Lorna Tedder Read online

  Benny was all of four or five years old, with a freshness about him that made me want to scoop him up and hug him tightly to me as I had with Lilah at that age. Yet his destiny had been determined at birth, surer than any combination of stars and planets. He’d spend the next five years of his young life with private tutors, and the five after that learning the skills he’d need to be as cold and heartless as his grandfather. In another twenty years he’d know the cultivated pleasures of cruelty and manipulation as he prepared to take over the Adriano family. But at the moment he was just an innocent little boy who longed for a playmate.

  And if Eric wasn’t the boy’s father, who was he? And why did he seem to care so much for the little tyke? He had to be someone they trusted to have been involved in my heist. Maybe someone they shouldn’t have trusted, given his penchant for errors. But even if the man was an idiot where I was concerned, my heart still softened as I watched his response to the boy.

  “Benny, go back inside. Ask your mother to play with you.”

  The child rolled his eyes. “She said to ask you.”

  I caught the slightest hint of an exasperated sigh from Eric, but otherwise he kept his opinions to himself. I had the impression that he disliked Pauline as much as I did.

  “I’ll play with you after the pretty lady leaves.” He stood in silence, studying me while Benny studied him.

  I clutched the briefcase to my chest. “I’m not leaving.”

  One eyebrow rose just enough to be noticed. “You shouldn’t be here at all. If you want to live, you’ll turn around and go. Now.”

  “Can’t. Sorry. I have a delivery to make.” And a paycheck and a pink slip to pick up.

  “Give it to me. I’ll see that Simon gets his artifact. Leave before your pretty corpse is hanging on a wall like one of your stolen trophies.”

  Was that a threat? Or a warning? I ignored the chill in my bones but not the disdain in his voice. Unbelievable. He worked for the Adrianos, too, and yet he had the nerve to pass judgment on the way I earned my living? Who did he think he was? Did he think being a security guard was any more altruistic than stealing back lost treasures that had belonged to the Adrianos’ ancestors?

  “Simon will want to see me,” I assured him through gritted teeth. “I want him to know I didn’t fail.” This time.

  I still had to make up for losing that statue earlier in the year, and if this package was truly the “artifact of the second millennium,” then maybe Simon would feel he owed me my release. I’d already rehearsed my resignation speech in my head, about how often I’d come through for him and how he was right to be fond of me. I was nervous but determined. Sure, I could take the money I had stashed in several South American banks and hope to disappear, but without Simon’s blessing, I’d never really be free of the Adrianos’ grip as long as I was alive.

  “Listen to me,” Eric warned in a whisper. “Your pride will be your failing. You’re fooling yourself about how much Simon likes you. You are not the teacher’s pet.”

  Teacher’s pet? What was that supposed to mean? A reference to my former life as an English literature professor? The Adrianos knew nothing of those days.

  Eric leaned into my ear so that only I could hear. “You’re special to him but not in the way you think.”

  Before he could say another word, I pushed past both man and boy, through the door and into the lion’s den. Eric and Benny followed me, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Eric hand off my borrowed gun to a security guard called Algernon in a hallway and then discreetly holster his own weapon.

  No matter how many times I had entered the compound’s main house, it always amazed me that people could live in so much luxury. The house reeked not only of money but of centuries-old wealth. But there was no warmth in this place. The air was as sterile as any I had breathed in the world’s most closely guarded museum vaults.

  My boots clicked on the marble floor as I stalked across the foyer and into the reception area where I had previously met with Simon on thirty-five occasions, all of them successful. Always before, I’d felt calm and in charge. I’d never had butterflies in my stomach, but I did now. Then again, the only Adriano I’d ever said no to was Caleb, and that had ended badly. Very badly.

  “Hello, Ms. Moon.”

  I stopped in my tracks and clenched the briefcase. Panic rose in my chest. I took a deep, measured breath to calm myself. Just the sound of Caleb’s voice was enough to unnerve me, especially when he made the effort to discount my talents by ignoring my usual title of Dr. Moon, the one old Max Adriano had ordered given me on my last incarnation as an art thief. Caleb thought my name was Ginny and I’d let him think it. By the tone of his voice, I knew something was up.

