Inferno's Kiss (23 page)

“That she went alone? No,” Marcus said as he shot Ignacio a hard look then shoved a hand through his silver-tinted hair. “But I’m glad I told Dante she was still in the city. I knew he’d watch out for her without my asking him to. And I wouldn’t have agreed to her staying in Rome if she hadn’t been with Dante.”

“Sweet Juno, I should never have let Lysander convince me to send her to Rome with him. None of this would have happened if she’d stayed here.”

She rubbed her temple as the throbbing in her head increased. Invisible fingers pushed hers aside as Marcus took over the task of massaging her forehead. It felt wonderful. She closed her eyes for a brief moment and welcomed the swift relief brought by his unseen touch.

“I want her brought home, Marcus. I want her safe,” she whispered.

“Dante will keep her safe, and she’s a skilled fighter. She held her own in the Pantheon despite her lack of abilities.” Marcus’s voice indicated he wasn’t about to change his mind. “If we send for her now,
carissima
, you’ll only widen the gulf between the two of you, and I’ll lose all hope of knowing my daughter.”

He was right. She knew that. But the logic warred with her maternal instinct to protect her child. She’d failed Gabriel, and she couldn’t bear to do the same with Cleo. An image of Marcus and Gabriel in the Pantheon fluttered through her head. It took her breath away as she remembered those terrible moments.

Gabriel and Marcus fighting each other so viciously. Then Gabriel striking his father down. Her own plea for Marcus’s life only to see Gabriel sink to the stone floor from the fatal blow of Marcus’s sword. The pain of that moment pressed its way into every inch of her until it felt as though someone were ripping her heart out all over again.

She’d already lost her son. She couldn’t lose her daughter, too. First one tremor and then another rippled through her. Instantly, Marcus enveloped her in his warmth, and she pressed her face into his shoulder.

“It will be all right, mea kara. I have great faith in Dante and in our daughter. She will be fine.”

The soothing caress of his thoughts mingling with hers eased Atia’s trembling. Slowly, she pushed herself free of Marcus’s embrace. As her gaze met his, she recognized the sorrow in his blue eyes. She was certain he was remembering Gabriel’s kidnapping. The loss of their son had cost both of them so much.

Losing Cleo would be no less painful, and as agonizing as it was to admit, Marcus was right. If she had any hopes of mending her quarrel with Cleo, she couldn’t demand her daughter’s return without just cause.
Deus
, Ignacio should never have let Cleo take on her most recent mission. She turned to her bodyguard.

“How could you have been so shortsighted as to give Cleo that assignment just after we’d fought Nicostratus in the Pantheon?” she asked with a growing sense of outrage.

“I’m not a mind reader, Madame Consul. As I said, I had no reason to believe she wouldn’t leave the city once the mission was complete. I made a mistake.”

“A mistake I could expect of someone less experienced, but you, Ignacio? You know better.”

“Are you implying I deliberately put Cleo in harm’s way?” The cold anger in Ignacio’s voice emphasized how much her comment had insulted him. She frowned. It didn’t surprise her that he was offended, but he displayed no remorse either. It wasn’t like him. She shook her head as she tried to reassure him that she was merely disappointed in his actions.

“Of course not,” she responded with regret. “I know you wouldn’t do anything of the sort. Sandro’s murder has me on edge. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, because it tells me that you no longer trust my judgment,” Ignacio said. “Therefore you shall have my resignation on your desk by tomorrow morning.”

Stunned by his declaration, Atia shook her head in protest as her
Celeris
bowed sharply then turned and walked toward the door. She took a quick step forward.

“Ignacio, please. I don’t want you to resign. You know how much I rely on you. I need you.”

His hand holding the door open, Ignacio turned slightly in her direction. Bitterness had hardened his features into a cold mask as he looked at Atia then to the man behind her and back to her again.

“No, Madame Consul,” he said in an icy voice as he flashed a look in Marcus’s direction. “You already have my replacement. I can only hope he will serve you as faithfully as I have and that he doesn’t put his own needs ahead of yours.”

