“He’s d-dead,” she stuttered, horrified, looking up at the first man who knelt beside her. “I’m sure he’s dead.” She nearly collapsed in his arms, forcing the man to drag her away from the body while others helped. He put her in a chair at one of the outside tables and then rushed back to the body.
A crowd gathered. She slipped out into the street, joining the crush there. She crouched low beside Belsky’s body, one hand feeling for his pulse while the other slipped inside his jacket and deftly removed the envelope of cash. “He’s dead,” she said, and stood up, looking dismayed. The crowd pressed closer, and she slipped back into it.
She spotted Arturo in their car several yards down. She gave one last casual glance around and made her way to the car, carrying her clutch and the book. She couldn’t say she wasn’t grateful to her savior for dispatching a man who had planned on killing her – and there was no doubt in her mind that he was lying in wait for her – but she didn’t want, nor could she afford to have a guardian.
Halfway to the house, she swept off her very expensive and beautiful wig, shaking out her own hair. It was always a production to get her wig on because she had so much hair, but she didn’t want to cut it. Her mother wore her hair long, and it was one of the few things that always made Lissa feel as if she still had a part of her.
“I’m changing,” she announced.
“Get to it,” Arturo said, completely unaffected by the fact that she was peeling off her shoes, socks and jeans to pull on a long skirt. The top and band she bound her breasts with came next, and she yanked a thin, silky top over her head to match the skirt. The tiny pearl buttons were already done up. Her heels matched the color of the top, a pale blue to match the thin stripes in the skirt. She added gold bangles to her wrist, pulled out the earrings that were simple studs and replaced them with gold hoops.
Her work clothes and shoes were thrust into a bag along with the earrings, clutch, syringe and envelope of money. She set the bag on the seat beside her and quickly began to brush out her hair. She’d changed in under four minutes. A record. The adrenaline was rushing through her veins. Her heart pounded. Her mouth was dry. She’d come to expect the symptoms after working, but this was different. This was about what she was going to do when she reached her uncle’s estate.
Absently she picked up the book. Old Poisons, New Problems. She frowned and tapped her finger on the cover. She’d read the book. Luigi had a copy of it in the library along with other reference books on poisons. She smoothed her finger along the spine and turned the book over and over. The more she stared down at the copy, the more she was certain it was from their library.
“Gavriil Prakenskii. I know you sent a babysitter.” She whispered the words softly and pressed the button to bring the window down.
“I didn’t hear you,” Arturo said. “My ears aren’t what they used to be.”
“I was muttering to myself.”
“You only do that if you’re upset. You got the information. Belsky may be a double-crossing rat but he always brings the goods. It’s a point of honor with him. Whatever you have there is what you asked for.” There was curiosity in his voice.
Ignoring his unspoken question, she closed her eyes and stuck her head out the window, allowing the wind to blow through her hair and over her face. Cooling her. She was bound to fire. Inside, deep, where it mattered, at her very core, there was nothing cool and collected about her. She burned hot and passionate. Sometimes she felt as dead as her parents, lost to the world, existing, not living. The farther away from the farm and her sisters, the more that feeling persisted.
She had to be focused. Completely alert and absorbed, concentrating only on the job at hand. She’d stayed alive because she pushed her natural nature down. The need to bring justice to those who had so brutally murdered her family and those serving them had been overwhelming. The need to let them know she, Giacinta Abbracciabene, was the one bringing that justice down on their heads was equally as overwhelming. The intelligent, logical part of her had kept her calm and allowed her to formulate a long-term plan.
Now, Gavriil Prakenskii was threatening that plan. It made no sense to her. He knew her intention. He knew she planned to kill both father and son Sorbacov. Her sisters deserved happiness, and the Prakenskiis had served their country with honor. They also deserved to live out their lives in peace. She was doing this for them. Why would he make it more difficult? Because she was certain – certain – that the man calling himself Tomasso Dal Porto was in reality a Prakenskii.
