Stealing Venice

by Anna E Bendewald

  Gabrieli put his hand up to the delicate metalwork of the lattice screen. “You’ve already done my family a great service by telling me this.”

  “Now that I’ve reflected on it, I saw something in Scortini’s eyes that tells me he’ll stop at nothing to obtain control of Verdu Mer. Gabrieli, I’m afraid for you and for your family.”

  “I’m relieved that Salvatore and Gelsonima Scortini didn’t live to see their only son become so twisted.”

  Americo put his hand up to the screen that separated them in a symbolic handshake. “I’m sorry I failed to warn you sooner. I’ll keep my eyes open and help you in any way I can.”

  The two old friends left the church separately, Tiberius joined Gabrieli, and Zelph trailed from the shadows on the opposite side of the canal.

  Markus and Giselle stood side by side making graceful curls by bending lengths of copper over the mold she’d made in Paris, and then polished them on a buffing wheel. It was a hot Indian summer day with clouds passing overhead frequently enough to keep the sun from beating upon them. As they worked, Markus was aware of Giselle’s eyes on him and her efforts to mimic his precise movements, almost like a dance. It was incredibly flattering to be the object of her attention, and it made him hyper-aware of their delicate interactions. It was energizing in a way that made it difficult for him to relax into contemplation of the work at hand. She was extremely distracting.

  When they’d fashioned the last curl, Markus was ready for a break, but Giselle ticked her pencil along her list of tasks and went straight back to work. The next step of assembly was inserting the copper curls into the girders, and Giselle set about carefully inspecting each of the pre-drilled holes. Markus stood in the shadow of the greenhouse and watched as she climbed around the metal beams in bare feet, like a child on playground monkey bars. He gave himself over to his longing for her—the ache was constant now.

  Once satisfied with her inspection, Giselle swung down off a beam in an athletic move made incongruous by her soft dress, and walked over to the shaded table for a break. He joined her and poured glasses of lemonade as she put her bare feet up on a chair and stretched her legs. She was concentrating on the sculpture, which now looked like three-quarters of a fanciful igloo.

  “I’d planned on making a simple scaffold to hold me while I welded the curls to the beams, then I’d use it again to affix the glass spindles. But…” She trailed off, deep in thought, and looked discouraged as she pointed to all the different heights of the steel. He picked up one of her feet and began massaging it as his eyes followed hers to the sculpture. He could see what she was just now considering.

  “But to make a scaffold, and then have to change the height of that scaffold at every junction for every height, and move it to each position… That would be more work than making the sculpture, no?”

  “I could order a pneumatic elevator platform from Paris, or maybe Brussels…” She sighed as he moved his hand up to knead her calf. Moving her other foot onto his thigh, she pointed to the ground, and then to the top of the sculpture. “It might make more sense for me to just stand on a ladder.”

  “No, too unstable. And do not forget that after the phase of the copper curls, we will next be each holding two glass spindles filled with irrodium. We want your neck and those spindles to be unbroken when you finish this sculpture. We build one small scaffold with different levels that we can move easily with the Bobcat, and I will hold you.”

  Giselle dropped her gaze to meet his eyes. “You’ll hold me? You mean like in a circus act?”

  “I will not drop you.” He picked up her other foot, and gently pressed his thumbs into her arch and heel.

  She closed her eyes and let her head drop back. “I’ll rub your feet on our next break, Markus. I promise.”

  “Da.” And while trying to give nothing away in his expression, he poured all of his sexual frustration into giving her pleasure through her feet. His eyes swept up her thighs as far as her little dress allowed. Giselle’s eyes returned to the sculpture, and when she twisted sideways to grab her blueprint, he was rewarded with the briefest view of her white panties. He was also rewarded with two sighs and a compliment.

  “Mon Dieu…that feels so good.”

  After their break, they fashioned a small, lightweight scaffold with a ladder built right through the center of it. Then while Markus used the Bobcat and pulled it into place under their first junction, Giselle donned her work glasses and gloves, and prepared her tiny welding torch. After selecting a copper curl and a piece of flux core wire, she stood at the ready.

