Not Juliet (13 page)

His breath
hitched. “I would if I could. But it’s not in my power. I love you,
Riella.”

Riella shook
her head and let out a hollow laugh. “Yeah. I thought that.” Then
she got up and turned to Zamir. “Thank you for opening my eyes,
Zamir. And for your devotion to me and my father, and for watching
my back. I feel such a fool for having fallen for King Anziano’s
tricks. I should have known better.”

“Look!” Luca
said. “I’m the one who’s been played here. I love you. I fell for
you and I did everything I could to protect you from HIM.” He
pointed at Zamir, who backed up a few paces, as if he was genuinely
afraid of Luca’s ire.

“Don’t be
absurd. Zamir has known me since I was a little baby. He’s one of
my father’s oldest friends.”

“And why is it
so impossible to consider the idea that he might be a traitor?”

“You know, I’m
seeing you in a different light now, Luca. But even in my darkest
nightmares, I doubt I would have ever anticipated you sinking so
low.”

“He was there,
Riella, in Florence. Look at his shoulder. I shot him trying to
protect you.”

“Hah!” Zamir
exclaimed, shaking his head.

“You were
protecting me?” Riella asked Luca. He nodded. “In Florence.” He
nodded again. “For how long?”

Luca swallowed
and avoided her glance.

“If what you
say is true, you must have been one of the two shooters in the
alley. Why pretend nothing happened when I was telling you about
the shooting? You made me feel like I was crazy, inventing things,
overreacting, when all along… you knew!”

Zamir picked up
the carnival mask from the couch and waved it in the air. The
decorations clinked and jangled, making the conversation seem
surreal.

“He shot at
you. I shot back and clipped his shoulder,” Luca said and pointed
at Zamir.

Riella ignored
his explanation. “And all the time, when I was asking about Cosimo,
and begging people to help me find him… A whole week of wasted
time… Were you aware of that, too?”

Luca exhaled
loudly and looked away again. Riella nodded in acknowledgement.
Just as she’d thought.

“So you follow
me for a week, finally seize your chance, and Zamir shows up and
ruins your plans.”

“For God’s
sake, Riella,” Luca pleaded with a wild look in his eyes. “Why
would I want to kill you? I love you! Think… think back to
Florence, and… and… to Orazio’s. If I were so intent on killing
you, I would have had plenty of chances to do so. I didn’t. What
does that tell you?”

“That you
wanted to have fun before you did it?” Zamir put in.

Luca scowled at
him, then continued. “The Roma camp. The bulldozers. Why do you
think I dragged you out of the tent?”

“To make
yourself look better and gain my trust.” Riella shrugged. “Every
girl loves a hero.” Luca growled in frustration and brought his
clenched fists up to his forehead. “And for a while, for a very
short while, you were my hero, Luca. I’m obviously not the best
judge of character. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Riella glanced
around herself, trying to remember what she’d done with her
clothes.

“There’s a
bathrobe on the back of the door,” Luca said quietly, pointing to
the bathroom.

Riella marched
to the bathroom and emerged a second later with the robe on.

“Ready to go?”
she asked Zamir.

He grinned and
opened his arms for her. “Your father will be so glad to see you.
And Kai, too. You have friends, Riella, and we all love you.”

She allowed him
to give her a quick hug, then swiped the carnival mask from the
chair and walked toward the door. She wasn’t even sure she wanted
to keep any of the souvenirs from this trip. What a fiasco it had
been! Why try to remember it?

On the way to
the door, she stopped in front of Luca.

“If that set-up
with Father Marco was even a real wedding,” she said, staring into
his eyes, “send on the annulment papers.” Then she turned on her
heel and walked out of her fairytale and into reality.

Luca stood there,
straight and strong like a mighty oak, weathering her storm. All
she said, all her accusations were right. He loved her, and yet
he’d lied to her. He sucked at relationships.

What was he
saying? He sucked at being a man!

She swept past
him, an avenging angel dressed in his knee-high satin bathrobe and
looking sexier than hell in it, and the gate’s motion detector
buzzed.

