The Italian (9 page)

Or…just sex.

For the first time with Stefano, she wasn’t sure what had happened. Sex or lovemaking.

They hadn’t spoken a word since he’d climaxed and he hadn’t met her eyes. In any other man, she’d just put it down to him being a jerk and would have gathered her things quietly and left. She usually didn’t feel bad about jerks for more than twenty-four hours, and with any other man, by this time tomorrow night she’d be eating a wonderful meal on her terrace, back to watching her neighbors on the street below, her bedmate forgotten.

There was no forgetting Stefano though. There was no forgetting him ever. And she knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t being a jerk, he was being a realist. He’d obviously been able to move mountains to give them this little two-day surcease from the world, but just as obviously it couldn’t happen again.

His life was duty and she was distracting him, possibly endangering him. They were both in over their heads in an impossible relationship that was deeper than it should be, or even could be.

So when he came out of the shower, she didn’t say a word, just watched him dress, committing his every movement to memory.

With each item he put on, years went back onto his face, aging him before her very eyes. By the time he was fully dressed he looked ten years older, the same hard man she’d met…what was it? Only four days ago?

It felt like four years ago.

He looked at her, eyes hooded and wary. His mouth opened but no words came out. She couldn’t say anything to him either, because there were invisible knives in her chest slicing her open from the inside.

And anyway, there were no words possible.

His cell gave a small trill and he answered, keeping his eyes on her. “
Sì
,
va bene
.
Ora
.”
Yes, all right. Now.
He thumbed the phone off and opened his mouth to speak.

Her hand shot up, palm outward. An instinctive gesture.
No.

There wasn’t anything he could say that she wanted to hear.

He nodded once, face sober, and turned his back to her. A white rectangle, his card, fluttered to the desk by the door as he walked out of the bedroom. A moment later, she heard the door of the hotel suite close quietly behind him.

She had to shower, dress, pack.

But first she had to breathe down the pain that was crushing her heart.

* * * * *

Stefano didn’t look down as the helicopter lifted and banked. The most beautiful landscape in the world below him and he couldn’t bear to look at it because he was leaving his love behind.

Love.

An odd word, even a ridiculous word for a battle-hardened thirty-six-year-old lawyer, a judge. A word that didn’t even make much sense except—except there it was. He’d fallen in love with Jamie. And like his countryman Romeo, it was an impossible love. At least it was impossible right now.

He was getting close to Serra, he could feel it. Their snitches said word on the street was that Serra was becoming desperate, which meant he would be taking risks to get rid of Stefano. In Sicily, offing a judge sometimes worked. The next judge would be more cautious, would want to go over what Stefano had uncovered document by document, from the very beginning.

If Serra managed to kill him, that would gain him at least three or four years, an eternity. A lot could happen in three or four years, and so Serra would be willing to do whatever it took to bring Stefano down.

It was entirely possible, though, that Stefano would bring
Serra
down. It was entirely possible that this time next year, he’d be back in Milan, resuming his normal duties, Serra in a cage awaiting trial.

But there were no guarantees. And there was also no doubt that Stefano was becoming a greater and greater target. How to bring a woman into that?

Forget that he’d never been as happy with a woman as he was with Jamie. It wasn’t just the sex, though that was spectacular. She was so easygoing, such delightful company. Interesting and talented and straightforward. And so beautiful she made his heart ache. Every second with her had been sheer delight.

How could he give that up?

How could he not?

Being with him meant painting a huge bull’s-eye on that lovely back.

If he asked her to stay in Palermo, she’d become a moving target too. She’d have to stay under police protection at all times. He’d have to justify the expense to the Interior Ministry. Her life would become a living hell and he had no idea when they could even contemplate leading a normal one.

It was too much to ask any woman, let alone such a vital and talented one. Her career would be put on hold and that would be a crime. He’d leafed through the sketchbook she’d brought along, and even a philistine such as himself could recognize the sheer artistry of her drawings.

“You okay?” Buzzanca’s voice in the com system. There were four other officers in the helicopter and they were all hooked together. Nobody’s head turned, but Stefano knew they were all listening.

You okay?
What a stupid fucking question.

No, he wasn’t okay. He was hurting. He was leaving behind a woman he thought could be the woman of his life. He might never see Jamie again. The truth was he
shouldn’t
see her again.

He’d had just a taste and now he had to go back into his cold steel cage. Alone.

“
Fantastico
,” he replied, and switched the com off.

* * * * *

The trip back was a blur, almost literally, since she had to keep blinking back tears. The officers accompanying her were completely unknown so she flew back in a bubble of isolation. Which was fine. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. There was absolutely nothing to say.

A young officer accompanied her to her door, set her bag at her feet, lifted his hand in a slight salute and retreated fast down the stairs. He all but dusted his hands, probably glad to be rid of the
Americana
, this huge burden.

It was early evening, the hour she loved so. When the light turned golden and the birds gathered in the skies for the final balletic swoops in the air before settling down for the night and the Palermitans dressed up for their evening walk about town
.

It all seemed so remote and far away though. Even the concept of pleasure was somehow obscene.

She dropped her bag in the entrance and drifted into the kitchen. There wasn’t much to eat in the house, but it didn’t make any difference because she had no appetite. There was still half a bottle of Salaparuta though, and that appealed. Sitting on the terrace drinking a glass or two of wine—
that
she could wrap her head around.

