L’uomo solitario è bestia o angelo.
A solitary man is either a brute or an angel.
“Watch out, Finestra.” Captain Papatonis slammed Dante to the wall. “He’s armed.”
Dante’s shirt hiked up, revealing a strip of skin and scabbards on either side of his waist. Even with his cheek pressed into the wall, he managed to look bored and irritated. Papatonis might have the upper hand, but only because Dante was letting him have it, and he clearly didn’t plan on tolerating the rough handling much longer.
“At ease, Captain,” Alessa said, drawing herself tall. “He’s with me.” She was technically the head of the military, and he’d better remember his place. “I have the right to choose my own personal security officer, and I have chosen him.”
She’d never seen anyone look as profoundly offended as Captain Papatonis in that moment. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to mistrust all the guards because of one traitor, but she was in too deep now.
A furious debate flashed across the older man’s face before he released Dante and stepped aside.
Glaring at her, Dante straightened his clothing with a few rough tugs.
“With all due respect, Finestra.” The grizzled older man bit her title short. “Do Signora Renata and Signor Miyamoto know about this?”
“Of course.”
Captain Papatonis puffed his chest out. “He can’t walk around looking like that.”
“Then have someone send up something more suitable, Captain.”
The man’s dusky skin flushed beneath his beard, and he gave a jerky salute before storming off.
Alessa’s hesitant smile only made Dante’s scowl deepen.
When they reached her suite, she dropped her key, fumbled to pick it up, then couldn’t get it out of the lock.
“Need help?” Dante said, his words clipped.
“No.” She yanked, and the key popped free, sending her stumbling back into a wall of muscle. She jumped forward, grabbed the handle, and turned it with a vicious twist.
“Looks like you did.”
What was she supposed to say? He made her nervous? She was still shaking from their confrontation with the Captain? That she’d broken more rules and told more lies in one day than she had in the previous five years and she wasn’t sure whether to feel horrified or elated?
As soon as the door closed behind them, Dante locked it and eyed the metal brackets on either side. “These are meant for a barricade. Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
He snatched a lace parasol from an umbrella stand and shoved it between the fixtures, glowering. “I’ll find something better.”
Alessa stared as he stalked the perimeter of her suite like a caged animal.
“What are you doing?” she finally asked.
“Assessing the security.”
She didn’t know much about bodyguard duties aside from “stand outside the door and look grumpy” which he seemed perfectly suited for, so Alessa bit her tongue as Dante examined everything she owned.
It wasn’t too uncomfortable watching him investigate the main section, which held a cozy sitting area and a small kitchenette with a bistro table and glass-fronted cabinets, but she couldn’t help squirming as he passed the doors to her closet and bathing room, or the standing privacy screen concealing the sleeping area.
Pulling open the balcony doors, he strode out and leaned over the side. She took a moment to admire his backside, not realizing until it was too late that he was about to massacre beauty. With no care for the orange and white roses climbing it, he grasped the top of the metal trellis and yanked the structure back and forth, loosening it until the bolts came free with a crumble of stone.
“Hey,” Alessa said, hurrying to the balcony. “Those roses were planted by the first Finestra.”
“Then they’re hardy enough”—he pulled his lip between his teeth—“to survive”—a final tug—“the fall.” The trellis parted from the wall with a scream of metal and clattered to the paving stones below.
Two guards ran around the side of the building, looked at the broken trellis on the ground, then up at her.
“Everything all right, Finestra?”
She gave them a small wave. “Sudden gust of wind!”
While Dante stalked around the room, she sat on the edge of her bed to pull off her boots, softly swearing at the laces slipping through her gloved fingers. She didn’t hear his approach, so when he cleared his throat nearby, she nearly fell off the bed.
“Having trouble?”
Alessa calmed her breathing. “Everything’s more difficult in gloves.”
“So, take them off.”
Bracing himself on her bed, he checked underneath it, his long fingers digging into the soft duvet.
She jumped up as though burned.
Satisfied that no one was hiding under there, he opened the small door in the corner and stared into the darkness. “What’s through here?”
“The stairs to the salt baths.”
He gave her an incredulous look.
“Not the public baths. The Cittadella has its own chambers, and the only other way in is through the Fonte suite. Which is empty. Obviously.”
He scowled at the door to the baths as though it personally offended him, before giving the room one last scan. Passing the table, he paused to pick up a large, engraved envelope.
“For you.” He held it out for a second, realized she wasn’t going to take it from his hands, and tossed it back on the table.
She’d known the envelope was coming, but the sight stole her breath.