  Slowly I turned to face my ex-lover. He was as handsome as ever. Dark blond hair discreetly dyed to make him stand out in a family of dark-haired Europeans. Tall. Piercing Adriano eyes. Expensive casual clothes. Devastating smile. The physique of a muscular teddy bear.

  Yeah. A teddy bear with fangs and claws.

  I forced a smile but kept my distance. The twenty feet between us wasn’t nearly enough to make me feel safe. The fact that Eric, Benny and a host of servants and security guards stood watching on the periphery didn’t help, either.

  “Can I get you anything to drink? Wine? Hemlock?”

  Caleb snapped his fingers, and a svelte servant in a black dress and white apron appeared at his side with a tray of crystal glasses and dark red juice. “Oh, that’s right. You have a preference for pomegranate juice.”

  The servant offered the tray to me, but I shook my head. How did Caleb know I enjoyed pom juice? Unless he’d been watching me. Checking me out. Spying on me to learn more than just what I considered the secret to my youthful looks or that, like the goddess Persephone, I made regular trips into hell. I frowned at the crystal pitcher of juice and the empty glasses on the tray. Caleb had gone to extra effort to let me know he was aware of this particular secret. In any relationship, you must follow the effort to know whether the other party is interested, and Caleb was interested…in something.

  Another liaison in his bedroom? No way in hell was that going to happen. I’d told him that a year ago. I’d told him again on the two occasions I’d seen him since, and he hadn’t taken the rejection lightly.

  “I had the juice prepared especially for you.” He winked at me over a smirk that told me he knew something he shouldn’t.

  Drink whatever poison Caleb offered? “Not damned likely,” I murmured too softly for him to hear. My fists tightened. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to force me to drink something more dangerous than antioxidants. Tonight he was more treacherous than usual because he was alone—he didn’t have a new conquest on his arm to keep him in line.

  I’d warned his newest love interest, a woman named Scarlet Rubashka, what he was capable of. I doubted he’d bedded her yet, but he was definitely courting her, and she wasn’t letting the relationship move too fast. Smart woman. I’d liked Scarlet. Something about her reminded me of Lilah, even though Scarlet was a grown woman in her thirties and Lilah—according to the last photos I’d seen—still had a slight sheen of adolescence.

  If Caleb hadn’t already hated me enough, he’d vowed to kill me after my little conversation with his new infatuation. Scarlet had reminded me that I was a criminal and hadn’t believed me, then she’d told Caleb all about my warning. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Caleb had promised to see me dead for telling her about his bedroom antics. He didn’t need yet another excuse to want me dead, but I’d given him one.

  I should never have gotten involved with the older Adriano brother. I’d known better. And yet, true to form, my years of rejecting Caleb’s advances had brought his pursuit to fever pitch, just as Scarlet’s slower pace was doing now. He always wanted what he couldn’t have, and my denying him just made him that much more determined to have me.

  Glancing around the room, I suddenly felt self-conscious. What the people in that room must have been told about m
e! Eric Cabordes included. Even the servants eyed me as if I were some kind of slut. I knew without a doubt that if I needed help from them now, not one would risk his life to save me. None of them knew the whole story.

  Caleb had worn me down, gotten through my defenses, and I’d relented after six months of his constant attempts to court me. Over several dinners at the palazzo, including one private rendezvous on the old tower ruins before the first quake of the past year skewed the stones, he’d shown me a tender side of him that seemed incongruous with the man I knew now. Probably the same lies he’d told Scarlet on every attempt to get her into his bed. He’d been wildly passionate and intense, and I’d let go of my worries and found myself acquiescing.

  Once. Just once.

  Caleb was an experienced lover, almost fanatically competitive about bringing me to climax, as if it were a power over me that he simply had to wield. Then, when I’d been lost in the throes of passion, he’d closed the fingers of his large hands around my throat and pressed his thumbs into my carotids, cutting off the flow of blood to my brain until I’d felt dizzy. I’d fought the intensity of the physical pleasure, fought to live instead, fought him, scratched at him with my long fingernails, cut his chest and face.