She felt he was in her very bones. It was his eyes. She had been on the farm with her sisters of the heart, as they often called themselves, for a little over five years. In that time, Rikki, a sea urchin diver, had pulled a man from the sea. He had been a Prakenskii. Lev Prakenskii. She had married that man. They all learned to accept and love him, but he was a protective, overbearing man.
Then Judith had fallen. Judith, who had all kinds of sense until a man showed up to protect her from her past. Her man just happened to be a Prakenskii as well and she married him. Stefan Prakenskii owned an art gallery and was just as protective and overbearing as Lev.
Next it was Airiana. She’d been kidnapped – by a Prakenskii. Together they had shut down a ship of human traffickers and rescued four children. She was married to Maxim now and they were adopting the children. Max was worse than the other two when it came to being protective.
Little Lexi, their youngest and most vulnerable, had succumbed to the charms of Gavriil Prakenskii. He was the most arrogant and dangerous of all the brothers she’d met. Lissa liked him and especially liked him for her youngest sister, but adding him into the mix was just downright scary. There was way too much testosterone on the farm.
The brothers believed in safety first and they’d turned the farm into a heavily guarded sanctuary, but Lissa wasn’t safe there. She had too many secrets, and her work wasn’t finished. She couldn’t afford to have anyone watching her every move. Gavriil had guessed at what her plans were and he’d even provided information she wouldn’t have been able to get on her own, but she didn’t want help. She didn’t need it, and she refused to allow a Prakenskii male anywhere near her.
She wasn’t stupid or blind. She saw the pattern. Each of her sisters was bound to an element. Rikki was bound to water. Judith to spirit. Airiana was bound to air. Lexi was bound to the earth. Lissa blew out her breath and yanked the brush through her hair. She was bound to fire. That meant that every minute of every day, she had to suppress her passionate nature. Her need for action.
Lissa didn’t dare show the Prakenskii brothers her skills when she was practicing martial arts or using weapons with them. She had to allow them to best her at every turn. It wasn’t always easy. When discussions arose, she had to be subdued and keep silent when she wanted to argue fiercely for her point. She desperately wanted to be herself. Desperately.
Coming back to Italy, being in her uncle’s home, she still couldn’t be who she was deep inside. They had planned together, long ago, when she was a child, how to bring justice to the Porcelli family. Lissa had been a hothead, but Luigi had forced her to slow down to learn the things she needed to learn in order to keep from being killed. That had taken years. In that time, she learned the wisdom of patience.
The Porcelli family had no idea they were under attack. The accidents came infrequently. Two, sometimes three in a year. There was no pattern that anyone could detect, and Lissa always made certain the accidents were random. She didn’t care about tipping off the Porcelli family that the Abbracciabene family was coming after them. She didn’t care anything about the second generation either. Only those responsible for the deaths of her people and her family. Luigi was her only living blood relative, and she didn’t want him compromised in any way. He appeared to live quietly, surrounded by those he trusted, an older man who enjoyed gardening.
She hadn’t known a real family again until she lived on the farm with her chosen sisters. Of the six women who had banded
together to start a new life, only Lissa and Blythe remained unmarried. Unclaimed. Well… Blythe was up in the air. She had her own secrets. But Prakenskiis were overrunning their farm and the small village of Sea Haven. Even the famous Jolie Drake was married to a Prakenskii, which put five of the seven brothers in her small town. She could count. That left two. One for her. One for Blythe. It wasn’t happening. Not to her.
“We’re nearly home, Lissa,” Arturo announced. His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “Are you settled, or do you need me to miss the driveway?”
She loved Arturo. She did. She loved few people in the world. She didn’t dare get close to them. Her sisters. Their husbands – and she was still trying to hold herself apart from them. Her uncle and Arturo. Those were the few people she had in her world. In truth, Gavriil telling his brother about her hurt. She had trusted him to keep his word to her, not to let anyone know that she planned to go after the Sorbacovs. He’d given his word, and it hurt more than she’d ever expected that he’d broken his promise to her.