His eyes fell
on the thug who’d hugged his wife, and all the fury and guilt he’d
been suppressing simmered to the surface. Zamir must have noticed
the murderous spark in his eyes, because he turned to sneer.

“Give up.
You’ve lost her now, and killing me won’t change that. Despite your
behavior, the deal still stands. If you want her to live, you’ll
let her go without quarrel.”

Luca squeezed
his eyes shut, gritted his teeth and refrained from punching the
leper.

He breathed in,
ignoring the stabbing pain each of her steps – bare feet on wood –
was inflicting. Each step, a new gash. Each step took her farther
away from him.

The front door
opened and a courier brought her suitcase in.

“Perfect
timing,” he heard her say. She asked for a lift to town, and the
driver obligingly agreed.

Then the door
slammed shut.

Once Riella had
gone, he’d spent ten minutes walking around his place, too stunned
to make any decision, take any useful action. Eyes open or closed,
he saw Riella everywhere. Looking out the window, he caught
movement over the top of the hedge. Riella’s dress, draped over the
bougainvillea by the pool. Inside, the kitchen – she’d opened a
cupboard to find it bare, then offered to help him learn how to use
it all. Upstairs, the bed where he’d ravished her after taking her
virginity in the Jacuzzi. The bed sheet trailed through to the
bathroom, so she could put on his bathrobe and leave.

An agonized
sound burst out of his lungs. He gripped his head in his hands and
dropped to the bed that smelled strongly of her.
You have
friends, Riella, and we all love you. Kai, too
. Zamir’s words
had been designed to hurt him, and hurt they did. Luca could have
kicked himself for not fighting harder.
He
was the one who
loved Riella.
He
wanted her.
He
always would, no
matter what. And who the hell was Kai?

Dejected, and
at the same time intensely aggravated by his ineffective handling
of the situation, he let himself fall back. His head hit something
hard. It took him a moment to process that information. The
gun.

He turned and
snatched it up, staring at it as if it had been designed to show
him what to do.

And it did.

In a flurry of
movement, Luca retrieved and loaded the magazine. Next, he searched
for clothes. He only placed the gun down for the few seconds it
took him to pull on a pair of jeans. He tucked the gun in his
waistband and wrestled into a black hoodie as he took the stairs
two at a time. By the entrance, he snatched up a pair of ankle
boots and ran out of the house barefoot.

He knew his
aim. Now all he needed to do was consider his options for achieving
it. As he half-sprinted, half-skidded down the cliff to the dock,
he played back the encounter with Zamir, to see if he could find a
chink in the king’s best friend’s armor.

The more he
thought about it, the more he seethed. The bastard had been
watching them, watching
Riella
hurt, her heart bleed out,
with such a satisfied grin on his face, Luca had found controlling
his emotions extremely difficult, barely stopping himself from
punching Zamir into orbit. If Riella’s survival hadn’t depended on
Zamir, he might have let loose his anger.

Luca jumped
into the boat and started it up. Dawn was creeping in, but it was
still dark on the western horizon. Not many vessels out at this
time of day. He steered west and decided the nature of his
situation justified ignoring any speed restrictions. Landing a fine
for speeding was barely a small concern, in comparison with the
rest of the stuff he had to consider. Soon he had direct line of
sight to his father’s vineyard.

Luca pulled out
his phone.

“Father, I need
your help.” He remembered the ‘good morning’ bit after that first
sentence. Oh, well.

“Where are you,
son? Is that your speedboat I hear?”

Luca let out a
short laugh. Not much got past the old man. That was why Cosimo had
been a great king, while Luca was merely a washed-out shadow of his
father.

“Yeah. I’ll be
there in about ten minutes.”

“What can be
that urgent?”

“You’ll find
out soon enough.”

Luca slipped
the phone into his pocket, the simple gesture reminding him of the
recording he’d made for Riella the day before. She’d loved it,
wanted to keep it. He’d promised her another selfie, this time with
her smiling by his side.

Somehow, he
couldn’t imagine she’d be smiling, even if he did manage to
convince her to stand by his side again.