Alessa didn’t want his keen eyes on her when she read it, but the letter refused to be ignored, like a persistent buzzing in her ears. She picked it up, turning it over a few times before breaking the seal and scanning the flowery script. When she finished, she crumpled the paper in her fist, squeezing until sharp corners jabbed her palm through her thin gloves.
Dante eyed the mangled paper in her grip. “Love letter?”
“A summons.” Alessa dropped the crumpled ball into the trash. “The Consiglio is convening tomorrow.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That was fast.”
“Very.” She swallowed hard. “I thought I’d have a few more days, but it seems they’ll have the next poor soul trussed up and delivered by tomorrow evening.”
Dante turned to her bookshelf, running a hand down the leather spines as if the books were precious or potentially dangerous.
“My guards usually stand outside the door at night,” she said, walking toward the privacy screen. “But you can take a chair if you’d be more comfortable.”
Studying the faded spine of one book, he gestured at the couch. “I’ll sleep there.”
Alessa cut off a yawn. “No, you won’t.”
“I didn’t come to a castle to sleep in a chair.”
“Then drag the cushions into the hall. You can’t sleep in here.”
“Why not?”
“These are my rooms.” Her sanctuary, where she shed her layers and didn’t have to worry about her every movement terrorizing others. But she couldn’t say that. She refused to bare her pain to a rude stranger.
His biceps tested the linen fabric of his shirt as he crossed his arms. “How’d the guy who tried to kill you get in?”
She blinked. “The door?”
“Or the balcony.”
“You think he scaled the side of a four-story building?”
“There was a trellis.”
“Which is gone, thanks to your delicate handiwork. I can’t have a man in my rooms. There are rules.”
“You’re the Finestra. If you can’t change the rules, who can?”
“You don’t understand how my position works.”
“And you don’t understand how bodyguards work. See, I”—he pointed to himself—“guard your”—he pointed to her, tracing curves in the air—“body.”
She half-scooted behind the screen. “You work for me. I give the orders.”
“I don’t half-ass any job. You want me to guard, this is how I do it.”
If she had to close the balcony doors to get him in the hall, she’d spend the night tossing in a hot, stuffy bed, with visions of leather-clad hands squeezing her windpipe. “Fine. But I’ve killed three people already, and if you try to sneak up on me while I’m sleeping, you’ll be the fourth.”
Dante kicked off his shoes. “Same.”
She squinted at him. Was he saying he’d killed three people? That he’d kill her if she sneaked up on him? Both?
Eyes locked on her like he knew exactly what she was thinking, Dante began unbuttoning his shirt. Panicked, she fled before she made an even bigger fool of herself.
How was she supposed to relax with only translucent panels between her and a half-dressed stranger?
“Dea,” she breathed. Surely he wasn’t taking everything off.
Still trying to decipher his warning, Alessa determinedly steered her thoughts away from the brief glimpse of skin that was now branded into her memory and pulled on her most voluminous nightgown.
He was a criminal. He might be packing up her valuables already or waiting until she fell asleep to smash her head in. She should have shut her mouth in that alley the moment she realized he wasn’t the hero she’d taken him for.
This was ridiculous.
She stepped around the screen with a firm “get out” perched on the tip of her tongue, but he was gone.
The main door was closed. The bathing room was dark. A neatly folded shirt on the end table was the only sign he’d been there at all.
Her gaze flicked to every corner, then the ceiling, as though he might have taken flight. Warmth tickled the back of her neck, and she whirled, but there was no one there.
The wind shifted, carrying the scents of Saverio farther inside.
The balcony.
Dante stood just outside the doors, pants riding low on narrow hips, knives still sheathed on either side. His thumbs found the hilts of his blades, then slid off, again and again, like he was checking to be sure they hadn’t vanished. The broad shoulders and muscled back that had looked so golden and alive in the fighting ring looked like marble gilded silver in the moonlight.
He could have been a sculptor’s masterpiece: Man on Balcony.
He tensed at some distant sound: Man on Balcony Poised for Flight.
Bit by bit, his shoulders lowered, and his hands unclenched, his chest rising as though he’d ordered himself to relax, one piece at a time. He stepped forward, but paused with a slight shake of his head, like he didn’t trust the open sky before him, or feared freedom was a trap. Rubbing the back of his neck, he turned, looking back at the city over his shoulder.
Alessa ran away before he became Man on Balcony Who Caught You Staring.
He’d been sleeping on floors in tavern storage rooms. She could let him have one decent night’s rest. Clearly, he had his own demons to slay, and she wasn’t one of them.
Besides, it was only one night.