. Coming back into the main room she walked across to her mother's piano and picked up the photo of the two of them. It had been taken a few weeks after she had come to terms with who she was and both their faces shone with love and happiness. Biting her lip to prevent the threatening tears from falling she wrapped it in a t-shirt and stuffed it into her bag leaving the villa through a secret door into the garage. Moving quickly she fastened the holdall to the back of the small motorbike she had stashed there just for this purpose. It was relatively easy to hide her long red/gold locks by tucking them into the back of her jacket and then pulling on the helmet making her look like any other young Italian. She headed straight to the port and rode onto the small shuttle ferry without a backward glance then when she reached the mainland she headed up the country not stopping until she had almost run out of petrol and did not want her meagre cash supply anymore.  

The little motorbike was extremely economical and she had travelled about a hundred miles only filling her up once using some of the small amount of cash she had on her She found the tiny back street stations that sold groceries as well as petrol and did not remove her helmet just handed them the cash and left.