“I’m good. Thank you for going with me, Arturo. I don’t know if I tell you enough, but I appreciate the way you’ve always looked after Tio Luigi. I don’t ever worry because you’re with him.”
His teeth flashed at her, his smile dazzling. She hadn’t trusted, even as a child. She’d learned the hard way not to, but over the years, Arturo had become another uncle to her. Her hand shook as she put the brush back in her purse. Lifting her chin, she caught up the book and slipped from the car. Arturo drove the vehicle into the garage, leaving her at the side entrance.
She knew her uncle would be waiting for her, worried as always, but Arturo would tell him what happened. It was too late to beat Tomasso to his room, if the man with the book had in fact been Tomasso – a Prakenskii – so there was no need to try to catch him in the act of reverting back to the bodyguard role. In any case, if he actually was a Prakenskii, she knew she wouldn’t surprise him in the act of assuming another role. He would be too good for that. The Prakenskiis’ craft had been honed in a hard school. They wouldn’t make mistakes. Which left her the book.
Why had he dropped the book and then not recovered it? Especially if the book was from Luigi’s library? She used the back stairs and hurried into the room she had grown very familiar with as a child. She’d often taken refuge here when she was lonely. She’d been lonely a lot. Luigi wasn’t a man who knew how to comfort a grieving child. He was a man of action. He’d devoted his life to his brother and the family business. It had been small but lucrative. Now, he found himself with an emotional child who went from storms of weeping to fiery rants on vengeance.
Luigi had learned, over the years, how to express his love for her in more concrete ways, but she’d spent so many of the earlier days right there in the library, crying her eyes out. She tried to be brave in front of him because she wanted him to teach her what he knew. Then she’d discovered his books. She’d learned everything from Luigi, from self-defense and dirty tricks to weapons and poisons. She was a walking encyclopedia on poisons.
She knew right where the reference books were kept, and she hurried across the room to the shelves. The book should have been right there. She’d read it, put it back and granted, it was a number of years ago, but still, no one else was going to have taken it off the shelf. She scanned for the title. There was a small space between The Elements of Poison – A History of Murder and Basic Illustrated Poisonous and Psychoactive Plants, a book she’d read repeatedly as a child. This book, dropped by the man who had probably saved her life, belonged in Luigi’s library.
She took a deep breath, let it out and replaced the book between the other two titles. She was going to confront Mr. Prakenskii and have him leave immediately. She couldn’t afford to have him looking over her shoulder. She had work to do. Luigi had found the man she had wanted more than any other, and she intended to take care of Cosmos Agosto, the dog handler who had betrayed her entire family, and then she was going to see to the problem facing her sisters. No Prakenskii was going macho on her and stopping her.
Lissa hurried up the back stairs leading to the second floor, to the wing where Arturo, Tomasso and three other bodyguards resided. She knew which room was Tomasso’s and she stood in front of the door, there in the darkened hallway. No sound emerged from the other side. No light slipped under the door.
She turned the doorknob very slowly. It was locked. That didn’t surprise her in the least. It wasn’t that difficult to pick the lock and she did so quickly. She pushed the door open cautiously, slipped inside and closed the door silently.
She stood just to the right of the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was much darker in the room due to the fact that heavy drapes had been pulled across the windows. She heard her heart pounding. As a rule, she could overcome fear rather easily. It was a matter of discipline and resolve. But this was a different kind of fear. Completely different.
Lissa’s life had been destroyed by the attack on her family. Her parents had been brutally murdered. She’d nearly been murdered as well, and she’d been a very young child. That day was forever stamped in her mind, burned deep into her memories, but she kept that door carefully closed. The moment it was opened, the nightmares started. Standing there in the dark, she felt those murders and the memory of them all too close because the very air around her was fraught with danger.
