Ruth Wind - The Diamond Secret

“Henrik Gunnarsson.”

“Still nothing,” I said. “And while I know Maigny would not particularly care for a close examination of his business, I wouldn’t think drugs would appeal to him.” He preferred art, jewels, antiques. “Drugs would be too messy.”

“Let’s walk,” Luca said, gesturing.

I frowned at his stalling, and stopped where I stood. Wind came off the water, brisk and invigorating, but it would soon be very cold. The wind skittered up my skirt and I shivered. “Let’s not. We can stand here on the bridge.”

“As you wish.” He faced the sea, putting his face in profile, and I saw something ancient in the Semitic angle of his high-bridged nose, the fullness of his lips. A profile meant for an ancient Greek coin. No, not Greek. An ancient Romanian coin. Yes, that worked. A Gypsy prince, that was Luca, both wild and elegant. The wind gusted his scent of oranges toward me, and I found myself breathing it in before I knew what I was doing.

Dangerous.

In a hard voice, I said, “Tell me.”

“Maigny hired me to steal the jewel from Gunnarsson. They are old, old rivals—something that began over a woman who became Maigny’s mistress. You may remember her.”

“He had a lot of mistresses,” I said with a shrug.

“I have the impression this one might have meant a little more to him. Elena?”

I didn’t say anything, but memories swished forward. A woman with a deep bust and long legs and beautiful shoes, chuckling at me. A man with ice-blond hair and cool eyes, smoking on a balcony in Paris. Paul, his jaw hard, ordering them out of his house. I couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. “I remember her, but not because he was somadly in love.” Though I supposed he might have been. What did I know—or care—of adult love affairs at the time? “She betrayed him. Stole something, maybe. I can’t remember exactly.”

“Yes, she betrayed him. She stole a Celtic brooch from him, and took it to Gunnarsson.”

“I see.” And I could. I could imagine the cold fury that must have overtaken him when he discovered her treachery. “So, how did Gunnarsson end up with the Katerina?”

“It was largely to thwart Maigny,” Luca said.

“Ah.” Old, bad blood. How typical of men. “So Paul wanted it as payback for the earlier theft.” It was a test to see how much he knew.

He glanced at me below his lashes, quick and measuring. “Not exactly. Partly, of course, but he has been seeking this jewel for twenty years or better. Something to do with his father.” He shrugged, and leaning on the bridge, laced his hands together. “I don’t know.”

“His father was a thief, like you,” I said. I watched a pair of gulls wheeling against the eggplant-colored sky. “He spent years tracking down the Katerina, and managed to at last steal it from a war criminal who’d fled to Brazil. Paul was young, eight or nine, and saw the jewel when his father brought it home.”

“Mmm.” Luca’s murmur was sympathetic—and knowing. “I can guess the next part. Maigny’s father was murdered and the jewel disappeared.”

“From what I gather, it was quite brutal. Dismemberment, maybe even decapitation.”

Was it my imagination or did Luca shudder slightly? “So it goes with curses.”

I thought of Gunnarsson, he of the Kingpin’s Crown Jewels that I’d been brought in to evaluate. He’d been garroted. “Did you know the Kingpin?”

“No.” The word was short and cold. “He was dead before I arrived. He had only held the Katerina three days.”

“And was murdered.”

He looked down at me, his hands quiet on the stone balustrade of the bridge. “Yes.”

“Who did it?”

“Who knows? Perhaps it was your Maigny.”

“No.” Paul was a very wealthy man with an eye for beauty who’d made his fortune in canny investments. While I could credit the idea of his hiring a thief to steal a gem from a drug lord with whom he had an old grievance, I didn’t think he was a killer. “Who else wanted the jewel?”

He made a pishing noise. “More to the point, who did not?”

I nodded. “And you have now stolen it yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Has he paid you?”

“Half.”

I raised my eyebrows. “And now you’ve stolen it and have his cash and there are others after the jewel, and if you live another week it will be a miracle.” I tossed my heavy braid over my shoulder. “And you dragged me into this mess, why?”

“It belongs to Romania,” he said.

I half snorted. “And a thief cares about that, why?”

He gave me an injured look. “My country is poor but proud, and she has been overlooked. Our wealth comes in claiming our own heritage and taking pride in it. If the crown jewels of England were stolen, wouldn’t a British thief wish to return them?”

“I suppose.” I was still picking up a note of insincerity. Something not quite right. A gust tossed handfuls of dust into my eyes. “Let’s go back.” We turned around, and I noticed a pair of lovers kissing on a bench. Something about them looked—off.

I frowned. Or was I just being paranoid? Not everybody was paparazzi. “What do I have to do with all of this?”

“Your name was in the newspapers after the murder.”

“Yeah. And?”

He paused, put his hand on my arm. Again the night wind blew his exotic scent toward me, mixing it with the sea in a heady combination. I looked at his mouth, wondered…

“When I saw your photo in the paper, I knew I had seen it before, but only when they mentioned your father was Gordon Montague did I realize that I could protect myself from Paul’s wrath.”

I raised an eyebrow. “How will I protect you?”

“Sylvie, think,” he said. “Why choose you? He won’t kill me as long as you are with me.”

“Why would I care if he kills you?”

“It does not matter what you think. It matters that he will do nothing to endanger you. You are the most precious of all creatures to him, did you know that?”

I snorted. “We haven’t spoken in five years.”

“That may be,” he said quietly, and lifted a hand to my face to capture a strand of long hair that had escaped my braid. He smoothed it back. “But it has not changed his feelings for you. He’s very protective of you.”

Luca’s fingers were graceful and delicate on my cheekbone, and as I looked up at him warily, I spied something in his blue eyes. Surprise, perhaps. A tendril of awareness unfurled on my spine as he took a step closer.

From behind us came a shout, “Hey, Sylvie! Is that your new boyfriend?”

I turned, instinctively, and the flashes went off, pop, pop.

“Shit.” I whirled away, putting my back to them. “C’mon,” I said to Luca. “Let’s get out of here.”

He had not moved, his hand still circling my arm. He appeared to be confused as he stared at the photographers, and I’m sure they caught very flattering, open-mouthed pictures of him. They’d run with some appropriately awful headline about shocking secrets or something appropriately comic-bookish.

The flashes from the cameras lit up the night, and Luca scowled. “Who—?”

“Fucking paparazzi,” I said, striding away. “Where’ s the car?”

He hurried to catch me. “Language, language,” he said with a chuckle in his voice.

“You try having sleazy photographers taking your picture every time you’re about to kiss someone.” I was still stinging from an encounter in New York last spring, when the doggedness of a pair of photographers had cost me a developing relationship with a man I’d really liked. Joseph had been a professor at Berkley. He’d found the attention daunting, and dumped me.

“Were we about to kiss?” Luca asked.

I glared at him. “Don’t be arch.”