“Yes. Why? What’s happened?” Iacob’s knife appeared out of nowhere and he twirled it between his fingers, not in an idle way but as if refamiliarizing himself with it before getting stabby.
“What language were we speaking?”
“You and I?”
“Yes.”
Iacob thought for only a moment before answering. “Romanian.”
Nikolett closed her eyes as a sickening realization slid through her, the world tilting and turning on its axis. “Gus doesn’t speak Romanian.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Are you sure you were speaking Romanian?” Zoran asked.
“Not totally,” Iacob said.
“Do we have a recording of that?” Maxim shifted to stand beside Zoran.
“No, we only had mics in the suite.”
“Nikki, explain,” Eric demanded.
She didn’t want to look at him, but when he grabbed her hand, she glanced over, not quite meeting his gaze.
“Gus made a joke about the flowers being poisoned because Iacob had tested them for poison at the door. But Iacob and I were speaking Romanian, not Hungarian, when we talked about what he was testing.”
“I said ‘they’re clean’ in English.” Iacob spoke slowly in the way of people trying to remember something. “Because he made a joke about the flowers getting ‘mucky’—I had to look the word up since I didn’t know it.”
“Isn’t it possible heguessedwhat Iacob was doing was checking for poison?” Maxim asked. “He’s a smart man.”
“We could just have easily been testing for radiation.”
“He knew someone was trying to hurt her,” Iacob said, countering Zoran’s point. “It’s not absurd to expect poison might be one of the things we were checking for.”
Nikolett stayed quiet, listening to Iacob, Zoran, and Maxim, hoping one would say something to ease away this sick feeling in her stomach.
So far, it seemed totally reasonable to assume that he’d just figured out it was a poison check from context clues. She tried to relax.
“Even if he did understand, why does it matter if he speaks some Romanian?” Eric asked. “Maybe he’s learning that language too and forgot to tell you. Or maybe he speaks enough Hungarian to understand Romanian.”
“That’s not how those languages work. They’re not even in the same language family,” Zoran said without looking up from his computer. “Hungarian is a Uralic language. Romanian is a Romance language.”
“Why lie about it?” Nikolett added. “Why not say he knew some Romanian?” Now that she let herself think about the possibility that he wasn’t who he said he was, almost everything about their time together felt suspicious, but there were a few actionable items. She whipped to face Zoran. “Toward the end of dinner, he mispronounced charcuterie when talking about the cheese course. Find it, please.”
Eric gently gripped her shoulders, forcing her to face him. “Nikki, what is it you think is happening?”
“I think…” She squeezed her eyes shut, then forced herself to open them and look at him. “I think Gus might be the Spaniard.”
Eric blinked. “You think a man named Angus McAngus might secretly be an assassin, blackmailer, thief, and fixer who goes by ‘the Spaniard’?”
Nikolett exhaled. “When you put it like that it sounds ridiculous.”
“It is. Your people vetted Gus, you told me so yourself.”
“I checked everything,” Zoran added, sounding entirely confident. “Angus McAngus is clean.” Zoran was staring at his computer while holding a headphone to one ear.
Eric tugged on her hand. “You’re adding two and two and getting five,” he said soothingly.
