11

LUIGI rubbed his hands together, more than pleased with the evening’s event. His niece had done her job efficiently, the way she always did. He really regretted having to kill such a competent and resourceful tool, but he wasn’t going to take any chances, not now when he was so close to his goals. He sauntered out to his car. He couldn’t celebrate with the lovely widow. He didn’t like that he’d lost her, but maybe this worked out better. He would see that the men he paid such good money to every week would be assigned to her tragic case. No one would ever suspect Cosmos had been killed on Luigi’s order. No one. Not when the tragedy surrounding his widow would become the number one topic of gossip.

He needed a woman. He’d tried to call Arturo several times but the man hadn’t picked up. Still, he’d left him a message to pick up one of the girls working for him. One that still wasn’t as trained as they’d like. The fact that Arturo hadn’t answered meant he had brought the girl to their little school and was working with her. By now, she would need his tender care. Arturo always commanded fear. When Luigi arrived, the girl would need gentle handling. Not gentle when it came to sex, but those little intimate gestures they misread into thinking he cared for them. Just a touch here and there, that was all it took after Arturo spent a little time with them.

He laughed aloud as he slid behind the wheel. He so enjoyed watching Arturo work, almost as much as Arturo enjoyed working. Still, he was going to have to find out exactly what happened, how the widow had died. He hated losing that income. Arturo was good at what he did, but sometimes he was a little too enthusiastic.

Luigi couldn’t get too angry with his oldest friend, not when there were times when he was a little too enthusiastic himself. It was easy to forget the women brought them in money when they were having such a good time. Sometimes clients forgot that as well, but that was okay, because then they paid for that mistake over and over. If Arturo or Luigi killed the golden goose, they got nothing but that moment’s pleasure from it.

He spent the rest of the drive fantasizing about giving Angeline to a couple of the men who were regular customers, men who had killed twice. They liked to make their purchase together. Of course Luigi charged them double, and since they’d killed twice, he made certain to give them the girl who brought in the least amount of money—just in case. Arturo had to clean up quite a mess both times.

It would be fun to film Angeline’s slow, torturous death. He couldn’t chance it, of course, but still, thinking about it was one of his favorite pastimes. Bringing anyone else in on Angeline’s death would be a risk he couldn’t afford to take. He planned the next best thing. He’d already discussed just how sweet Angeline would die with Arturo. His best friend had agreed to take her to the privacy of training school and spend a few hours with her before Luigi killed her.

Angeline had always been far too arrogant and haughty to ever talk to Arturo. She didn’t like him in her house and made no bones about letting both Luigi and Arturo know. Arturo would love to get her to himself in that training school. The instruments he had weren’t toys. He knew how to cause a woman such pain she would beg for death. He was equally as good at humiliation. Arturo hated Angeline almost as much as Luigi did.

She always treated their soldiers with a kind of disdain and frowned on Luigi being friends with someone who never rose above personal bodyguard in the organization. She harped on the fact that her father would never have tolerated Arturo’s familiarity with the boss. She was just the opposite of Lissa. Lissa threw her arms around Arturo, hugged him with genuine affection, joked with him, treated him like family and had, on more than one occasion, taken care of him when he was ill. If there was anyone Arturo cared anything for other than Luigi, it was Lissa. Still, like Luigi, Arturo knew Lissa had to die. It would be sad, but it was necessary.

Luigi turned the vehicle onto the long winding drive to the back part of the property. He’d scored with the building, snatching it up the moment it was on the market. In town, yet secluded, no one would ever have a clue what went on there. He loved being there with the women, and his enemies, all at his mercy inside the soundproof building, surrounded by the rest of the town. No one ever suspected.

As the car approached the last bend, nearly overgrown with foliage, he saw an orange-red glow. Frowning, he automatically accelerated and then slammed on the brakes as the building came into view. There were no flames on the outside, but windows were breaking, and through them he could see a vicious, hungry blaze leaping greedily at the walls and seeping under the doorway. The outside walls were black and blistered with the incredible heat.

Arturo must not have returned yet. He caught up his phone as he backed down the drive fast. Punching in Arturo’s number, he swore as it went to voice mail. “The building’s on fire. Inside. I can see the flames. Call me. Now.”