When she was settled, had calmed a little, she’d call Gramps, scold him for not being in touch, listen to his deep, now quavery voice. She wouldn’t tell him about her love affair with Stefano but Gramps was smart. And he’d find the right thing to say. He always did.

She poured herself some wine in one of her landlady’s crystal glasses and moved to the living room. It was dark because she’d pulled the curtains closed before leaving for Taormina. The golden light limned the edges of the dark velvet curtains. It would be beautiful outside on the terrace. Maybe sipping the golden wine in the golden light of evening would help.

With a sigh, she reached out to pull the curtains back.

“So, what is it like, fucking the judge?” a cold male voice asked from the shadows.

Jamie screamed and dropped the glass. It shattered on the marble floor, showering her legs with wine and glass shards.

He was sitting in her favorite armchair, the one by the piecrust table with the banker’s lamp. He switched it on and there he was. Not tall but immensely broad, squat even. Legs short, chest deep and wide. A strong, thick neck and bullet-shaped head covered with bristly gray stubble, as was his face.

Face cruel and hard, expressionless. Cold, dark eyes.

One of the most frightening men she’d ever seen.

Contrasting with the gangster physique, he was elegantly dressed in a bespoke suit. No off-the-rack garment would fit his proportions. A thin gold watch and a large gold ring on a hand holding a pistol. Aimed right at her heart.

“What—” Her voice stuck. She wheezed with terror, lungs bellowing. Her heart hammered against her ribs irregularly, like a broken metronome. “What do you want? Who are you?” The words came out in a whisper when she finally found her voice.

The man merely looked at her out of dark, dark eyes. Two summers ago she’d gone on a study trip to Valencia, home of great modern architecture. It had a superb aquarium with an unusual feature—a Plexiglas tunnel where you could walk through a huge basin in which sharks roamed restlessly, ceaselessly. They came right up against the glass, opening their terrifying mouths. One shark followed her down the tunnel, watching her out of cruel, dead black eyes.

This man had the exact same eyes.

He didn’t answer. He simply grunted something into a cellphone in the hand not holding a pistol.

A second later her own cell rang. She glanced at it.
Gramps’ number!

She ignored it, staring at the man with the gun.

“Answer it,” he growled.

She hesitated and there was a metallic
snick
sound, loud in the silent room. Even Jaime recognized it as the sound of the safety coming off the gun. Her hands were shaking so badly she dropped her smartphone on the floor into the puddle of wine. It took her two tries to pick it up without cutting herself on the shattered crystal.

“H-hello? Gramps? Ah, now’s not—”

“Not your grandfather, you bitch.” The voice from the phone was low and vicious, completely American with a heavy Boston accent. “Check your screen.”

This was a nightmare. It had to be. Still, she pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at the screen, not understanding what she was seeing. It was…a human face, but grossly distorted. The screen was small and her shocked mind tried to make sense of what was on it.

Suddenly, the image coalesced in her head and she gasped. A grotesque vision—one eye swollen shut, dark with caked blood. Blood crusting along the side of a face that was somehow lopsided. Again, it took her a second to realize he was missing an ear. It had been cut off, blood flowing over the entire side of the face and down to the shoulder. The lips swollen, a tooth missing. Around the face a halo of white hair. A familiar halo…

Time slowed while her stomach lurched into her throat.

She convulsed forward and vomited into the wastepaper basket by the desk, her stomach emptying itself completely, though there was little in it. She clung to the edge of the desk with one clammy hand, her knees ready to buckle, her eyes glued to the small screen. Whoever the man with the cruel voice was, he was sending a slideshow of horrors.

Shot after shot of her grandfather, brutalized, ending with the final one, Gramps slumping against a rope tying him to a chair, head lolling to one side.

Oh God, was he—was he
dead
?

Her mouth was fuzzy, dry. The words were hard to get out as she turned to the man in her armchair. “Is he alive?”

The man spoke briefly into his cell and out of the speaker on her own phone, she heard a shaky whisper. “Jamie?”

She gave a cry, clinging to the phone as if she could reach out through it and touch him, hold him. “Gramps! Oh God, Gramps—”

The connection went dead.

“That’s enough,” Shark Eyes said. “Your grandfather is alive. For now. And we just might let him live if you do what I say.”

Jamie barely heard him. Fury filled her head like a hot whistling wind. An electrical storm that wiped everything from her mind but rage and hatred. She forgot the shark eyes and powerful frame. She even forgot the gun he held as if it were an extension of his hand.

With a wild cry she launched herself at him—and was blocked, frozen by a searing pain in the back of her head.

Her feet scrabbled for purchase. Tears sprang to her eyes, the pain almost unbearable as her head was pulled back so sharply she thought her neck would crack. The terrible tension in her head was released and she sank to her knees, one hand landing on a shard of glass that sliced deeply into her palm.

She was yanked back upright so brutally the muscles in her arm protested.

For the first time she realized there was someone else in the room, someone who’d yanked on her hair when she’d tried to attack the man in the armchair. She was held against a male body that smelled of sweat and cheap cologne. Bile rose in her throat and she had to swallow not to vomit again.

Shark Eyes rose and walked slowly toward her. The man behind her held her in a crushing grip—she was immobilized. She tried kicking backward and received a blow to the head that made her ears ring.

“Stop that,” Shark Eyes said softly, and something in his voice, in his look, made her stop struggling immediately. This man was dangerous in a way she’d never encountered before. It was an instinctive knowledge, from before civilization, when humans lived in the wild.

This man was very,
very
dangerous.