“Fine,” the Scotsman huffed. “But I’m pouring myself another drink.”
The room was quiet, except for the clink of Gavin’s glass, and Beatrice could hear Giovanni’s steps cross the courtyard. He paused before the door opened, and she wondered what he was planning as he looked at the bodies of the men he had hired to keep her safe.
Lorenzo gave her another giddy smile, and she was reminded of a Botticelli angel again. She looked away from him and glanced toward the dining room where she and Giovanni had eaten her cake the night before.
Instead of the usual candles that decorated the table, she saw stacks and stacks of books, bound in an assortment of dark leathers, spilling onto the chairs, even some that lay on the ground. They were assorted sizes and appeared to be different ages. There were scrolls and stacks of loose vellum, along with a series of large, identical books with a small stack of parchment on top of them.
“The books,” she whispered.
Lorenzo followed her eyes. “Oh, you’ve spotted my surprise! I thought you’d appreciate them. I brought all of Papà’s precious books. Now we will see why he was so excited at the library, won’t we?”
Beatrice looked at the vampire, confusion evident in her face, but he only smiled at her, his eyes burning with delight.
She turned when she heard the door from the kitchen open. Giovanni walked in, and she could see the flush on his cheeks indicating he had fed. His eyes swept the two strange vampires in his living room, and he examined the stack of books on the dining room table with only a cocked eyebrow before he turned to Gavin and Lorenzo lounging in front of the fire.
He curled his lip at his son then looked at Gavin, before finally, he let his eyes wander to her. He wore the same blank expression he’d often worn when they first started working together. She bit her lip, hoping to quell the tears that threatened to surface.
Giovanni walked to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of scotch before he sat down in his armchair. Gavin sat across from him, looking bored, but nodding politely toward his host. Lorenzo sat on the couch, almost bouncing in excitement, and Beatrice sat frozen next to him, willing Giovanni to give her some sign they would be okay.
“Why were you sitting in my chair, Lorenzo?” he finally spoke. “You know I hate that.”
Lorenzo let out a shrill laugh. “I know, but I had to try it. Your scent and the girl’s were all over it.” He winked at Beatrice. “Naughty human.”
“What do you want? I’m tired.”
Lorenzo looked at the clock over the mantel. “It’s barely nine-thirty!”
“Let me clarify. I’m tired of your company.”
“Fine,” Lorenzo said. “But you take all the fun out of everything.”
“What do you—”
“I do wonder,” Lorenzo interrupted, and took a moment to brush the hair away from Beatrice’s neck, keeping his eyes on Giovanni as he leaned closer. “Where do you bite her? I’ve been looking and I can’t see a mark on her.”
“None of your business.”
He paused to inhale at her throat and his soft blond curls brushed her chin, making her shudder and tense.
“Because you do bite her, don’t you? I mean, why else would her scent be all over your house?” Lorenzo ducked his head back to her neck and took another predatory breath. “And I do mean all over,” he said in a hoarse growl.
Gavin interrupted. “Lorenzo, I have things to do. Get on with it.”
Beatrice was still blinking back tears, staring at the motionless Giovanni, who gave her no sign or acknowledgement. She bit her lip to hold in the cry that wanted to escape when she felt Lorenzo’s hands. The cold that had started in her stomach when she saw the murdered guards had spread to her chest, and a chill crept across her skin everywhere he touched.
“I’m just wondering where you bite her. But maybe that’s not your favorite place?” He smirked and stared into Giovanni’s impassive gaze. “How about her wrists?”
Lorenzo made a show of checking both wrists. “Nope, nothing there…and nothing on her neck that I can see.” A cold finger ran up her neck, starting at her collarbone and reaching her jaw. She jumped and a small whimper left her throat.
“And what a lovely neck she has,” he whispered. Beatrice could no longer hold back, and tears began to trace down her cheeks.
