Chapter Nine
They landedin another private airfield, this one close to the French city of Mulhouse. From there, a waiting car whisked them to a train station. Within moments of arriving, they’d shown the pre-booked tickets stored on their burner phones and were boarding a sleek double-decker train, anonymous amongst the multitudes who’d boarded in Paris. An hour and twenty minutes later, they were in Zurich.
Georgia had never been to Switzerland before, but once they’d left the train station, there was no time to take in her surroundings, for Niccolo was ushering her into a taxi.
Their journey didn’t take long, certainly not long enough for her to gawp at the architecture or try to get a flavour of the city’s ambience, as now they were entering a huge department store. Niccolo knew exactly where he was going, steering her to the women’s concessions and telling her to choose whatever she wanted but to choose it all quickly.
As their holdall contained a quarter of a million euros in cash, it meant that she could have her Cinderella moment and buy anything her heart desired, regardless of the cost. Alas, time being of the essence meant the bundle of clothes she carried to the service desk consisted of the first items she’d spotted thatwere vaguely to her preferred style and looked like they would fit. Even the underwear, despite her desperation for bigger bras, were off the peg.
Clothing bagged and paid for, they took the escalator to the men’s floor, where Niccolo selected clothing in the same hurried fashion. The only difference was that he tried one of the suits on, decided it worked fine, and kept it on. Georgia thought it worked more than fine. Dark charcoal trousers and jacket and a dark green shirt he wore without an accompanying tie; he’d kept the top two buttons of the shirt undone. Fine whorls of chest hair showed through the V. All this topped with his newly grown dark brown beard, and he looked darkly dangerous and darkly, darkly handsome.
If her skin wasn’t so tight with tension, she would smile at the thought that this was likely the first time Niccolo had ever bought a suit off-peg.
Hands tightly clasped, they joined the bustle of the great outdoors and melded into the afternoon crowd. Niccolo knew where they were going, and soon they were stepping into a four-storey building with a pristine white façade that was home to one of Zurich’s oldest private banks.
An immaculately presented woman greeted them. Her eyes flickered with appreciation at Niccolo, but her nose subtly twitched at Georgia; admittedly, jeans and a leather jacket did look a little out of place in this venerable building where history and secrets breathed through the walls. Whatever the woman’s private thoughts of Georgia’s attire, she was the consummate professional, conversing with Niccolo in fluent Italian whilst inputting information onto the tablet she carried. In no time at all, they were being escorted onto an elevator.
On the lower ground, the woman scanned his passport, asked him what were obviously more security questions, and then she went to a long, high wall filled with numbered black boxes. Shetyped in a code and beckoned for Niccolo to do the same. A box slid out. She handed it to him before crossing the floor and opening the door to a small room that contained a small table and two chairs. Niccolo steered Georgia inside, closed the door for privacy, and opened the box. Inside it were rolls of cash in numerous currencies, along with a passport and credit cards under the name of Paolo Baggio.
The hotel Dante had booked them into was a gorgeously decadent eighteenth-century building. Niccolo checked them in using his real passport and paid for it with his real credit card. Georgia had to present her passport, too, but that was okay. Because eyebrows would be raised at the use of cash in such a high-end establishment, he removed a large wad of notes from his wallet and handed it to the concierge as a memorable tip for his assistance.
A phone call to Dante had confirmed the Espositos knew Niccolo and Georgia had escaped England. An alert would be out in all the European countries Niccolo had business dealings in, of which Zurich was one. As soon as they learned where they’d landed in France, Zurich would become their top priority. If their dogs weren’t here already, they soon would be.
But that was also okay. They wouldn’t be staying in Zurich.
Signing for the room, Niccolo thanked the concierge and, hand held fast in Georgia’s, took the stairs to their appointed room.
She sighed with pleasure to see it. “Can we really not stay here?”
He kissed her. It was a rhetorical question that needed no answer. “Take a shower, and I’ll order food. What do you want?”
“Whatever you’re having. Do you need your painkillers?”
He shook his head with a wry smile at how, even when time was of the essence, Georgia was still being fanatical about him taking his painkillers at regular intervals. “I’m good. Go shower.”
As they hadn’t eaten since the light meal on the flight from England, he eschewed the finer items on the room service menu and ordered them both a gourmet cheeseburger, again paying for it on his real credit card. When it was delivered, he paid another hefty tip. He wanted to be remembered.
When they’d finished eating, she licked her fingers and casually said, “Do we really need to leaverightnow?”
Breathing deeply, he stroked her soft cheek. “Carina, I want nothing more than to try this bed out with you, but we’ve set the trail and now we need to go before they follow it to us.” He had no doubt the Espositos would know they’d checked in within the hour.
Both freshened up and wearing clean clothes – Niccolo tried not to pay too much attention to the burgundy summer dress Georgia had changed into and which looked utterly ravishing on her – and with their stomachs full, they slipped out of the hotel with their clothes stuffed in the holdall, and into the car park.
The promised crossover car, one that was popular throughout Europe, was parked amongst the gleaming high-end cars. Behind the driver’s wheel, as promised, were the keys.
After sharing one last kiss, he drove them out of the car park.
Only when they’d left the city and darkness had fallen did he pull over and change the licence plates to the ones that had been left in the boot for them, and did Georgia disguise her distinctive hair with the brown wig she’d been provided with.
Georgia opened her eyes and for a moment couldn’t work out where she was. She sat up with a shot. Naples.
They’d come to their enemy’s home turf.
Niccolo had driven through the night. They’d reached the Italian city just as the morning rush hour had started. They’d brought breakfast at a drive-thru, Niccolo paying on the credit card he’d retrieved from the bank safe with the fake passport. As far as anyone in Naples was concerned, Niccolo’s name was Paolo Baggio.
The hotel Niccolo had checked in under the Paolo Baggio name and secretly snuck Georgia into as she didn’t have a fake passport to present, was a tourist-friendly place catering for the Pompeii crowd. It made her think of Callie. Callie had always wanted to visit Pompeii. When they were together again and all this was over, she would arrange a trip to Pompeii and Herculean with her twin… that’s if everything went according to plan.
It was two in the morning. When the sun came up, the endgame would begin. The thrill of their escape from England and escapades in Zurich had all left her. They’d been holed up in this hotel room since mid-morning, and not even Niccolo’s superlative lovemaking had been enough to drown out the fears growing louder in her head.
