Great. WhenI’mthe secret weapon, we’re fucked. But I paste on my best smile and try to look like a weary-but-excited traveler with big dreams of touring Vatican City.
Our hopes arealmostdashed. “No, signore,” the receptionist mourns, “we have limited space—the Angelus is tomorrow, you understand?”
There’s that damn Angelus again. What the hell is it?
“Any room will do,” Luca insists.
“We have no standard rooms left, and I’m sorry to say that only the most expensive—”
“We’ll take it!” I blurt out.
“It is…veryexpensive, signore,” she repeats, her eyes hovering over our disheveled appearance with disapproval.
I get it. I probably look like a street rat about to service a customer. To be fair, Idostill have Luca’s cum oozing out of me, and we both stink like the alley we fucked in. My ass is sticky and sore, making me shift uncomfortably.
I try to arrange my face into an expression I see Aidan wearing from time to time—scholarly, enlightened delight. The even-more-suspicious stare the clerk gives me suggests I got it wrong.
“A view of the Angelus from such a beautiful location is priceless,” Luca says, and puts a slab of cash on the counter. “Sign us in. Please.”
She eyes the cash with the same skepticism she gave me. “I will need to record your passports.”
Luca feels inside his jacket and then slaps two passports down next to the money—mine and his, only not the ones we traveled on. We took a range of options to use while we’re here in Italy.
“Hm,” the clerk says dubiously, after scrutinizing our passport photographs and then our faces. “Just one night, signore?”
“I’ll pay for three,” Luca says, and at last we seem to be getting somewhere.
Chapter Forty-Four
FINCH
The room is, even I have to agree, pretty spectacular. It’s got this classic Italian charm to it, everything built in cherrywood and marble, with rich red and gold trimmings. The suite has a living area and a bedroom, but my first priority is the bathroom.
I go straight into the shower and wash my ass, thanking any saints who might be listening in from the Vatican next door for getting me out of that roach-infested room near the Colosseum and into the kind of place I prefer. I don’t have to dance around on my toes the whole time in the bathroom, worrying about athlete’s foot, and the towels are white and fluffy instead of gray and bald.
When I come out, Luca has drawn the curtains in the bedroom to only a few inches and is staring out at St. Peter’s Basilica. “Róisín asked us to meet her at the obelisk at noon tomorrow in the square.”
“Okay,” I say. “We can sleep in, in that case.”
There’s no reply, so I go to him, still damp from the shower, and wrap my arms around his waist. “What’s an Angelus? Apart from an angel, I mean.”
“The Angelus is a prayer the Pope gives to the crowd every Sunday when he’s in the Vatican.” Luca’s voice is hard.
I pull him away from the curtain and twitch them shut. “Sounds like there might be a lot of people around.”
“Yes.” He wanders over to the fruit bowl and chooses a pear, tossing it up and down in his hand a few times. “There will be a lot of people. A lot of potential for confusion.” He sets the pear down again in the fruit bowl and goes back to peek out the curtain again. “Your sister, Róisín,” he begins, and then looks over his shoulder at me. “Are you sure we can trust her?”
I blink. “Look, she doesn’tlikeme much, but I don’t think she’d set me up for assassination or anything. At least, not in front of the Pope.” Luca doesn’t even give a ghost of a smile, and I feel a strange sensation rising in my chest.Defensiveness. On behalf of my sister. Who knew I still had such familial feelings? “We’re the ones asking her to put herself in danger. You can’t blame her for wanting to meet in public.”
“I don’t. And it could be a smart move, all those people around. Gives us more chance to blend. But…” He trails off as the brooding, thinky side of him takes over.
I try not to sulk too much over his comments about Róisín. At least Luca is looking happier since we got in here, and I guess he doesn’t have those tingles at the back of his neck anymore, or whatever it is he feels when someone’s about to try and kill us.
“I need to work on my spatial awareness,” I say thoughtfully, and abandon the towel by throwing it over my shoulder. Fuck it, I can air dry. “I never noticed that guy following us,” I say, pacing the room. I stop, put my hands on my hips, and stare at Luca, who is sitting on the bed now, his back up against the wall.
“I mean,” I continue, as Luca looks me over with a slight smile of appreciation, “I think I might have been relying a little too much on Teo and Gio and, of course,you.”
“It’s their job to protect you,” he tells me, “and it’s my privilege.”
