In La Contessa’s lap, Andreas turns over like a sulking child, and hides his face in her skirts. La Contessa regards us both, and I don’t like the amusement in her eyes. “I see,” she says at last. “Well, that’s a shame. When Andreas is unhappy, so am I.”
“Perhaps this will cheer you up,” Luca says, and from inside his coat, he produces an envelope and hands it to her. “Thank you for your time, Contessa.” He gives a nod, takes my hand firmly in his, and leads me out of the room.
“Can you believe the nerve of that slinky little bitch boy?” I demand as we walk along the balcony. Outside, the party has continued and there’s no trace of the IFF assassin at all. La Contessa’s men have done their work discreetly and well.
“She’s the one who put him up to it,” Luca tells me. “He’s been checking me out all night, giving out thosefuck-mevibes while going up and down the stairs. But he would never do it without her say-so.”
“You think it was a test?” I ask slowly, as we head downstairs. “What was she trying to do?”
With a scornful huff of laughter, Luca says, “I think she wanted the measure of me. So whether I accepted or whether I turned her down, she still learned something. Still, it was a crude method. The contents of that envelope will tell her more about me than any ill-advised honeytrap ever could.”
The contents of that envelope are the remaining photographs of La Contessa meeting with a Clemenza Family member, plus the negatives. I was opposed to the idea of Luca just handing them over, but he insisted it would be the wiser move. I decided to trust him on that.
He pulls me close as we reach the bottom of the stairs. “Anyway, as if I could ever want another man with someone likeyoubeside me,uccellino. Or rather,Arlecchino. Suits you.” He ruffles my newly-pink hair. He’s barely been able to keep his hands out of it since this afternoon.
My hairstylist back in New York is going to be pissed when he sees what I’ve done—bleached it myself and then stained it hot pink in the bathroom of our palazzo. But Luca was so damnhappywhen I came out of the bathroom looking like the love child of a punk and a clown that I don’t even care. He’s been hinting that I dye my hair pink again for years. And who am I to say no to what he wants?
I grin as we hit the ballroom floor, looking up at Luca. “That IFF guy pushed right past me after I took off the plague doctor outfit—did you see?”
“I did.”
I look down at my boots again. Luca was right; shoes are the hardest thing to change on the go. “You’resureit was the right move to give La Contessa those photos back?”
“I am.”
“You could have kept the negatives, at least,” I sigh, as we make our way out to the back pier of the palazzo, and take one of the water taxis bobbing there against the poles.
Luca leans in to speak in my ear as the motor starts. “I want people to understand that my power does not rely on blackmail, or underhanded dealings. I want them to know I’m a man of my word. That it is more profitable to be my friend than my enemy. That they cantrustme.”
It’s a bold thing to say, the idea that trust could ever exist in Luca’s world. But it’s my world, too. And I trust Luca. I let him pull me into his arms and we watch Venice go by as we dart down the Grand Canal, back to our home base.
I just wish I could know who else was worthy of my trust. Because my mind keeps going back to the mole. Al Vollero is the obvious pick, but he just doesn’t have access to the level of information that this mole seemingly does. So who is it? Are my choices really limited to my best friend’s boyfriend, or my own damn sister?
The idea that either Teo or Tara has been hiding a deep hatred of me—of Luca—could be working with our enemies—it spins my head around. Butsomeoneis spilling information.
“Stop thinking so loud,” Luca says, smiling down at me. “We had a good night, didn’t we?”
I’m not sure how to answer that, so I just ask, “What next?”
“Next? Next I shake your soul again, all night. And tomorrow, we travel to Florence.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
FINCH
Florence is one of my favorite cities in Italy, although Venice comes close. Especially after all the fun we’ve had in the city of canals. But Florence, a place I first came to only a year before I met Luca, holds many good memories for me. As far as I evenhavegood memories before I met Luca.
Florence was the first place I felt truly free, the first place I’d been where I could walk the streets and not worry about someone tracking me down. That was because I’d managed to give my father’s spies the slip in Naples, and jumped a train for Florence while they were still looking for me. I had a glorious two weeks to myself before they figured out where I’d gone. In those two weeks, I did a lot of living.
The first time I went to the Accademia Gallery to see Michelangelo’s David, I was more interested in the unfinished sculptures that lined the room leading into the David like a guard of honor. Michelangelo’s prisoners and slaves, eternally trapped and unable to pull themselves out of their marble blocks. No hope of freedom for them, because their master was long dead.
I might have identified an unhealthy amount with those sculptures, feeling like a prisoner myself in those days. A slave of my own making—chained by drugs and grief and fear.
When I met Luca, I felt, for the first time, that I had a chance at real freedom. That he was the master sculptor who might pull me out of my bonds. Now he’s here with me in Florence, and I think we both have a similar sense of freedom. We are as anonymous as we’re ever going to be. Luca is more relaxed than I’ve seen him in a very long time. It’s as if concluding his business with La Contessa allowed him to regain mental space to devote to fun instead of worry.
That’s whatIthink, anyway, and when I tell him my theory, he laughs and tells me that maybe I’m right, but that what it means tohimis that he has more time to devote to solving the mystery of the rosary.
“It would be a good title for a book,” I muse as we unpack in the hotel room. We’ve returned to a budget option in Florence, and although it’s nowhere near as bad as the Roman hotel, I already miss our palazzo in Venice. I pull out the rosary from the hidden pocket at the bottom of my suitcase and hold it up to look at it once more. “The Mystery of the Rosary: Finch and Luca Investigate.”
