Neither would Luca Borgia.
He looked at the flip phone.
One call.
A spark to light the fire.
Chapter 70
Cannes
Simon pushed the Ferrari through the hills above Mougins. He knew these roads, had learned to drive on them from Marseille to Monte Carlo, and in the backcountry, too. Single-lane macadam tracks, no safety railings. Nothing between him and a five-hundred-foot fall over a sheer cliff. Cannes, Antibes, Juan-les-Pins were prime territory for a young car thief. Nothing taught you how to drive better than being pursued by a dogged cop, or a dozen of them. The prospect of jail, or worse, was ample motivation to keep the pedal to the metal.
Simon felt the same urgency as they neared Cannes, driving as fast as he thought safe, maybe a little faster. His mind was racing as rapidly as the car, but not ahead. He was speeding through the far more treacherous alleys of his past, advancing on the black heart of Delphine Blackmon, or as she now called herself, Milady De Winter.
He should have known.
She lay facing him on her immense bed, their legs intertwined, her head propped on an elbow, eyes staring down at him as if he’d committed a crime. Her naked torso glistened with sweat, her nipples erect. “Jesus, where did you learn to do that?”
“Do what?”
“That. I’m still shaking.”
“Seminar at the bank. Management wants to ensure we keep our clients satisfied.”
“Satisfied? That’s one way of putting it.” She ran her hands across his chest, tracing the latticework of scars, pressing against the ridges of muscle. They’d been dating for three months. He’d told her his story that night, about his past, about prison, his return to the law-abiding world. Not all of it, but enough. She kissed him, her breath sweet, her mouth no longer a cauldron of desire. Her hand went lower. She liked holding him, squeezing him until he responded, then instructing him what he was to do. She liked being in control.
“Now I’m going to teach you something,” she whispered.
“Oh?”
“Don’t…move…a muscle.”
She pushed him onto his back and mounted him, waiting for him to stiffen entirely, then using him as an instrument, pressing herself against him, riding him, her motions near violent, without the least inhibition, until she gasped and shuddered and rolled off of him. She didn’t care about his pleasure. That one had been for her and her alone.
Delphine.
He’d never met a woman like her, a woman of such wide and varied appetites, all of them pursued with a passion bordering on the fanatical. Sex stood at the top of the list.
She hadn’t gathered her breath before she found the remote and turned on the television. Politics came in a close second.
“All those people with nothing. No one lifting a hand to help them.”
Simon didn’t need to open his eyes to know that she was talking about the unrest brewing in Venezuela. She’d traveled to Caracas the month before and had returned determined to expose the dictator’s crimes.
“Isn’t that their government’s responsibility?” said Simon. “I mean, they have oil. Tons of it.”
“‘They’ have nothing. The government supremos keep all the money for themselves. I’m sure you have plenty of clients from there.”
“A few,” said Simon. “Maybe I should frog-march them down to the basement and summarily execute them.”
“It would be a start.”
Simon laughed, though part of him thought she wouldn’t mind one bit.
“And if the government can’t help…or won’t?” said Delphine. “Then what? Is it really every woman for herself? Every child? Have we come to that?”
“But we do help, Delphine. The Brits, the Americans, the EU. They provide billions in aid.”