Heart pounding, he drove fast away from the fire. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the place when the fire department came. He had no idea how much of the inside of the building would be destroyed, but he knew the investigators often could read a lot in the ashes. He was going to have to spread money around to get the official report and either bury it, tweak it, or let it go at what they found. Thankfully, he knew Arturo had gotten the widow’s body out of there.

What the hell happened? What had started the fire? Clearly it had started inside. Swearing again, he sent a text to Arturo. Call me now. An order. Where was the son of a bitch? What game was he playing? He should have disposed of the widow’s body, picked up a woman for the two of them to play with and already be in the building. There was no car there. Unless . . .

Had he seen a vehicle? Parked down from the building under the trees? In the shadows? He rubbed at the frown lines in his forehead. Had there been a car? He slowed down and pulled over to park, trying to think. If he went back to look, would the fire department get there and catch him there? He didn’t want questions. Arturo never parked that far away from the building, but maybe he had.

Swearing, he turned around and started back up the drive.

*   *   *

CASIMIR stood outside the inferno, feeding the flames, wishing, for the first time in his life, he could hear the screams of his mark. Arturo deserved death a hundred times over. He despised men like Arturo, men who enjoyed the pain of others. Men born, not shaped, into monsters.

What does that make you? The wind whispered the question in his ear. What did it make him? He wanted Arturo to suffer. He needed him to suffer. To do this terrible thing, allow it to be personal when his code was so rigid, unbending, when he swore to live by that code and yet he still didn’t move.

The building was old and wooden with a flat roof. It had obviously been a small warehouse or storage building, but had been renovated more than once. The place had one bathroom, and the rest of the space, maybe a thousand square feet, had been divided into three rooms. The small reception area where Arturo and Luigi could watch television and take a respite from their work as well as a small bedroom where the women they brought there could sleep—when they were allowed sleep. The main room was the “classroom.”

Casimir thought in those terms. He’d seen similar classrooms before. Dungeons that held every type of contraption for bondage as well as the necessities for inflicting pain. He remembered every one of those items.

The skylight cracked and shattered as heat rose and there was nowhere for it to go. Instantly the oxygen pouring in fed the flames, so it wasn’t as necessary for him to exert himself to keep the fire going. Still, he wanted the blaze hot, burning everything to the ground, destroying Arturo and Luigi’s playground. Taking it all. Taking each room. The bedroom had fuel—the beds, mattresses and cheap dressers. Paper strewn around. Luigi and Arturo weren’t neat and they didn’t give the women much time to be neat and tidy either. Mostly though, it was the soundproofing they had padded the walls and ceiling with in order to keep the screams of the women from being heard that provided the best fuel. And that was pure irony.

The blackened windows began to crack. Spiderweb. The outside walls turned a color much like paper when a flame burned from the other side. They blackened slowly in an alligator-skin pattern and then here and there a flame broke through. Flames leapt out of the skylight, indicating inside the fire was towering, completely engulfing each room.

He kept feeding the flames, burning the building hot and wild, making certain that Arturo died by fire, not by smoke inhalation. He wished he could hear the man suffer each lick of flame, hear him scream for mercy the way his numerous victims had.

Shaking his head, he lifted his face to the sky as the outside walls continued to blacken and more windows shattered. Flames licked along the sills hungrily and danced toward the night. His chest hurt as he made his way back toward his rented vehicle. The car sat under the trees, deep in the shadows. He slipped inside and continued to watch the conflagration. He had to control the flames so there was no chance of them spreading. Fortunately the building was a distance from other buildings, but he didn’t want to take chances. He had enough sins on his soul with what he’d just done.

He couldn’t go back to Lissa this way. Not like this. He sat there, trying to feel remorse, but he just couldn’t drum up any. Was it too late for him? Had he crossed a line he couldn’t come back from? It didn’t make sense that he’d finally found her and now, he’d let a mark get to him. He’d dealt with pedophiles, monsters involved in human trafficking rings, killers, a dozen other types of criminals and never once had he lost it, but this time—this was just the last straw. He’d had his fill.

Twin lights pierced the night, and he swung his gaze from the burning building to the back entrance road. It was mostly overgrown, but Luigi tended to use it. Fewer people would see his vehicle on that road than on the main one. He was a little surprised to see the man, since Luigi knew Arturo had killed Cosmos’s wife.