  “Come now, we begin.” Markus took off his work boots and socks, climbed onto the scaffold, and then beckoned to her. She climbed to the base platform of the scaffold, then ascended three rungs of the ladder and hooked one leg around Markus. He held her waist with both hands while she neatly welded the first copper flourish into place.

  She unhooked her leg and he lowered her slowly. She gripped his hips with her thighs and her face was an inch from his.

  “You’re so convenient to have around! Now we can really get to work!”

  Grinning, she let him lower her a bit more until her feet were back on the scaffold, then she pushed her protective glasses up and raised her hand for a high-five.

  “Da, we are here to make art, not rebuild a scaffold eight hundred times.” He patted her hand in victory.

  They made quick work of welding copper curls to an entire section of one span, and Markus enjoyed every second of holding Giselle.

  When Selma and a team of maids arrived at the château to clean, Giselle declared it was time for a break, and they drove the Tank into Aiglemont to buy supplies. Walking along the medieval streets, Giselle stopped frequently to receive little kisses on the cheek from local residents, and to answer questions about Markus. Entering a charming little grocery shop, Markus heard a familiar voice call out.

  “Hey, you two! How’s the piece coming?”

  “Fauve! It’s still in pieces.” Giselle hurried over to chat while he stopped at a display of apples. He didn’t want to intrude on their conversation, so he inspected the shelves nearby. But they didn’t drop their voices, and he could hear them clearly.

  “Can I see it when Vincenzo comes?” Fauve sounded excited, apparently gearing up for a ramble. “He just called Henri. He arrives this Saturday, right? Mon Dieu, if I had a husband like yours I wouldn’t be out here in the country getting callouses with a bunch of boring tools. Let’s all just forget work and have fun this weekend. Please say you will.”

  “Okay.” Giselle nodded, and then arched an eyebrow. “But Markus and I still need to find time to work, so just be flexible when scheduling the fun.”

  Fauve turned in his direction and called out, “That tool remark wasn’t aimed at you. Pardon my rudeness.” She showed no embarrassment whatsoever.

  Markus smiled, and accepting her acknowledgement as an invitation, he walked back over to join them.

  “I am not insulted.”

  Tapping him on the arm, Fauve turned to Giselle in a conspiratorial tone. “Don’t tell Carolette, but Markus here would be perfect for Simone.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “It’s time she moved on from Oscar.”

  “But she lives in Spain.”

  “You’re right, geographically that won’t work. But he’s her type.”

  “You’re such a matchmaker. His friend, Yvania, would approve of your efforts.”

  “Hey, when I see a man I want and I can’t have, I try to pass on the gift.”

  “The gift can hear you. He’s not deaf.” Giselle scowled and pinched her.

  “Ow! I’m sure he doesn’t mind.” She flicked her eyes back and forth between them. “What is it about you gorgeous people? You don’t seem to care that you’re making the rest of us drool. Seriously, can you honestly not want to mount him and ride him like a stallion?”

  Giselle looked flustered, and he could have sworn he saw a guilty expression. She swatted Fauve a
way, and with her face flushing bright red, she moved off to claim the groceries the store had set aside for her.

  Fauve pivoted to face him. “You’re not married, right?”

  “No.”

  She sidelined him with her body, making it clear she didn’t want him wandering around the shop while she was trying to interrogate him.

  “Never been married?”

  “No.” He kept his tone soft because he could see her pushiness was not mean spirited.

  “So, what’s your story? Are you dating anyone special?”

  “No.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “Ah, the same question always. Such a personal inquiry, and I believe this is the one area where women allow themselves license to pry.”

  “You’re right. How are women supposed to learn the playing field if we don’t ask questions? And, well, look at you.” She vaguely gestured from is face to his body. “Of course every woman wants to know your situation so she can act accordingly.”