  The people in this room…the ones looking at me with such disdain…they don’t know the truth.

  He seized my wrists then, held them down with one hand while he’d borne down his full weight onto my chest until I couldn’t breathe and cupped his other palm over my gasping mouth and nose. His candlelit bedroom had given way to gray sparkles of nothingness. Later I would remember thinking, I’m going to die and the last thing I’m going to see is the look of delight on this bastard’s face. I’d felt my body give way to light and a sensation of floating among angels.

  Then I’d felt the sting of his palm on my face, again and again, slapping me to bring me back to life. I’d gasped and choked and crawled to the bathroom to throw up.

  “Ms. Moon?” Caleb asked more forcefully as I stared at the glass of pom juice.

  I shook myself and then glanced back at him. As more than one man can attest, I’m by no means a prude when it comes to sex and I wouldn’t mind surrendering control to the right lover. But Caleb Adriano had stepped over the line. I’d ended our affair then and there, which had stirred up an anger I’d never seen in any man. He’d threatened my life several times since that night, and I had no doubt he knew exactly how he wanted to see me executed and whose hands would be around my neck.

  “Aren’t you going to drink your juice?” Caleb grinned at me and gestured to the tray as the servant poured a glass from the pitcher.

  “Why?” I found my voice last. “So you can drug me? Poison me—”

  “Juice!” Benny screeched from across the room and dashed for the tray. He grabbed the glass in his two small fists and pulled it toward his lips.

  Chapter 4

  Eric was by his side in four quick strides. “Here, Benny. Let me.”

  He shot a doting look at the boy, and Benny willingly gave up the glass. Eric glanced at Caleb, but Caleb only blinked, bemused. Everyone else in the room seemed frozen in time.

  My God, what if it is poison? Would Caleb do that to his own nephew? To the heir to the Adriano dynasty?

  Eric brought the glass to his lips and sniffed, then drank deeply. He closed his eyes and waited. Silence fell across the room. Then at last Eric opened his eyes, poured a second glass half-full and handed it to the little boy. Benny grinned and took it, but after a single sip made a face and handed it back.

  “Fucking babysitter,” Caleb mumbled.

  “You watch yourself.”

  I was stunned. A henchman for the Adrianos had just threatened his boss. Unheard of! I could almost admire that in a man, even one who’d screwed up my heist. Eric Cabordes would certainly be dead by dawn.

  “Watch myself?” Caleb closed the distance between them and leaned into Eric’s face, but Eric didn’t move. “What are you going to do about it, Cabordes? Tattle to my baby brother?”

  “My only concern is protecting Joshua’s son. I couldn’t care less about your games with women.” Eric didn’t bother to look in my direction. He set the glass down hard on the tray, sloshing juice onto the servant’s white apron. “Come, Benny. I’ll play hide-and-seek with you.” He grasped Benny’s hand and led the boy out of the room.

  Watching him go, I felt a little less safe in a room full of people…and Caleb. So Eric Cabordes was Benny’s bodyguard. Other than our dislike for Pauline, we had one more thing in common: we both hated Caleb Adriano.

  “Caleb, will you stop taunting the hired help?” Simon swaggered into the room, waving his hand as if to dismiss his elder son. “Dr. Moon, cara mia. Ginny. So nice to see you again.” He eyed the briefcase, then crossed the room to me and gave me a civilized peck on both cheeks, lingering too long to inhale my scent.

  “Thank you, Duke. I’ve missed you, too.”

  Strange as it may seem, I actually liked Simon Adriano with his clipped words, stylish air and promise of intensity. I don’t know. Maybe it’s something like Stockholm syndrome, that effect where the hostage takes on the necessary traits of the kidnapper to earn his affection and approval. I’d been working for the family for so long, heard so many disquieting rumors, seen so much unsettling evidence of their true power, yet Simon had never mistreated me.