Luigi halted his car the moment he saw the building in flames. He sat there staring and then abruptly backed down the road again. For one moment, Casimir wanted to chase him down and do the same thing to him, burn him alive, make him suffer for all the suffering he caused. Instead, he gripped the steering wheel hard and made himself breathe the need away.

He had to follow the plan. He knew better than to deviate. Casimir knew he didn’t have a lot of time. He had to get to the hotel where Lissa Piner would be meeting with the owners the next day, hopefully tamper with the security tapes and meet with the head of security as Tomasso. He also needed to return the rental car. He drove without lights until he was back on the main street.

*   *   *

CASIMIR hadn’t come to her. Lissa paced back and forth in her room, her belly tied in hard knots of fear and her chest hurting from the terrible pressure there. She knew he was back. He was safe. He hadn’t come to her. She yanked her fingers through her hair in sheer agitation, unsure of herself. She wasn’t a woman to be uncertain. She made split-second, life-or-death decisions with confidence—but this was different. She wished she could call one of her sisters and ask advice.

Why wouldn’t he come to her? That was what she had to figure out and then she would know what to do. He could be injured. She paced more, rubbing her hand up and down her thigh. Her palm itched. Her heart hurt. She hated indecision. What if he was injured and couldn’t come to her? She pressed her palm harder against her bare thigh. He would call her, using the mark on her palm. He had told her that was possible.

The need to go to him was strong. She blew out her breath and made up her mind. Whatever was wrong—and something was—she needed to be with him. To share whatever was wrong with him. Instinctively, she knew he would be there for her no matter what. Having made up her mind, she didn’t hesitate. She yanked open her door and nearly ran right into her uncle. He was reaching for the doorknob.

“Tio Luigi, what is it?” she asked. She’d never seen him look the way he did in that moment. Visibly upset. Agitated. It was no act. He was pale beneath his olive skin, and there were lines carved deep into his face. He’d never looked older. She caught his arms and held on tight. “You look . . .” Terrible. Rattled.

“Come with me. The only man not accounted for is Tomasso.”

“Tomasso?” she echoed. “Tell me what’s wrong? Has that horrid man done something to you?” She turned toward the stairs. “I’ll kill him myself.”

“No, no, Giacinta,” Luigi protested, catching her to him. His distress was very real. He actually clung to her. “I want to make certain he’s in that room. Then I need to find out where he’s been and what time he got back.”

She detested him calling her Giacinta. Her real name. The name her father and mother had given her, but now wasn’t the time to protest. She had to act out the charade perfectly, no matter what she felt inside.

“He went to the hotel this evening to check with their head of security and make arrangements for my arrival tomorrow. You gave him those instructions yourself. He told me he was going to go while I was in my meeting with you.” She frowned at him. “We discussed it, remember? Tio, you need to tell me what’s wrong. What happened to upset you this way?”

“I think Arturo’s dead.” He spat the words at her and then sagged, his weight nearly knocking her over.

She staggered, her arms going around his waist to help him sit on the bottom stair. She crouched down in front of him. “You think? But you don’t know? Why do you think he might be dead? And what does Tomasso have to do with his death? Tomasso likes Arturo. Everyone likes Arturo. Tomasso talked about him all the time.”

Luigi shook his head. “No. No, Gia.” He lapsed into Italian, talking rapidly, rocking himself back and forth, telling her the police had come to tell him about the burned building. There was a body inside. A man. He’d burned to death. He’d been locked into cuffs, a sex game of some kind. The police believed it was a sex game gone wrong and the woman he’d been playing the game with had been Cosmos’s widow.

“What?” Lissa widened her eyes in feigned shock. “Were they having an affair? You know Arturo better than anyone. He’s been on vacation. Did he run off with her? Was he into kinky sex games? Bondage? You have to tell me, Tio. I don’t care what he was into. It won’t make me think less of him. If I’m going to help you figure out what happened, you have to tell me the truth.”

Luigi lifted his face to look at her. Then he nodded. “He was with her. She went to him after Cosmos died. They liked each other. Cosmos would have killed Arturo if she’d run off with him before that. No one could know. I’ve admitted this to the police. Cosmos is dead. There’s nothing he can do now.”

