Page 36

CHAPTER 36

“Two people.” Dante smiled at her. “You’re one.”

She didn’t want to experience the warmth of knowing this man trusted her. Yet she smiled back and said, “Yes. You can trust me.”

“Do you trust me?” he coaxed.

She wanted to think about it, the ramifications of trusting him, the consequences of admitting it, but there it was, flowing through her veins, a rock-solid certainty that he’d put his life on the line for her. Again she fussed with putting her tear-away pants back in order. “Yes. I trust you.”

He touched her cheek. “Shy? Now?”

“No.” Yes.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

She glanced at him.

He met her gaze for one swift moment, his eyes all golden warmth, then turned back to the traffic.

She blushed and faced forward.

It didn’t change a thing. They were up shit creek without a paddle. Still…through all the difficulties and anguish, trust had grown between them. That was nice to know.

Just like she knew he hadn’t forgotten to tell her who the other person was, and that meant he wasn’t going to. If he truly trusted her, and she knew he wouldn’t have said it unless he meant it, then only the sensitive identity of that other person stopped him. And that made her think…

He said, “I know Octavia is going to worry when she can’t contact you, but I promise as soon as it’s viable, I’ll contact her and assure her of your safety.”

“Thank you. That’s good of you to think of her.”

“She’s my mother-in-law. Alex is my sister-in-law. Because of what happened to Alex, I already had placed them under protection. That order won’t be rescinded until I feel sure of their safety.”

Maarja’s breath caught. All that had happened: la Bouteille de Flamme in her drawer, the fake wedding that Dante took so seriously, the flare of heat from the bottle and stopper (she looked at her palm, which still did not , she told herself, tingle with sensation), this fear that drove them—all made her aware that someone, somewhere could capture Mom and Alex and use them to control her.

As she absorbed that truth, this trip took on new urgency. She had to get somewhere, do something, to protect the ones she loved.

All the ones she loved.

She didn’t love Dante.

She didn’t love Dante.

She didn’t love Dante. He was a strong man, a Boss with the capital B, but he could be taken, tortured, killed. She’d seen death. She knew its face. She didn’t love Dante, but she didn’t want him wearing that face.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

Theoretically Dante and Maarja were driving out of San Francisco, away from the morning rush hour, so the traffic shouldn’t have been terrible. But not terrible for the Bay Area equaled solid suckage, and no cell phones meant they couldn’t use GPS to find a better route. They weren’t going anywhere, merely staring at miles of brake lights while Maarja fiddled with her leather pants.

“The legs won’t go back together?” Dante asked.

Maarja sighed in exasperation. “Not in this car. It’s so small I can’t maneuver.”

“Leave them. I like it.”

“Because it looks like a leather skirt slit up to my vajayjay.”

“Of course.” He was such an unabashed male animal.

She scooched and adjusted until the leg slits were on the side. “There. Now it’s slit up to my hips . That’s a little less…southern exposure.”

“You have great hips. Great legs. However you want to show them to me is a boy’s wet dream.” He sounded so ravenous and happy .

“I’m not showing them to you, I’m—”

He smirked.

She smoothed the leather over her knees. “Anyway, you’re supposed to keep your eyes on the road.”

“I am.”

Someone honked behind them.

“No, you’re not.”

“It’s your fault.” He gave the finger to the car behind them. “Your legs make me think of your chatte . Are you still wet? I came like a boy and now I want to do it again.”

“Traffic is moving!”

In a happy tone, he said, “You already nag like a wife.” He drove forward at twenty miles per hour.

She wasn’t going to win, so she subsided into silence.

After half a mile, he braked again. “Wow, I even got to put it into second gear! Are you sulking?”

“Similar. I’m thinking. The reappearance of that bottle—does that mean things are coming to a head?”

“Yes. I have been waiting for them to make the next move. Which they did.”

“Why did they?”

“Pending deals that require me to change my policies. Potential allies who are questioning their competence.” He nodded in satisfaction. “Impatience.”