She stayed still, inhaling to calm her pounding heart. The air was spiced with a dark, masculine scent. Dangerous to her. She recognized that immediately as she pulled her breath deep into her lungs – pulled him deep into her lungs. Prakenskii. No one else had those eyes. It didn’t matter what color they were or if he wore glasses or not. It was the eyes. Hawk-like. Piercing. Seeing everything. Seeing into one’s soul.
Then there was the blistering chemistry between them she couldn’t deny. She didn’t have chemistry with men. She didn’t allow it. She wasn’t finished with her work and it was too important to screw that up for a man.
He made no sound. No movement. But he was there, somewhere in the dark room. Close to her. Very close. Somehow he’d seen or heard or was alerted to the doorknob twisting, or her picking the lock. It was impossible, she hadn’t made a sound, but she knew he wasn’t in the bed. He was there, very, very close to her. She held her breath, listening for the sound of his breathing, but there was nothing at all to give him away. She had trapped herself in the room with a powerful predator.
Lissa acknowledged and tried to learn from every mistake she made. She didn’t just keep going on a path if it wasn’t the right one because of ego. Right now, she knew she was in over her head. Whoever this man was – Prakenskii or not – he was much better at cat and mouse than she was. She was used to being the cat. In this room, she definitely was the mouse. Very slowly she inched back toward the door, her hand moving toward the doorknob.
“Don’t.”
The single command was low. Soft. Close to her right ear. So close she felt his warm breath stir her hair, disturbing a few stray strands. The hair moved over her face, causing an electrical shock to chase across her entire body, bringing every nerve ending alive. Her breasts felt tight, swollen, aching. Her nipples tightened into two hard peaks. She shivered – a full-body shiver. He hadn’t touched her. She drew in another breath, suddenly terrified that this man – this stranger – had more power over her than anything else in her life ever had.
He couldn’t stop her from opening the door, yet she hesitated, her hand hovering over the doorknob indecisively when she was always decisive. Her hand trembled and then she dropped her palm onto the knob. It felt solid. Reassuring. His scent tilted her world and made her feel disoriented. Alarmed. Hunted.
His hand covered hers. Gently. So gently. Still. She couldn’t move. His body caged her in, inched forward just enough that she retreated before she even realized she’d given ground. Her arm was trapped behind her, and, consequently, one of her weapons was tied up, fingers still curled around the doorknob.
His palm no longer surrounded the back of her hand. Instead, it was loose. A worry. A very lethal weapon.
“I want to leave this room. If you force me to scream, the other bodyguards will come running. Just step away.” She managed to get the order out without her voice shaking. The threat level was extremely high. Her body didn’t feel at all like her own. He stood facing her, his front solid. Muscular. Presenting her with numerous targets, yet she couldn’t take advantage. It was too easy, and she knew it was a trap. He was baiting her.
His hand came up – the one she’d known was going to be trouble – and cupped the side of her face, his thumb sweeping along her cheekbone. “But you won’t scream. If you brought them all here, you would force me to defend myself. I would, and I like most of the boys working for Luigi. With the exception of Enzo, who is a snake waiting to strike. In any case, I would kill them all and then your uncle would come…” He trailed off and swept his thumb over her lips. “You know you don’t want that.”
4
Lissa’s heart pounded so hard she felt the beat of it pulsing in her slick, hot, feminine core. Pulsing. Pounding. Demanding. She was in such trouble. Tomasso’s voice was pitched low. So low it was only the fact that his mouth was against her ear when he spoke that she could hear him. She felt his breath stirring tendrils of hair. His lips brushed her skin intimately. Teeth slid down the curve of her ear and then tugged on her lobe. A million butterflies took wing. There was a definite spasm in her sex. Very definite. Strong. Maybe a quake more than a spasm.
Fire Bound (Sea Haven Sisters Page 6