The moment the door closed behind the man, Atia moved to go after him. An invisible hand grasped her arm to hold her back.

“Let him go, Atia. His pride is wounded, and he’s in love with you.”

“I know,” she said softly as she faced Marcus. “I always knew he cared for me, I just didn’t realize how deeply.”

“That morning at La Terrazza del Ninfeo.” His lips twisted in a grim smile. “I thought I’d lost you to him.”

There was a look on his face that said he was waiting for her to reaffirm her feelings for him, but she remained silent. She’d already confessed her soul to him once this evening. To do it a second time would only give him more power over her. Power she wasn’t willing to give. When she didn’t speak, Marcus sighed heavily.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a more stubborn woman than you, Atia,” he said with quiet exasperation. His frustration was suddenly amusing, because he looked just like Cleo did whenever she was annoyed about something. She smiled slightly, which made him scowl darkly.

“Cleo looks just like you when she’s irritated.” Her words made Marcus’s expression lighten.

“Then you must aggravate her as much as you do me.” Although his voice still held a note of exasperation, there was humor there as well. Her smile widened.

“We’ve had more than our fair share of battles. Cleo can be incredibly stubborn.”

“Like her mother.” Marcus’s blue eyes studied her with an intensity that suddenly made her uncomfortable. “I know you’re worried about her, Atia. I am, too. But you can’t keep her locked up because of what happened to Gabriel.”

She closed her eyes against the truth in his words. It was true. No matter how much she wanted to lock Cleo up to keep her safe from harm, she couldn’t. Losing Gabriel had left a wound that would never heal, even though she’d only known him a short time. She’d never known the man he might have become. She’d only known the monster Nicostratus had created.

But losing Cleo would be like losing not just another piece of her heart but a part of herself as well. She didn’t really see Marcus move. She only realized the space between them had disappeared. As he cupped her face in his hands, his touch ignited a familiar fire inside her. She trembled and opened her eyes to look at him, struggling not to let him see how disturbing the simple caress was to her.

“Why do you think I blame you for Gabriel,
carissima
?” His question doused her skin with a frigid chill. She swallowed hard and shook her head.

“Not now, Marcus. I don’t want to do this now.”

“Then when?” he said through clenched teeth. “Tomorrow? Next week? If I let you, you’ll avoid discussing it altogether.”

“
Deus
, and you call me stubborn,” she said as she jerked away from his touch. Frustrated, she blew out a harsh sigh. “You push too hard. You always did.”

“I push because I refuse to let the past come between us.”

“You can’t just wipe it out with a wave of your hand, Marcus.” She made a gesture in midair as if she were waving a wand. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Then tell me what will work, Atia. Tell me how I’m supposed to get my beautiful, stubborn wife to accept the fact that we belong together?”

“You can’t,” she snapped, angry that he refused to drop the matter. A knot swelled in her throat as she put more space between them. “I’m not the girl you married, Marcus. Losing Gabriel changed me. Changed us.”

“Tell me how it changed? When I came back from Rome that last time, you wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“Because you left me,” she cried out. “You went looking for Gabriel’s kidnappers and left me alone. I needed you.”

“Are you saying you wanted me to stay at the château and do nothing?” The ferocity of his question made her wince.

“No. But you wouldn’t take me with you. You shut me out. You took on a burden that wasn’t—that wasn’t yours to carry.”

“I didn’t shut you out. You weren’t in any condition to go with me.”

“You
did
shut me out. You went racing off to Rome in search of Gabriel, and you didn’t call me for almost two weeks, Marcus.
Two weeks
,” she hissed angrily as she remembered those terrible dark days. “Is it any wonder I didn’t want to talk to you when you came back? I felt like you’d deserted me. You left me alone to deal with the fact that it was my fault Gabriel was gone.”

“
Christus
, it wasn’t your fault,
carissima
,” Marcus exclaimed as he stepped toward her, but she avoided his grasp. “Is that what you’ve believed all these years? Those Praetorian
bastardi
almost killed you. It wasn’t your fault, Atia.”