“You curly haired git,” Gavin groaned. “Hands off the blood until you make the deal. She’s not yours, so stop acting like an ass and get on with it. Or I’m leaving and I’ll let him burn you to a crisp if he wants.”
But Lorenzo didn’t stop, and nausea roiled in her stomach as his cold hand approached her thighs.
“No…” She gritted her teeth and tried to squirm away, but he held an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t touch me!”
She kept looking between Lorenzo and Giovanni, expecting him to stop his son—to at least object—but he continued to stare at the vampire next to her with a completely impassive expression.
The tears fell faster when she realized Giovanni wasn’t going to stop him.
“Maybe you like biting her down here,” Lorenzo giggled, trailing a finger along her knee. “Shall we take off her skirt and find—”
“He doesn’t!” Beatrice finally shrieked, pushing him away, unable to take the thought of the vampire’s cold hands touching the skin of her thighs.
“He’s never bitten me! There are no marks,” she cried as she squirmed out of his grasp and scrambled to the other side of the couch. “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me. Please, don’t touch me again.”
No one answered her. She began to cry angry tears; she felt like an object in the room. “Why aren’t you making him stop?” She sniffed again and pulled her legs into her body, trying to make herself as small and casting her eyes around the room, looking for escape.
“For fuck’s sake,” she heard Gavin mutter.
Lorenzo scooted away from her, seemingly uninterested in her further discomfort. “So, not your property after all, is she, Giovanni?”
Giovanni sat, coldly sipping his scotch in the armchair. He glanced at Gavin.
“Why are you here, Wallace?”
“Shite, I’m here to witness a supposed business transaction that your little boy here doesn’t seem to want to complete. Stop the gabbing, Lorenzo, and just do it.”
“Fine!” Lorenzo sat back and crossed his legs. “You two are so boring. I’m going to allow that she’s yours,” she saw Gavin open his mouth to speak, but Lorenzo continued, “even though we all know I could press the point if I wanted to. Still, possession is nine-tenths of the law, or something like that.” He shrugged. “Anyway, Papà, I do have a proposition for you.”
He waved his hand toward the dining room table. “Over on the table, I have your books, the entire Pico collection. Manuscripts, letters, scrolls, blah, blah, blah. What I’m proposing—since possession is nine-tenths of the law—is that you give me the girl, who I have use for, in exchange for your books, which I don’t.”
Her stomach dropped. He wouldn’t…
“The entire Pico collection is there?” Giovanni asked. Dread twisted in her stomach when she saw the interest light up his eyes. He glanced over toward the table and then let his eyes flicker to her.
“No,” she whispered, but no one seemed to listen.
“Yes, yes.” Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “All of it.”
“And Andros’s books?”
He snorted. “How valuable do you think she is?”
A sense of panic began to crawl over her skin the longer Giovanni looked at the books on the table.
“No,” she said a bit louder. Still, no one even glanced at her.
“I’ve grown tired of lugging them around, so I thought I’d just throw them in this lovely fire if you don’t want them. After all,” Lorenzo leaned forward, “they are mine. Like the girl is yours. I can do with them what I want.”
“What?” Beatrice looked around the room. “I don’t belong—”
“Giovanni?
” Gavin cut her off with a glare. “What do you think? He’s offered a fair trade, property for property, do you want the books or the girl? It’s up to you,” Gavin said, as he played with a thread on his cuff.
“Gio,” Beatrice started in horror. “No! You can’t—”
“No trade,” Giovanni murmured, finally looking at her.
Beatrice relaxed into the couch, leaning her forehead on her knees as she took a deep breath; her heart rate, which had been pounding erratically, started to calm.
“Unless you have Giuliana’s sonnets.”
Her head shot up.
She stared at him in horror. “What?”
He was looking at Lorenzo. She shook her head in disbelief.
“No,” she said again, even louder.
Lorenzo reached over, drawing a thin book, bound in red leather, from the side table. It was small, no bigger than the size of a composition book, and the binding was intricately tooled; she could see the finely preserved gold script on the cover.