  He could see her interest was building, so he offered, “The women I have met since moving to Paris have been either too pushy, or they pretend to be hard-to-get and play silly games. I have not found ‘the one,’ and it is not right to use a woman as a place-holder, so I am alone.”

  “That sounds lonely. What about back home?”

  “I lived in a very small area that did not have any women I desired.”

  “Let me see if I can fix you up with ‘the one.’” She made air quotes with her fingers. “There are too many desirable women around here to have lonely men.”

  Giselle arrived at his side and handed over some packages for him to carry. Turning to Fauve, she broke in.

  “We have to get back to work. But sure, come Saturday when Vincenzo arrives.”

  After returning to the château, they deposited the groceries in the kitchen and walked back to the greenhouse. Giselle produced a set of keys and unlocked a cabinet. When she opened the door, Markus saw a heavily reinforced case sitting on a shelf. She took it over to the worktable and set it down with care.

  “I bet you can guess what’s in here.”

  “Now we break the law?” he whispered.

  “Oui. Just possessing this irrodium is illegal. We have to make absolutely certain the spindles stay intact until we fuse them into their star patterns. Then I’ll fracture the junction to join the chemical compartments.”

  “Not a big fracture, right?”

  “No, the fuse point will be about the size of a pea, and the fracture will be no larger than an eyelash.”

  He helped her lay out a thick cotton pad, and a non-skid sheet of anti-static rubber on top of that. “Which side of the glass tube has the poison?”

  She picked up a spindle and gave it to him.

  “This compartment contains the hydrogen,” she pointed, “and here’s the irrodium. I had each spindle filled by two different chemists. The first chemist received all the spindles with two empty compartments. He filled one compartment in each spindle with hydrogen, and then sealed those halves. I picked them up and took them to the second chemist, along with a canister of irrodium. He used that to fill the remaining compartments.”

  “It was your irrodium?”

  “It had been my late father’s. I found it here in the basement in his personal laboratory.”

  “You trust these chemists?”

  “I do. But the truth is, I never told them what I was going to do. I simply engaged them to do their specific task, and that was all they knew. The first chemist specializes in hydrogen, so he had no questions. And the second is a very old friend of my father’s who works in the safest laboratory environment possible. I personally delivered the irrodium to him in a container that still had my father’s handwritten notes on it. He never directly asked me what it was.”

  He quirked an eyebrow and gave her a questioning look. “Hmmm.”

  “Oh, he knew what it was. He did it out of loyalty because I asked him to. There was nothing in writing, no papers. No one will ever know how I did it.”

  “When the authorities see Star Fall, they will ask questions.”

  “My father’s lab still has the equipment to do what the chemists did for me, and I know how to use it. I used to fill spindles with all sorts of things when I was little.”

  “Sure, children do things like filling vials with glitter, but filling hundreds of vials with a deadly chemical is not the same thing.”

  “I won’t ever admit to it happening any other way.”

  “There are times when I do not know what to think of you.”

  “Can you pick a new subject?”

  Clearly he had pushed her as far as he could.

  “Okay, new subject.” Markus handed her back the spindle. “How long have you been married?”

  Accepting the glass tube, she laid it down on the prepared surface. “Five years. We got married right out of high school.”

  He handed her another tube. “You were in a hurry?”

  “Oui.” She kept her eyes on the spindles.

  “Will you tell me why?”

  “My family’s business was chemical manufacturing—industrial explosives. We made our fortune in munitions manufacturing, fireworks, and things like that. By my father’s time we owned the biggest chemical company in the world.”

  “Ah, now your estate makes sense.”

  “I was seventeen when everything came to an end.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Every last member of my family was at the unveiling of a new plant. But one static charge in a mixing room caused an explosion that was felt as far away as Brussels.” Her voice broke and her shoulders sagged.

  He took the spindle out of her hand, set it gently on the table, and pulled Giselle onto his lap. She rested her head on his shoulder and let him comfort her. He felt her hot tears slip onto his neck.