“It
was
my fault,” she shouted. “I lied to you. To everyone. I was a coward. I could have taken Gabriel’s life before those
bastardi
took him out of my arms and I didn’t.”

The minute the words were out of her mouth she regretted them, as the color drained from Marcus’s face. Stunned, he stared at her as if she’d taken a sword and plunged it into him. Her entire body was as tight as a piece of elastic stretched to its breaking point. Slowly, Marcus’s disbelief faded and his fury rolled over her senses like a tidal wave. If she had been feeling less drained, she might have been able to keep from drowning under his harsh emotions. She couldn’t. Her headache had weakened her ability to protect herself, and it was impossible not to feel the impact of his anger.

“Sweet mother of Juno,” he snarled. “What kind of a man do you think I am, Atia? Do you really think I would have judged you for not following the old ways?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “You practiced the ways of the first Sicari Lords. You still do. What was I supposed to think?”

“That I would have understood,” he said fiercely. “That I would have told you it was all right.”

“Would you have?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“All this time you’ve believed me to be that much of a
bastardo
.” The disgust in his voice cut deep like a razor.

“No. I believed your loyalty to the
Absconditus
was, and still is, absolute. The minute the Praetorians took Gabriel, he became a serious threat to the Order as well as the
Absconditus
. I was certain you would despise me for choosing our son’s life over the Order. So I lied.”

She bowed her head, unable to bear looking at his angry features. The confrontation was every bit as painful as she’d imagined it would be. Exhausted, the pain inside her was a raw wound. The ache made her feel like she’d aged twenty years in the last half hour. The throbbing in her head only added to the mental anguish tearing her apart inside. She wanted to end this. Be done with it. The tension between them thickened as she opened her eyes to look at him. The fury blazing in his eyes made her hesitate for a moment before she drew in a deep breath.

“I think you should go, Marcus.”

“Fuck.”

The violent response made her nerve endings scream with tension, and fear propelled her backward as he took a quick step in her direction. She wasn’t sure if it was anger or anguish that made his features darken that much more as he came to a halt. They stared at each other for a long moment before Atia turned her head away, unable to bear the censure in his gaze any longer.

“Please go, Marcus.”

The quiet command drew a dark noise from him, and she jerked her head in his direction to look at him again. His face was a sharply defined mask that hid everything he was feeling. He’d even regained control of his emotions, as she realized they were no longer bombarding her senses. With a low growl of frustration, he started to move toward the door then hesitated.

He didn’t say anything, and the invisible stroke of his hand against her cheek startled her. Emotion flashed in his blue eyes, making them darken, and she could have sworn he was in some great torment. As they stared at each other, somewhere in the depths of her mind she heard the whisper of his thoughts touching hers. The instant her mind recoiled from the mental touch, it was gone.

Marcus drew in a sharp breath, and with another guttural sound, he left the suite. As the door closed behind him, Atia stumbled forward to collapse into the soft cushions of the sofa. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she huddled against the arm of the couch and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore.

Chapter 12

THE sound of the library door opening made Cleo look up from the building plans she’d spread out on the table in front of her. Instantly, her senses were on fire as Dante walked into the room. Her entire body might as well have been a magnet, the way she was drawn to him. As he crossed the room toward her, she enjoyed watching the way he moved.

He was dressed in black again, but this time it was a neatly pressed black cotton shirt rolled up at the sleeves to reveal his forearms while the shirt flared open at the neck. The black pants he wore were just as crisp looking as the shirt, with a sharp crease running down the front of his trousers to brush the top of his Italian-made shoes. And they had to be Italian-made. She didn’t know how she knew. She just did. Maybe it was that careless yet flawless look of a man who’d just stepped out of the best men’s shop in Rome.

As he drew closer, her heart rate quickened to twice its normal pace.
Deus
, he was without a doubt the sexiest, most confident man she’d seen in a very long time. Her gaze drifted over his tanned arms with their dusting of black hair. She’d always loved a man’s arms. They emphasized male strength and beauty in one fell swoop. Well, short of the rest of a man’s body.

And she was willing to bet that Dante Condellaire—