“As a matter of fact,” Lorenzo said gleefully. “I do.”
Giovanni cocked an eyebrow and held his pale hand out. “Let me see them.”
She kept expecting him to offer her a look or a wink or…anything to tell her he was in control. That he was bluffing. That he wouldn’t trade her for his old books. Anything to stop the cold feeling of dread and betrayal that began to climb her throat, choking her where she sat. She looked around the room in panic as Giovanni paged through the small book.
No, no, no, no, no, her mind chanted when she saw the interest in his eyes.
“They’re all there. Angelo Poliziano had the originals bound after Giuliana sent them, heartbroken after her lover deserted her. Andros took them after he murdered Poliziano. These are her copies—written by her lover’s hand. Now, would you like to trade? Or are these little poems destined for the fire?”
Giovanni looked at the small volume in his hands and a look of tenderness softened his features. Then, he wiped his expression clean and looked at Lorenzo.
“Fine. The girl is yours.”
“No,” she screamed. “No!” Beatrice looked around the room, but no one would meet her eyes. “I won’t go with him!” She looked at the vampire she had trusted. “Gio? Don’t let him take me! Giovanni?”
He wouldn’t even look at her.
She crawled over the back of the couch, trying to flee toward the patio doors, but the dark-haired vampire grabbed her before her feet hit the ground.
“No,” she screamed again, trying to twist away, but it was useless. She was bound in the iron grasp of cold, immortal arms. “You can’t do this to me! No!”
But the sick feeling that crawled through her said that they could.
She observed the rest of the Lorenzo and Giovanni’s “business transaction” as she twisted and bit the guard’s arms, desperately trying to get away from him. “Let me go, you bastards! Let me go!”
They stood, and Giovanni shook Lorenzo’s hand, then Gavin’s.
She broke down sobbing when he refused to look at her. “Please, Gio!” she cried. “Please, don’t let him take me. Please!”
“So,” she heard Lorenzo say, “all that posturing at the library was about your books? I think I’m disappointed.”
“I don’t give a damn about your disappointment,” Giovanni bit out. “And you’re going to give me the rest eventually. Andros’s books are mine and I will find them. Now get the hell out of my house and out of Houston. I don’t want to see you for another hundred years, do you understand?”
Giovanni turned his back to her, and the tears fell swift down her face. Her screams had turned to painful whispers, and her head hurt from crying. She shook her head, trying to block out the betrayal that played out before her, and wishing for physical pain to block the deep cut of abandonment.
“I’m off!” Lorenzo chirped. “Lovely doing business with you.”
There was no need for the guard to hold her tightly anymore. She sagged in his arms, and if she’d anything left in her stomach, it would have been emptied on Giovanni’s luxurious Persian rug.
The whole time, she’d been a pawn. Only a pawn for the man in front of her to get what he wanted. His words months ago drifted to her memory.
“Don’t be naive. For the right price, everything is for sale.”
He’d told her.
She just didn’t want to believe him.
Beatrice was propelled toward the kitchen door, but she refused to walk. Finally, her captor picked her up and carried her like a piece of luggage. As she left the room, she heard Giovanni speak.
“Gavin, care to stay for a drink? I’ve got a wonderful whiskey a friend sent for Christmas. I’ve been waiting to open it.”
By the time they reached the car, she wished that someone would strike her or use their amnis so she could pass out and escape what must have been a nightmare.
Lorenzo got in the car next to her and shut the door. He smiled.
“Don’t worry, my dear. I’m sure you and your father will be seeing each other very soon.”
She glared at him, a bitter rage churning inside her.
“Go to hell.”
A flicker of madness crept into his eyes.
“Already there.”
Then cold hands touched her neck, and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty
Houston, Texas
June 2004
Giovanni stood frozen, his fists clenched as he listened to Lorenzo’s car wind down the driveway. When he finally heard it turn the corner toward Buffalo Bayou, he let out a roar and threw the glass of eighteen year old scotch into the fireplace.