“Were there two bodies in the fire?”

He shook his head, looking older than ever. “Only one. Only a man’s body. There was no car. The police found a suicide note at the Agosto estate from the widow. She said she accidentally killed Arturo, her one love, and she flung herself over the cliff after her husband.”

Lissa sank back on her heels, her mouth open, one hand covering it in shock. “Oh, no. Tio. But if you know she accidentally killed him, then why do you think Tomasso has something to do with his death?”

He dug his fingers into her shoulder in a bruising grip. “You don’t understand. I spoke to Arturo earlier. He had accidentally killed her in their sex games. She liked pain. She got off on pain. He always obliged her, but this time she had some kind of reaction, she couldn’t breathe. He tried to save her. He called me sobbing. I told him to take her back to her house and dispose of her body there. He was alive. She was the dead one. He was alive. How did he get back to the building without a car? How did he get into the cuffs? How did the fire start? There had to be someone else there.”

She was silent a moment. “You think that someone was Tomasso? Did he know Cosmos’s wife as well?”

Luigi shook his head. “I don’t know, but everyone else is accounted for.”

“Then we’ll go talk to him. Make certain he’s home. But, Luigi, is it possible Arturo was so upset over the death of the woman he loved that he killed himself? Is there a way to put himself in the cuffs and rig a fire?”

“No. No. He would never do that. He would talk to me. No, Gia, someone did this terrible thing, and we have to find out who it was and punish them. Kill them. Make them suffer and then kill them.”

For the first time in her life, Lissa had something genuine to compare with her uncle’s acting. This was genuine grief. Instead of feeling compassion for him, she felt anger. Betrayal. When he’d come to her and taken her out of the hiding hole her father had told her to run to, this was not how he’d been. The grief back then had been acting. Totally.

She forced herself to put her arms around him. He was actually trembling. “I’ll go to see if Tomasso is in his room, but really, as much as I dislike his arrogance, you know there is no reason for him to do such a thing. We have to look outside the family. Would Aldo come after you this way? If he suspected you had something to do with Cosmos’s death? If he saw Arturo near the house, with Cosmos’s widow, he might have drawn conclusions.”

She patted his knee when he continued to sit there, shaking his head, his body so stunned she knew he was incapable of walking. “I’ll be right back,” she told him, and turned away.

Luigi caught her wrist so that she was forced to turn back to him and give him a small smile. “What is it, Tio?”

“You’re a good girl, Giacinta. A good girl.”

A girl he planned to kill. It was all she could do not to jerk her wrist away.

“Remember to call me Lissa, Tio. Even now, we can’t make a mistake,” she reminded gently.

She didn’t want to think too much about Arturo’s death herself. He’d been kind to her when she’d been a child. Kind when Luigi was distant. Hugging her when her uncle didn’t. When Luigi had been a stern taskmaster, teaching her the art of assassination, it had been Arturo who had been the one to dry her tears when her uncle was angry with her. He wasn’t that man, but still, those were her memories of him.

“Go to your study, Tio. Call the hotel. Check to see if Tomasso was there tonight. You taught me well. I’ll have a conversation with him and see if he knows anything. Trust me to get to the truth.”

She had to help him stand, which necessitated touching him again. She felt repugnance at the closeness, at the way he leaned on her. Patted her shoulder. Acted like she mattered to him, when he was already plotting her death. Women meant nothing to him, not even his own flesh and blood. Evidently, his own brother hadn’t either. But Arturo, Arturo had mattered.

She waited until he was back down the first flight of stairs and down the hall before she hurried up the stairs to the men’s quarters. Knowing the security cameras were on, she knocked, when she wanted to rush right in.

Tomasso opened the door. He looked as if he’d been asleep, but she knew better. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of soft sweatpants and was pulling a T-shirt over his head with one hand. He stepped back to give her entrance and closed the door after her.

“Luigi wanted me to check to make certain you were here,” she announced without preamble, watching him closely. Studying his face. Something was very wrong. His face was a mask, and his eyes didn’t warm when they rested on her. “He’s calling the hotel right now to make certain you were there.”