“Serene is part of the conspiracy to depose you. The bitch.”

Dante ceased tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Why do you say that?”

“I thought she was an opportunist who used the explosion to steal the art to sell, but since the bottle arrived in my bedroom, she’s got to be working for…whoever it is.”

“Or she sold it to them.”

Maarja so badly wanted Serene to be more than a thief, but… “I didn’t think of that. I’m so angry at her.”

“About Alex.”

“Yes. Stealing and betraying a trust is one thing. Beating someone and leaving them to die is another. Serene was always, oh, so…pressing palms and namaste .” She said the last word as if it were an insult.

He inched the Opel ahead a few inches.

She glanced at his granite face. “You don’t think that’s it, either.”

“Previously, her reputation was spotless, right? Saint Rees thoroughly investigates his employees, no?”

“Right, and he’s uncovered some pretty heinous applicants who buried their backgrounds in a deep grave. He’s good at what he does.” She put her hand on his. “Really, Dante, I know you believed you’d been bamboozled, but Serene bamboozled us all. Her and her fucking Zen.” Oh, no. She snatched her hand away. She was starting to talk like him.

He didn’t say anything about her cussing, but his mouth quirked. “In that case, one other thought. If it was her first time at robbery, she may have tried to make a deal to sell the objects and—”

“And they were stolen from her!”

“You can’t steal from a dead woman.”

Maarja turned and stared at his indifferent face, feeling innocent and foolish. “You think she’s dead? You know she’s dead?”

“I do not know, but if I was betting, I’d come down on the side of a soon-to-be-discovered corpse, a recovery of all art except for one small bottle, and a successful closing of the case by the police.”

She faced forward, at the barely-inching-along line of cars, and swallowed. He was right, of course. If Serene was really a novice at theft and violence, she could very well have run afoul of the more experienced villains who objected to the attention her activities had brought to them.

A parallel could be drawn between her and Serene. In over her head. And sure, she didn’t like Serene, but she wanted her to go to jail, not be dead. Too much pain and ruin hovered close. Alex, Raine Arundel… “That works if someone killed Serene for the bottle. A relative of yours. Why wouldn’t they sell off the rest of the art?”

“Because it’s my art, and it’s always good to hedge your bets.”

“Oh.” She needed to remember Dante was the ultimate bad guy. “Whoever is doing this knows that if you survive all the assassination attempts, the return of your art might pacify you, you won’t be moved to widespread speculative vengeance, and they’ll be able to take another run at overthrowing you.”

He inclined his head.

“You won’t mention the bottle because it’s already in your possession.”

“It’s actually in our possession. I’m merely the one who is protecting it until such time when it’s no longer an object sought by anyone but museum curators.”

She thought about that. “When this is over, you want to give it to a museum?”

“That would be safest for la Bouteille de Flamme , don’t you agree? We can give it to someone with the stipulation that it must be displayed and protected, and on our anniversary, we’ll visit it and hold hands.” He cast her a flirty glance as if trying to lift her sadness.

She was not sad about Serene. She hadn’t liked her in the first place, and when Serene and her henchman hurt Alex, she discovered how to hate as a Daire should hate.

She was a little sad about her own loss of naivety. It seemed the further she got into this, the more she was bruised, not just in her body, although all the aches and pains from the early morning’s crashes had begun to make themselves known. But the woman she had thought herself to be: savvy, cynical, street-savvy, no longer existed. Compared to this place she now inhabited, before she’d been cocooned in safety. The world was both worse than she had believed and—she looked sideways at Dante—better.

“Hey, look!” He shifted gears. “We’re speeding along at thirty-eight miles per hour!”

“That’s great. How much longer to Connor’s?”

“At this speed? We might get there by eleven.”

“We really need a cell phone.”

“Not yet. Let’s stay off the grid for a while longer. Until we’re prepared.”

“For what?”

“For what’s going to happen.”