Elio

Elio is Guido Arrellio’s brother, an educated accountant whose professional connections help set the plot in motion: through a client at an auditing firm, he points Guido toward a security agency that supplies bodyguards to industrialists. His role is practical and familial rather than martial. He helps make Creasy’s hiring possible, offers him hospitality, and later accompanies Guido to Como, but the evidence does not implicate him in the kidnapping scheme that gives the bodyguard’s employment its darker meaning.

Education and Professional Life

When Guido returns to Italy, Elio is in the final term of his studies at Rome University, studying economics. By the time he and Guido discuss work for Creasy, he has completed a good education, qualified as an accountant, and joined an auditing firm in Milan. Guido paid for his education, making Elio’s professional stability one consequence of his brother’s earlier support. The contrast between the two men is clear: Guido’s past is shaped by military service and covert missions, while Elio has built a civilian career through formal study and accounting.

Elio’s work gives him a useful view of the commercial world around industrialists. One of his auditing firm’s clients is a security agency that supplies bodyguards, and he brings that connection to Guido’s attention. The suggestion is specific: Creasy could work as a bodyguard. Elio does not recruit Creasy himself or appear to control the agency; instead, his knowledge of a client’s business provides Guido with a route into a profession that might suit his friend.

The Bodyguard Proposal and Its Context

Elio’s suggestion matters because the market for protection has become more complicated than simply hiring the most capable guard. Vico Mansutti explains to Ettore Balletto that terrorism across Europe has made good bodyguards scarce and expensive. He also describes the insurance market: Italian insurers cannot write kidnap policies, while Lloyd’s of London offers such cover to wealthy families under conditions of offshore payment and strict secrecy. His explanation links the cost of a bodyguard to the premium on a kidnap policy, making security a financial calculation as well as a question of physical protection.

The figures expose the gap between appearance and effectiveness. In Vico’s example, insurance on one billion lire might cost fifty million lire at a five-percent rate, or thirty million at three percent if the client hires a full-time bodyguard. A so-called premium bodyguard, however, might cost only seven million lire a year while doing little to stop a kidnapping; the value of that cheap appointment is that it can help lower the insurance rate. These details illuminate the setting into which Elio’s ordinary professional connection leads, but they are Vico’s explanation, not evidence that Elio knew about or endorsed the arrangement.

Family and Creasy’s Welcome

Elio’s relationship with Guido is marked by both dependence and trust. Guido financed his education, and Elio’s career and professional contacts later give Guido a way to help Creasy. The exchange reverses the direction of assistance without erasing the brothers’ bond: what Guido provided materially, Elio now returns through knowledge and access. Their conversation about the bodyguard position places Elio inside Guido’s effort to find a workable place for Creasy after his return to Italy.

Elio also helps make that return feel less like a business arrangement. Creasy spends several days in Elio’s household, where Elio and Felicia receive him in a relaxed home. Creasy later telephones Elio to thank him for the hospitality and invites him and Felicia to dinner on his day off in a couple of weeks. Felicia has treated Creasy like a prodigal uncle and teased him gently; Creasy likes her. The invitation signals that he is not merely passing through their home as Guido’s difficult friend, but has begun to form a continuing connection with the couple.

Elio notices the change. On the phone, he tells Guido that Creasy seems more relaxed than before, is settling in, and has even told a joke or two. Guido is surprised and relieved, since Creasy has been much on his mind. Elio’s report gives him a small but telling role in monitoring Creasy’s adjustment: rather than making a grand intervention, he observes the shift and shares it with the person most worried about Creasy. His question about whether Creasy gets on with the girl also shows his attention turning to how the new arrangement is working in daily life.

The Como Visit and the Limits of His Role

Elio accompanies Guido to Como when Guido goes to see the Balletto family and find out whether he can help. The visit is tense. Vico Mansutti and his wife are present, Ettore Balletto is subdued, and Rika Balletto is furious after learning that Creasy was hired for a pittance merely to appease her. She condemns the choice of a drunk as protection for her daughter. Elio begins to protest, but Guido silences him; the brothers then gather Creasy’s belongings and leave.

The scene places Elio close to the consequences of the job he helped arrange, without making him its decision-maker. He is present when the difference between the promised function of a bodyguard and the bargain actually made becomes painfully visible. Later, Creasy tells Rika that the kidnapping was an insurance fraud: Ettore had taken out a two-billion-lire policy with Lloyd’s of London, with Dino Fossella to return half the ransom to him and Vico acting as intermediary for a commission. The revelation clarifies the criminal purpose behind the arrangement, but Elio is not named as a conspirator or as someone who knew of it. His part remains that of a brother whose legitimate business contact opened a door into a compromised system. That distinction gives his modest contribution its significance: he helps connect the characters, while the corruption and betrayal belong to others.