Casimir turned away from her, turned his back. Paced. Didn’t turn on the lights. “I was there. There are images of me walking through the hotel, checking everywhere a couple of hours before I met with the head of security. The recordings will pass inspection. I’m very good at what I do.”

His voice was clipped. Abrupt. An undertone of anger and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She moved toward him. He swung around and held up his hand as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

“Stay there.”

She halted instantly. “What is it, what’s wrong?” She had known all along something was wrong. She’d felt it. He hadn’t come to her the way he would have. The knots in her stomach tightened to the point of pain.

Casimir didn’t answer her. His mask didn’t slip, not even for a moment. The knots in her stomach got tighter. “Luigi knows Arturo is dead. He said his body was found in cuffs, hanging from the ceiling by chains and he died in a fire.” She kept her voice strictly neutral.

“Hell, yeah, he died in a fire,” Casimir said.

His rage shook the room. She felt the floor shifting. The walls breathing in and out trying to contain the pressure.

She wrapped her arms around her middle. She knew Arturo had to die. “He used to hold me when Luigi would get angry with me because I wasn’t fast enough or silent enough when I trained. He would sneak me chocolate bars and . . .”

“Don’t.” He snarled the command. Stepped close.

For the first time she saw the killer in him. She saw him. The man that was part of Casimir, maybe even the largest part. The man she’d so studiously avoided seeing when she homed in on the gentle soul he kept hidden from the world.

“Casimir, I can’t help but remember his kindness to me when I was a child.” She opened her mouth to continue, to tell him she understood that Arturo had to die, that he deserved it, but she couldn’t help that small arrow of grief for the man she’d thought he was.

“Don’t you even think about that fucker,” Casimir snapped. He stared down at her, his face an unreadable mask, his eyes as piercing as they could possibly be even with the dark contacts—alive with something close to hatred. “That man played you. Don’t you dare grieve for him. They had a little routine, your uncle and Arturo.”

Her hand rose defensively to her throat. His voice betrayed him. The fire in him was roaring. Angry. No, it was raging. And it ran deep. “I don’t understand, Casimir.”

“They set up a little school there in that building and they brought unwilling women and trained them. Arturo was the one who tore the skin off a woman with his whips. He caned her. He gave her so much pain she would do anything to make it stop. While they hurt her, tortured and humiliated her, they manipulated her body so she eventually couldn’t get off without pain.”

Her throat closed. Her lungs seized. She couldn’t breathe.

“Arturo, that man you want to grieve for, trained those women by hanging them from the ceiling or tying them to a wooden bench or cross or whatever the hell he wanted in the moment. He beat a woman until she was cooperative and would do whatever he said, whatever any man they gave her to ordered. Your uncle had to have been the good guy, the one who came in and soothed her, cared for her, gave her those little intimate moments that gave her hope that someone actually cared. Then he used her. Abused her. Sold her time to very ugly, perverted men who hurt her over and over. Then Luigi would come back and soothe her all over again. They just reversed the roles with you, Giacinta. Luigi was the assassin. He trained you—was the disciplinarian—while Arturo assumed the role of the man who gave you those little touches to make you think he cared.”

“Stop. Stop it, Casimir. I was a child. I lost my parents, my family, everything. You’re taking everything.”

He glared down at her, implacable. “You never had it in the first place. It was an illusion they created for you, not something real. Arturo was as sick as they come. I hung that sick fuck in the bloody chains and the pool of blood where he’d killed Carlotta. They took her there. They tortured her for days, while I sat in a fucking car a few hundred yards away and let it happen.” He spat the words at her.

She couldn’t stop the tears from burning her eyes even though she knew that would only fan the fire burning so hot in him. She should have known the moment she stepped in the room and found it so hot. He hadn’t turned up his thermostat, he was fighting to keep from setting the house on fire with his rage.

She understood his rage. He blamed himself for not getting into the building, not discovering what was happening until it was too late. He hadn’t saved the woman. That had to have brought flashbacks of the partners he’d been forced to have as a young teenager when they were teaching him control. The women who died because he’d had that control.

“Don’t you fucking cry for him,” he snarled.