  “I don’t talk about it. I wasn’t at the unveiling because I had a very bad cold. I was at home with a nurse. After the tragedy, our family business was ruined. The estate was sued for the wrongful death of everyone who died. After paying out everything our company had in the bank, the company was sold off to cover lost income lawsuits in six countries. I would have lost my home without Vincenzo and his family. In this region of France, anything in the bride’s name legally becomes the property of the husband upon marriage. We were racing to save my home from all of the lawsuits that kept pouring in. So we married quickly. My family really liked Vincenzo and they would have loved our wedding.”

  “I see.” He wrapped his arms around her as she buried her face in his neck. He nuzzled his cheek into her hair, and melted into her for as long as she would stay in his arms.

  Finally she sat up, wiped her eyes, and moved away. Returning to the work before them, she cleared her throat.

  “Anyway, about the irrodium. When I was about fourteen years old, I started sneaking into my father’s private laboratory here in the château’s basement to experiment with his chemicals, and I came upon some vials of irrodium. They had clear warnings on them, so I was careful never to break one. But I found by accident that if I touched irrodium vials to vials filled with hydrogen and held them together, the irrodium would have a momentary reaction through the glass and cause the glass to fuse. I thought I would get in trouble because I had ruined the vials, so I tried a light tap on the fusion point to separate them. But I created a tiny fracture in the fused joint and the irrodium flowed between the two vials. Well, the glass stayed stable, and the most beautiful glow appeared. I snuck the glowing vials out of his lab and kept them hidden in the back of my closet so no one would find them and realize what I’d done. One night at dinner, I asked my father how long irrodium would glow if it was mixed with hydrogen, and he told me one hundred years.” A sad laugh hiccupped out. “He believed me when I told him that I’d read about the reaction in one of his notebooks. I guess he never dreamed that I would experiment on my own.”

  “Where are those glowing vials from your childhood now?” />
  “Still in my closet upstairs.”

  “Ah. Most parents are only worried that their child will smoke cigarettes, I see that yours had something else to protect you from.”

  She stood up and stretched, arching her back in her profoundly sexy fashion.

  “True, well, let’s get one of the spindle stars set into the structure and begin lighting up Star Fall, shall we?”

  “Giselle.” He put his hand on her arm. “What if it spills on us?”

  “Oh!” Fear flashed across her face, and then he saw her grim resolve. “We have to make sure that never happens. Irrodium quickly eats through skin, and when it get into the bloodstream, it rapidly kills off blood cells like wildfire. Death is almost instant. We can’t get any on us.” She was already kicking off her shoes.

  Markus shuddered and took both of her hands in his. “You will show me one, and if I think it is too dangerous, I will ask you to quit this plan. I will not help you further.”

  “I can accept that.” She nodded and selected four spindles, which she separated between her fingers, and then she led the way out to the sculpture.

  Markus climbed the scaffold barefoot and stood balanced under the drilled holes. Giselle reached up and handed him the four spindles, which he kept separated between his fingers to prevent them from touching. She climbed the scaffold, and once in position she wound her legs around him to steady herself. Resting her body against the front of him she asked, “Do you feel solid?”

  “Da, I am good.”

  “Okay, I’m going to take two of the vials now, so we’ll each have two.”

  Her mouth was so close to his, he could smell the faint watermelon scent of her lip balm. Her body was warm and firm through the thin layer of dress material. He nodded and watched what she was doing. She carefully took two of the vials from him and exhaled to calm herself.

  “Now, together we’ll slip the four spindles into the four adjoining holes, and hold them completely still for one minute to ensure their tips fuse together.”

  She aimed her two spindles at the two holes on her side of the metal arm, and he did the same from his side. Together they inserted the spindles into the four holes and froze. Markus settled into sixty seconds of savoring Giselle against his body, feeling her supple feminine strength. Her breath became shallow and fast, and her eyes were gleaming. The smell of her made him both happy and miserable. He kept his eyes fixed on the deadly spindles in their hands, and sniffed the air for any odor that might warn him of leaking chemicals. But there was nothing except this beautiful creature braced against him, whose excitement was driving him mad.