He clenched his
jaw and stared straight ahead. Sea spray was gathering on his
cheeks and he wiped under his eyes. It was salt-water droplets, not
tears.

He snorted when
he realized he couldn’t even lie convincingly to himself.

Oh, grow up,
Luca!
He blinked the tears away and focused on his anger.

Zamir’s hint
that Riella might not be okay after her arrival back home nagged at
him. That little detail pointed at a change in the Lithuanian’s
plans. As a gang master’s master, Luca had his finger on the pulse.
He knew every big player’s every move, and if he didn’t, someone in
his employ certainly did, in Europe or farther afield. Karalius had
been setting himself up to overturn Goliath Petulengro for a whole
year now. He’d hinted and threatened, but never aimed his gun
straight at the king. As if he’d been waiting for something.

Whatever it
was, he’d obviously got it now, because Luca could feel it in his
gut – this situation would blow up in a day or so, and when it did,
he didn’t fancy Petulengro’s chances. And Riella was a Petulengro –
Smith was the gadjee name all Petulengro descendants used.

Shit! This was
more serious than he’d thought, and even more complicated because
of Riella’s newly acquired distrust for him. There would be no time
for arguments and explanations. If necessary, he might have to drag
her out of there, kicking and screaming, whether she ended up
hating him for the rest of his life for it or not. He simply had to
get her away.

The problem he
had at the moment was time, or lack thereof. If he was going to
somehow intercept Zamir and prevent the carnage in England –
because he sure as hell could see just how easily that could be
arranged – he needed to be quick. There was not enough time to
rally the troops and ferry them all to Goliath’s encampment. Sure,
he had a few people on the ground whom he could mobilize, in
specific locations in England, Ireland and France, but they
wouldn’t be enough to halt the assault from Karalius.

The guy was
strong, an arms dealer, amongst other business interests.
Habitually, he used a warehouse outside Kaliningrad to conduct his
business, but he’d been spotted in various other places in Europe,
for smaller-size transactions. It would be so easy for him to stage
a display, or an exchange, or a deal that went wrong, and blame it
all on Petulengro. It would have to be on Petulengro’s site, since
the king was too ill to travel, and would give him an excuse to
bring a lot of fire-power to the negotiating table. Goliath
Petulengro was marked for death, no doubt about that, but if he
somehow survived, the English police would detain him, while
Karalius would slither back to the rock he was hiding under.

Well, not if he
had anything to do with it.

Before he’d
slowed down by his father’s dock, Luca had already decided: he
would fly to England as soon as possible. He wondered if the old
man would lend him the chopper.

Luca threw his boots
under the patio table.

“Son,” Cosimo
greeted him, smiling. “Barefoot, as always. Ha-ha. So nice to see
you.”

After the
mandatory embrace and kisses, Luca accepted a glass of grappa and
sat in one of the chairs Cosimo had carved himself since he’d
retired. The chair protested, but held. The old man’s carving
skills were improving.

“Tell me. What
bothers you?” Cosimo asked.

Luca didn’t
need more encouragement. He told his father about Riella’s arrival,
how it seemed strange that she would be looking to speak with the
Italian Romany king, how he’d followed her, only to discover she
was being tracked by Zamir. The shooting in Florence and his
decision to keep a closer eye on her… until it backfired and he’d
fallen in love.

Oh, how that
amused the old man! Luca hadn’t seen his father laugh so heartily
for a long time.

He skipped over
the more private chunks of their time together and relayed the
bulldozer incident, and how he’d finally won Riella over.

“You realize
her estrangement from camp explains why she isn’t aware of the real
threat to her father, or that I’ve stepped down?”

“I know it now,
father, but at the time it was all I could do to distance her from
our people. I didn’t know what her intentions were.”

Cosimo nodded
and gestured for Luca to continue.

Luca explained
about the rushed wedding, barely legal in anyone’s eyes, and
hastened to add that there would be plenty of chance to have a huge
production when Riella was no longer in danger, and more to the
point, if he could win her back. Cosimo’s eyes had clouded over,
but then cleared again when he was satisfied his son was not
intending to rob him of a massive celebration.