“Dammit, man! The next time I give you a not-very-subtle message to get in touch with me, do it!” Gavin shouted.
“Not now,” Giovanni snarled as he stalked past the table of books and crashed through the patio doors.
In the privacy of his garden’s high walls, he let the rage envelope him. He’d kept himself reined since he scented the spilled blood coming up the driveway. He’d tamped down his anger when he caught the sharp tang of adrenaline in the courtyard, but he’d almost lost control when his son had placed his hands on her.
Blue flames erupted over his skin, burning off his clothes and turning them to charred rags as they drifted to the ground. He silently paced the length of the garden.
“Gio? Don’t let them take me!”
The full weight of his anger unfurled, and the flames grew.
“You can’t do this to me!”
He channeled the blaze toward a copse of cedars near the pool house, letting the intense fire burn them to ash in seconds as he heard Beatrice begging him to save her.
Please, Gio! Please, don’t let him take me…”
He paced the yard, burning hands tugging his dark hair as the memory of her tears flooded his mind. His shoes turned to ash along with his clothes, and he seared the lush grass wherever his bare feet touched.
“How valuable do you think she is?”
Giovanni halted at the memory of his child’s scoffing voice. He pushed the energy away from his body into the humid night air, loosing the fire within.
Priceless.
A thousand memories battered his mind. Her smile. The soft curve of her neck. The light in her dark eyes. The feel of her hands tangled in his hair. The soft, sweet smell of her skin.
In the shadow of her loss, he could finally admit the truth.
“How valuable do you think she is?”
She was priceless.
Remembering the sound of her defeated sobs when she realized his betrayal, he fell to his knees. His rage forgotten as the wave of loss washed over him. Giovanni stumbled to the edge of the pool, falling in and letting himself sink to the deepest part of the pool. He felt the water bubble along his skin as it cooled.
His rage ebbed as he floated in the cool water. The soft currents brushed through his hair, reminding him of her small fingers when she teased him the night before.
“Your hair is so soft. I wish mine was soft like that.”
“I like your hair.”
“You do? It’s so straight. I always wished I had curls like yours.”
“No. Your hair is beautiful as it is.”
He lifted his hand and felt the singed curls float in front of his face. Pieces she had touched drifted away in the dark water.
After a few moments of self-indulgent grief, he gathered his wits and shot to the surface. He climbed out of the pool, wrapping a towel around his waist before he walked inside. Gavin was on the rotary phone in the corner, speaking in a low voice.
“He’s just walked in…no, I don’t yet, but I’ll find out. Here, talk to him. Get him calmed down, and don’t ask him that because the bastard had two of his lackeys with him, and at least two more on the grounds that I could smell. There was no way they were leaving without the De Novo girl.”
Gavin handed the phone to Giovanni, who immediately took it and put it to his ear. He heard Carwyn’s steady voice on the line.
“Hello, Sparky, you calmed down?”
He could only grunt, but the priest seemed to take it as an affirmative.
“It’s a few hours before dawn here, but as soon as I’m able, I’ll be on the next boat—”
“Don’t.”
“What?” Carwyn paused. “We’re going after her, Gio.”
“Of course we are, but we don’t know where he’s taking her yet. I’m sure Gavin can find out, but it will probably be in Europe, and you’ll be closer if you stay where you are now.”
“But—”
“I can’t attack him here, Carwyn. There are too many unknowns and he’s been planning this too far in advance. They’re probably out of the city already, or close to it. And he’ll have more people with him than just the four that were at my house.” He saw Gavin nodding vehemently as he paced by the fireplace. “I’m better off…diffusing this right now and picking my own ground. I’ll need to go to Rome and talk to Livia—probably Athens as well—and we’ll need Tenzin.”
“But Gio, Beatrice will be—”