Linda Howard - Kiss Me While I Sleep

Damone was in Rodrigo’s office when the phone rang. Rodrigo answered it, and his olive complexion turned a strange ashen color.

Damone got to his feet. “What is it?” he asked when Rodrigo hung up.

Rodrigo’s head was bowed, his shoulders slumped. “The laboratory has been destroyed,” he said hoarsely. “Explosives. Vincenzo is dead.” Slowly he raised his head, horror dawning in his eyes. “He was killed by the security consultants you took into the complex.”

Damone took several deep breaths. Then, very quietly, he said, “I couldn’t let you release that virus.”

“ ‘couldn’t’—?” Rodrigo blinked rapidly, trying to make the words mean something else. But they remained the same, and Damone stood there with a very calm expression. “You—you knew what they were going to do?”

“I paid them to do it.”

Rodrigo felt as if the world had shifted on its axis, that nothing he had thought was real had any substance. In a blinding moment of clarity, he knew. “You were behind the first explosion. You hired the Joubrans!”

“Unfortunately, Vincenzo was able to duplicate his work, so I had to take more drastic measures.”

“Because of you, Papa is dead! ” Rodrigo roared, surging to his feet and reaching for the weapon that was always in the desk drawer.

Damone was faster, his own weapon much closer to hand. He didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger three times, putting two holes in Rodrigo’s chest and an insurance shot to the head. His brother sprawled over the desk, then crashed to the floor, overturning the wastebasket.

Damone let his hand drop to his side, and a tear rolled down his face.

It had come to this, from events he had set in motion back in August. He sucked in a deep breath and wiped his eyes. The road to hell was truly paved with good intentions. All he had wanted was for that virus to be destroyed. He couldn’t let his father go through with his plans to release it.

Giselle, his wonderful, brave, fragile Giselle, would never have survived if she had contracted the influenza. She had had a kidney transplant just the year before, and had to take drugs that suppressed her immune system, and even the vaccine could not have saved her. She had been reluctant to accept his proposal because she couldn’t give him children, and she knew how important family was to Italians in general, but he had eventually convinced her. He loved her more than he could express, more than he could explain even to himself. For her, he had taken steps to destroy the virus.

He had never thought his father would discover who had set the first explosion, and he’d been heartsick when he learned the Joubrans and their daughter had been executed, as a lesson to those who would cross Salvatore Nervi.

But the Joubrans had had a friend, this Lily Mansfield, and their deaths had sent her on a quest for vengeance that put his papa in the grave.

She had been the perfect choice to complete the Joubrans’ mission. With George Blanc’s help—Damone had almost panicked when she demanded a meeting, but an urgent call to Blanc had persuaded him to appear in Damone’s place—he had devised a plan to get her and her friend inside the complex.

He hadn’t been prepared for how he would feel when he actually saw her, the woman who had killed his father. For a moment he had wanted to kill her, punish her for his anguish at what he himself had caused. He was certain that “Charles Fournier” was this woman in disguise, though it was such a good disguise he’d been taken aback and unsure that there wasn’t a third person involved. But he had deliberately forced her to shake hands with him, and the feel of that slender, feminine hand in his had convinced him.

So. She had accomplished the mission—and forced him to pay her a million American dollars to do it. He hadn’t intended to follow through on the payment, but she had outsmarted him by insisting on payment in advance.

He wished she had died in the explosion. Perhaps she had; he didn’t know yet if there were any fatalities other than Vincenzo. But if she had escaped alive, he would call a truce. Lily Mansfield was safe from the Nervi organization. She had reacted to an event he had caused, and in the same way that a snowball rolling downhill becomes an avalanche, so things had proceeded to this point.

He had murdered his brother. His immortal soul was perhaps damned for this, but he thought the lives he had saved by destroying the virus would be weighed in the balance. And he had saved Giselle.

Damone stepped to the door. The sound of the shots had of course been heard, but no one had entered. He opened the door and saw several nervous men standing just outside, wearing uncertain expressions. He looked over the faces and picked out that of Tadeo, Rodrigo’s man. “Rodrigo is dead,” he said gently. “I have assumed control of all operations. Tadeo, would you please make certain my brother’s body is treated with all due respect? I will take him home, bury him next to Papa.”

His face pale, Tadeo nodded. He knew the way things worked. He could become Damone’s man, or he could die.

He chose to live. He murmured some quiet words to the other men, and they went inside the office to take care of Rodrigo’s body.

Damone went into another room and placed a call. “Monsieur Blanc. It is over. Your service to me has ended.”

32

“Why Greece?” Lily asked as she swiftly gathered her things in Swain’s hotel room.

“Because it’s warm, and because it’s the first flight out that I could get us on. Do you have your passport?”

“Several.”

He stopped what he was doing and gave her an oddly tender smile. “The one in your real name. That’s what I booked your ticket under.”

She winced. “That might cause problems.” She hadn’t forgotten that she had to be on guard against the CIA, too, though so far she seemed to have gone in under the radar on that one. After what had happened today, whether that would remain true was anyone’s guess. “Turn on the television. Let’s see if anything is being reported on the news.”

Either the explosion was being kept quiet or they had missed the story in the news item rotation, and they didn’t have time to wait through another segment. Rather than call a bellman, Swain carried their luggage down himself, then checked them out of the hotel.

“We have to go to my apartment,” Lily said when they were in the car. They had ditched the van several blocks away from the hotel, and walked the rest of the way.

Swain gave her a disbelieving look. “Do you know how long that will take us?”

“I have to get my pictures of Zia. I don’t know when or if I’ll be able to come back, so I’m not leaving them behind. If I see we’re going to miss our flight, I’ll call and cancel the reservations and book us on the next one.”

“Maybe we can make it,” he said, a devilish grin on his face, and Lily braced herself for the ride of a lifetime.

They did make it to her apartment building in one piece, but Lily kept her eyes closed most of the way and didn’t open them no matter how close the screeching brakes and blasting horns were. “I won’t be a minute,” she said when he pulled to a stop.

“I’m coming up with you.”

She gave him an incredulous look as he climbed out of the car and locked it. “But you’re blocking the street. What if someone wants to get by?”

“Then they can damn well wait.”

He climbed the stairs with her, his left hand on the small of her back and his right hand on his pistol butt. Lily unlocked the door, and Swain went in first as she reached in and flipped on the light switch, sweeping right to left with his pistol until he was certain no one was waiting for them.