He caught her face in one hand and she felt every fingerprint burning into her jaw. She didn’t try to pull away or explain that the tears weren’t for Arturo or Luigi. She wouldn’t cry for either of them. The tears were for her lost childhood. For those women. Most of all they were for him. For Casimir to have to witness such a thing. To have to remember. To relive that nightmare. To let that terrible door crack open and memories spill out when the brutal tragedy happened all over again. He hadn’t saved the woman. That was all he would see. All he would feel.

“Arturo tortured those women in his little sex school. I did the same to him and made certain he was alive when he burned. He didn’t get to die easy. He felt every touch of the flames. And I was glad he felt them. I needed him to feel every one of those flames that crept up his body. He was the torch that started the building on fire. Arturo. Your little childhood buddy. Every lick of flame on his feet and legs, just like the whips he struck those women with. So precise. The maximum hurt with the least amount of actual damage to their bodies so they couldn’t die and be free. I did that, to him, with whips and then with fire, Giacinta. I let that fucker and your bastard of an uncle turn me into a monster when all these years I’ve never allowed that. I gave that to them.”

“Casimir.” She said his name softly.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

She remained where she was. She understood everything now. He detested himself for not saving the widow, but more, he believed he had become the thing Sorbacov tried to create—the monster he’d refused to be all those years of empty loneliness—of being everyone but Casimir Prakenskii.

She shook her head. “I’m not going to do that. I’m never going to do that. You’re mine, Casimir. Mine. You aren’t Sorbacov’s. You don’t belong to him. You never did. Luigi and Arturo can’t turn you into a monster. You aren’t capable of being a monster. Don’t you dare ever put yourself in the same category.”

“I burned that fucker alive.”

“You found a woman dead, in a pool of blood, a woman he tortured and killed. We’re fire elements. What did you think was going to happen? Had I come across a scene like that, do you think I could keep fire under control? You can blame yourself for Carlotta suffering those nights you were outside, but you and I both know, we can only make decisions based on what we know. We had a timetable. You couldn’t risk getting caught just to satisfy curiosity. Had you broken into that building, you might have blown our covers. We didn’t know what was in there.”

He didn’t respond, he just looked at her. There was pain in his eyes. Pain a monster would never feel.

“I need to come to you now, Casimir. I need to put my arms around you and hold you. Will you let me do that?”

He continued to stand there without speaking, his eyes drifting over her face. He was utterly still, as if holding himself together and if he moved he would shatter into a million pieces.

She didn’t ask again. She crossed the space between them and slid her arms around him, pressed her body into him tightly. Laid her head over his heart. “If I haven’t told you yet, I love you. I know it’s too soon to say that. I know you’re going to say I don’t know you, but now, right now . . .” She tilted her face up so her eyes could meet his. “I saw all of you. The best and the worst. I saw what they tried to shape you into, and I know that’s part of who you are. I also know they didn’t succeed the way they wanted because of your character, because of who you were born to be. Because of your genetics and your parents and your brothers. You might not have been raised with them, but they were there for you. Inside you. Helping you hold out against the monsters. I see you, Casimir, and the man I see, the one you are, that’s the man I love. Don’t take him away from me. Don’t let the Arturos, Luigis and Sorbacovs win.”

Very slowly his arms came up to wrap tight around her. He didn’t say anything at all, but he nearly broke her in half tightening his hold on her, locking her to him so hard he clearly wanted to share the same skin. They stood there, just holding each other, and then he finally dropped his head over hers, his lips in her hair.

He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “You have to go to Luigi. Can you do it? Can you play out this charade? The cops will want to question him about Arturo. We can’t kill him now. Not and have it look like an accident. Someone will be suspicious.” He loosened his hold on her to catch her chin in his palm, lifting her face to his. “Can you do this, Giacinta? Because if you can’t, we’ll leave. We can disappear and come back in a few weeks or I will, and finish this.”

“I’ll finish it.”

“It might be best if you go to the States and wait for me there.”

She shook her head. “You can’t get close to the Sorbacovs and you have no chance at all without me. With me, with both of us acting together, we can eliminate them and come out of this alive. I’m not about to let Luigi and his plan to rule Italy as head of two families ruin our chances to ensure your brothers and my sisters a peaceful, happy life.”

His gaze moved over her face. Possessive. Still angry. Still upset, but loving her. She felt that. Loving her. He didn’t say it, but she felt it.

