CHAPTER24
SANDRO
Once Wilson has broughtup a breakfast tray for Teddy, I leave him there in bed. “Rest. Recuperate. The house is still open to you, but I think you’ve learned a valuable lesson, little mouse. Not every hole is one you might want to scurry down.”
He ignores me ostentatiously, sipping at the honeyed tea and refusing to say goodbye, so I leave without pressing him further.
I do consider going back down to Julian and making his life that much more uncomfortable, but I can’t trust myself. For all that I used Teddy as bait, my terror and frenzy when I saw him in peril were well beyond my control.
I did not expect that, not at all.
And if I go down to see Julian now, try to extract a little more information, I can’t trust that I won’t push too far. Even now, as I sit in the study and wait for Jacopo to arrive, my anger is rising again as I replay Julian slowly garroting Teddy there against the bars.
When I was a boy, my mother told me something that I never forgot:anger is a shield for the emotion a man fearsto feel.
What is my anger hiding from me now?
There’s a soft knock at the study door, and I shake my head to clear it of my reverie. “Come.” It’s Jacopo, the usual quizzical look on his face.
“You wanted to see me?”
I rise from the desk. “I need a bodyguard,” I tell him. “You’ll do.”
* * *
Jacopo is not as convinced as I am about Lina Lamond. “She didn’tseemall that vengeful,” he says doubtfully, as his Pinto sputters along. I wanted to take one of the town cars, but he pointed out that the Pinto would attract less attention. “You sure the intel’s good?”
I haven’t told him yet where I got it from, but I do now. “It’s what Julian claims.”
He goes quiet at that, thinking it over. Then finally, he says, “You need to make a decision there. About Julian.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do.”
He gives a sigh. “I’m just saying—”
“I don’t need you just saying.”
We drive on. “We going anywhere in particular?” Jacopo asks at last. I’ve directed him downtown, but now that we’re far enough from the house and I’ve satisfied myself that we’re not being followed, I give him an address.
“That’s Lombardo’s office, right?” He glances at me. “Not sure he’ll be happy to see me turn up with you.”
“I don’t—”
“—care about his happiness, yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m just saying. You catch more flies with honey, and all that.”
“You catch the most flies with dogshit, Jacopo. I’ll take my chances.”
He grins. “Guess that makes me the dogshit.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I hate that about Jacopo, that he can still make me laugh, even after everything he’s done.
We used to be friends. Used to be close enough to have inside jokes, to swap morning selfies of our wounds and scars just to boast about what we’d survived the night before.
Not these days.
“How’d your night go?” he asks, and I stop laughing.
“Fine.”