  I breathed in the sudden realization. Since when did lack of ill treatment equal fondness and appreciation? After my talk with Nicole in that borrowed hotel room in San Francisco, I’d become aware that I’d started to identify with Simon psychologically, which I found disturbing—and further evidence that I needed to get the hell away.

  Until then, I’d found Simon a lot more likable. He was sixtyish or more and charming, and I’d thought more than once that it was too bad I had a preference for younger men because I thought Simon would have been a hell of a lot more my type than his brute of a son. Not that Simon was a sensitive and gentle soul. I knew exactly who he was and what he was, but he’d always been honest with me, which was something I could appreciate in a world of dishonest power brokers.

  Typically Simon told me exactly what item he was looking for or what item he’d located from their lost cache of treasures, and either he or Joshua gave me instructions on the job. I would retrieve an artifact for Simon, and he’d pay me and pay me well even when he could have forced me to work for nothing out of fear of reprisal from such a powerful family. Unlike most Adriano employees, I was allowed to roam the world and keep my outside contacts, ostensibly because it made me a better-educated and better-connected thief. Simon was fond of me. Why else would I have been given such special treatment? Aside from my business dealings with other art lovers of the world, I’d amassed a small fortune from my dealings with Simon Adriano—if you can call seven million American dollars in untraceable accounts small.

  “Dr. Moon, my dear, do I detect a limp?” His concern seemed fatherly, as usual, and quite normal for our mutual admiration society.

  I felt myself blush. My knee still throbbed, but I was more concerned that I had let a weakness show. Simon didn’t tolerate weakness. I hadn’t been able to hide the fact that I favored one knee, and that was an invitation to my enemies to regard it as a target. If I took another blow to the knee, I’d find myself on the floor and unable to rise to whatever occasion I might find myself in.

  “Just a tiny limp, Duke. I’m sure an ice compress and some rest will suffice.”

  “Enough of this!” Caleb thundered from where he stood, arms crossed, Italian profanities spewing from his mouth. “Take the package from her and be done with her. Better yet, give her to me and I’ll personally pack her legs in ice.”

  Simon glared at his son. “Be silent, Caleb. She’s under my protection. You know that. When I’m done with her, then you can have her. Until then, you won’t…touch her…again.” He pointed to the exit, and Caleb grudgingly walked through it without looking back.

  I stared at the
Duke, at this harsh man who had drawn my admiration in a world where there was so little to admire. So he knew. My God. He knew what Caleb had done to me. And he’d let Caleb have me when he was done with me?

  “Oh, wipe that worried look off your face, Ginny. You’re safe from Caleb for now. I have no intention of being done with you for many, many years to come. By then, he’ll have forgotten all about your lovers’ spat.”

  Simon poured two glasses of pomegranate juice and handed one to me. He took a sip of the other and made the same face his grandson had made. “Wouldn’t you prefer wine to this? We have our own vineyard here as well as the famous one in Languedoc-Roussillon, the Chateau L’Astral. Our wine is respected as some of the finest in the world. It’s the ley lines, you know. Our grapes are rooted in the very life force of the planet.”

  I sipped the juice and didn’t speak. To me, it tasted like wine without the alcohol. As for ley lines, I wasn’t sure what the Duke had meant, though I’d heard about them from New Agers and Bohemian types like Scarlet. I was still stung by the fact that he’d known about Caleb’s misbehavior and had done nothing to protect me. As long as I’d worked for him, I felt he owed me something more than a good paycheck. I’d felt he actually cared what happened to me. And if he didn’t, what about his tentative agreement months ago to let me retire from hanging by threads?

  “You were gone a long time.” Simon replaced the glass on the tray and sank his hands into his pockets. His gaze fell on the briefcase under my arm. “I was worried that you might have decided to keep the artifact for yourself.” Then he raised his gaze to my face. “Did I have cause to doubt you?”

  “Obviously not. I’m here.”

  “But it took you a long time. Longer than usual. What were you up to, Ginny?”

  “You’re the one who wanted me to travel off the grid,” I reminded him. “I didn’t expect it to take me six weeks.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “I never said that. You were expected back within the week, and you were to contact me if you were late.”