“Kiss me, Casimir. Right now. I need to carry your strength with me when I go down to him. It’s going to be a long night. Tomorrow I have to be the real me and go to the hotel as if none of this has touched me. The world doesn’t know me as Luigi’s niece. I’m the woman who sold him chandeliers. Everyone thinks he gave me my big break here in Italy and that we remained friends.”

He didn’t hesitate. He framed her face with both hands and brought his mouth down on hers. Gently. Tenderly. A haunting, evocative kiss that would stay with her for a long, long time, as he meant it to.

“I’ll be in your bed, malyshka,” he whispered against her lips. He kissed her again. A little harder. A little longer. A lot more aggressively.

A slow somersault started in Lissa’s stomach. Little darts of fire streaked through her bloodstream. It didn’t seem to matter what the circumstances were, his kisses got to her. Claimed her. Took her out of whatever horrible world she was in and brought her into a much better one.

She stepped away from him because she had to. She wasn’t going to cling. If she did, he was in no state to let her go. He’d walk calmly downstairs and put a bullet in Luigi’s head and take her out of there. She was certain of it. She didn’t need that connection between them to know what was in his mind and what he would do if she hesitated.

Lissa walked slowly down the stairs, dread in every step. She’d told Casimir she could do this—and she would—but it wasn’t easy and she didn’t want him to witness her struggle. That definitely would be a disaster. She stood in the doorway of her uncle’s study. He was on the phone, his back to the door, swearing at someone. She caught the name “Angeline” and she closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the doorjamb. Of course he would have to call his wife and tell her Arturo was dead. She would find out sooner or later, and it was better coming from him. He would give her the tale he’d given to Lissa—that Arturo and the widow were lovers and into kinky games.

“Tio.” She didn’t want to eavesdrop on his conversation. He spun around, and she shook her head. “Sorry,” she mouthed. “I didn’t see you on the phone.” She made as if to leave, but he waved her inside.

“I have to go,” Luigi said decisively into the phone, and hung up. “He was up there of course, or you wouldn’t have taken so long.”

“Tomasso liked Arturo. I had to tell him something since I went into his bedroom.”

He nodded. “I called the hotel. He was there and very thorough. He familiarized himself with the layout before he even spoke to the head of security. I had them pull the tapes to see what time he arrived. He couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with Arturo’s death.”

“I know this sounds horrible, Tio, and I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but if the widow was having an affair with Arturo while Cosmos was alive, could she have been carrying on with someone else? Someone who might have been jealous?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear any rumors about anyone else. Cosmos was pretty demanding. To get information, I had to become friends with him. I even had dinner at his house occasionally. That’s how Arturo met her. I needed to know the layout of the house and the routine his bodyguards had so I could give it to you. Maybe Aldo thought an Abbracciabene shouldn’t be spending so much time with a Porcelli soldier and he arranged to have Arturo killed in order to send a message. Who else, Gia?”

“Tio.” She gentled her voice. “You have to call me Lissa even when we’re alone. No one can know who I am. That was your order.”

He sighed heavily, nodding as he did so.

“And you can’t go to see Aldo Porcelli. You can’t. Even to get more information. If he put out a hit on Arturo, then I have to take him out this weekend. In the meantime, you need to retire to your wing of the house and have the men you trust the most guarding this place. Don’t get into your car, don’t go anywhere. Don’t allow even a cop to talk to you alone. Have your bodyguards in the room with you and have at least one standing behind anyone insisting on meeting with you at all times.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll do that,” he agreed.

“I don’t need a bodyguard. I’m nothing to Aldo. Keep Tomasso here with you. He’s been loyal and now, with Arturo dead, you need someone good.”

“Absolutely not.” He stood up. “He’ll go with you. Someone needs to watch over you. I’m not taking any chances with your life.”

He was back to being Luigi, head of the Abbracciabene family. The man who had ordered the hit on his own brother. He wanted Aldo killed. He was too close to his goal to allow even the death of his oldest friend to delay his plans. He needed Lissa alive to take out his last obstacle.

Lissa nodded. “I’m exhausted, Tio Luigi. You must be too. You’ve been so sick and you don’t want to have a relapse, so let’s both go to bed.” She didn’t give him a chance to protest. She couldn’t be in the same room with him, not for one more moment.