Luca doesn’t reply. When I glance over at him, his eyes are scanning the stalls and boxes, moving fast until they backtrack and stop. I look where he’s looking. “Always business with you, honey, isn’t it?”
“Not always. But tonight, yes.”
Opposite us, on a lower level, is a woman who would be hard to miss. Itmustbe La Contessa. Seated in thePalco Reale, the Royal Box, even from a distance she looks lovely and vital, laughing in the middle of her group of tuxedoed men, and when I bring my opera glasses up to my face, her face matches the close-up cropped photograph that Luca has been carrying around these last few days as we organized everything for tonight.
But I notice something else about her companions, too. “Either she has a harem of dudes, or those are her bodyguards,” I mutter to Luca.
“Well done,” he says approvingly. “Yes. Those are bodyguards, trying hard not to look like bodyguards. How did you recognize them?”
I study them again, trying to figure out my own thought processes. “She’s a very beautiful and charming woman, and she seems like she’s having a very interesting conversation, but none of them are looking at her. Except the one in the middle.”
“Yes,” Luca muses. “What do you think of him?”
The one in the middle is a sylph-like creature with full lips and bedroom eyes. His gleaming black hair curls in ringlets around his neck, and the deep burgundy suit he wears is closely tailored to his slim body. Around his neck is a ruff, an actual ruff, giving him a Renaissance air. No plain tux for this guy.
“He’s either a vampire or a pampered cat in human form.”
Luca gives a soft laugh. “He reminds me a little of you.”
“What? I look nothing like him.”
“No,” Luca agrees, as though that settles the conversation. “And La Contessa?”
I go back to studying the woman. She is startlingly vivacious, the black of her silk gown set off by the diamonds at her throat, ears and wrists, her large dark eyes expressive even from a distance, and captivating when I raise my opera glasses again to get a closer look. She’s just real damn nice to look at, like a work of art.
But the more I stare, the more I wonder. There’s a weariness underlying that vivacity, a watchfulness to her. She’s surrounded by bodyguards—all of them packing heat, from what I can tell—but every so often she turns her head suddenly to look out across the room herself, as though she doesn’t trust even her presumably highly-paid and highly-trained guards to spot every sign of trouble.
In fact, she looks straight atmewhile I’m looking at her, her velvet eyes narrowing, and I immediately look away, turning my spyglass to the next box along.
“For someone in prime position, she doesn’t seem towantto be looked at,” I murmur.
“She carries many cares with her.”
Luca’s odd response is enough to make me wonder exactly what cares and worrieshecarries with him day to day.
“You think she made us?” I ask, concerned now that I might have been staring a littletoolong. I drop the glasses and pretend to read my own program.
“I think she’s aware of us.”
That doesn’t sound promising. But before I can say anything, the house lights dim three times, then go dark. The chattering crowd falls silent, and the curtain on stage begins to rise. The stage lights come up, but I can’t help glancing back toward the Royal Box.
Even over the distance I can see that La Contessa is still looking straight back at me.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
FINCH
“I’m not sure I’m an opera buff,” Luca says doubtfully after we’ve made our way to the bar at intermission. He clapped politely at the curtain, but he had to stifle yawns all the way through.
“Yeah, like I said,The Magic Flutewould have been better to start with. Opera’s an acquired taste,” I tell him. “Like olives.”
“I love olives,” he points out.
“You want one in a martini, baby?” I raise my finger to get the attention of the bartender.
“I do not. I’ll have water, though, if you are.”
“We’ll have a large bottle of San Pellegrino and two glasses,” I tell the bartender in my best Italian.
