“You can give it to me.” She might read it, she might not, but not here, not now. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of one good reason for going back. No, that was a lie. One big reason and then—nothing. Her life here was richer, more fulfilled.
The thought of returning to her old life in New York terrified her. It stopped her mind dead, made her break out in a sweat to even contemplate going back. It would be so easy, so seductive to slip back. She’d seen it over and over again. People broke away and kicked the habit that was destroying their lives, only to go home and slide back into their old ways, seduced by friends and familiar surroundings. For years that thought had haunted her.
When she realized her mother would have spent the paltry remnants of her father’s fortune, the reasons to go back went away. She certainly wouldn’t do it for her mother. “Why does she want to see me?”
He stroked her waist, swept his hand underwater to cup her hip. “Because she’s worried about you. And she says she wants to say she’s sorry. Maybe you both went through a phase, hmm?”
“Maybe.” But she didn’t want it to happen again. She didn’t need the nuns’ rudimentary analysis to know how badly her mother had screwed up parenthood. “I like it here.” That was true, too. Despite the gangs, the dirt and the dilapidated buildings, she liked Naples.
“It’s an interesting place. But you can’t stay here forever.”
“Why not?” She turned to face him, ignoring the water that sloshed over the rim of the bath again. “I like it here. I’m useful. The years I spent in New York were wasted years. I can’t remember a lot of it. Too high most of the time. Here I work, and I study. I’m late starting my life but it really has started now.”
“You could do that at home.”
He wouldn’t let her go easily, she saw that now. Time to introduce her greatest weapon, the reason she couldn’t go back. “I can’t become a nun there. Not as easily.”
“Yes you can—What?” Shock registered in his wide eyes, his dropped jaw. He closed his mouth, his teeth clicking together with the force of his clamped jaw. “You’re not serious.”
“Why not? I was raised Catholic. If it weren’t for the nuns in Rome, I’d have died. They’re a practical order, they go all over the world helping people who have fallen on distressed times. They concentrate on addicts and street children, learn all they can about them. That’s why I’m studying. I want to help, Jon, to give something back.”
He curved his arm around her waist and drew her close. His erection had subsided, but not by much. It still pressed into her. “You can study there. And we can be together.”
“You really want that?”
She dragged away and climbed out of the tub, reaching for one of the towels on the rack. If she’d missed anything from her old life, that would be it. Warm towels from a heated rack. But to her surprise she realized she hadn’t missed much.
Wrapping the towel around her, she headed for the door. “Don’t answer. You can’t want that. What if I went back to the way I was? You’d have an addict on your hands. I never pretended, you know, never dabbled. I dived straight in. You can’t want someone who’d do that. I’d be a liability. Here, I’m wanted, I’m useful. And everybody who knows me thinks I’m a good girl who doesn’t drink much and doesn’t take drugs. Part of the habit is the expectation. What people expect you to do, and the crowd you run with. If I came home, how long before they’d expect me to backslide?”
She strode into the main room, hearing the whoosh of water as he left the bath. He didn’t bother with a towel, she saw when he entered the bedroom.
She didn’t let him speak. “Your family and my family don’t mix. Your mother always looked down on me. You’re old money, real class and we’re Italian upstarts. You know it’s true. Your people won’t like it if you take up with me, especially after Byron. I bet they blame me for his death.”
She paused to swallow, reminded of her guilty feelings, and he took the chance to get a word in. “What are you, a coward or something? Don’t want to face them?”
“I guess I must be.” She’d use anything to get rid of him. Then she thought of something else, a reason he couldn’t argue with. “In any case I can’t leave, not now. If I do, they’ll kill Franco and his family.”
“Revenge?” His lip curled. “Bastards.”
She picked up her bra from the cream carpet and shrugged into it. “For sure. But it’s business, only business. At least that’s what they say. As long as he pays the protection and keeps his head down, they leave us alone, but you rattled them. Now we have to go about our ordinary business until they forget us.”
“You could do what I did. Disappear and reappear as yourself.”
She gave a derisory laugh. “You think that might not seem suspicious? No. As long as I don’t change what I do, I’ll be fine. I’ve been here two years and managed better than anywhere else.” And yet, she knew she’d have to move on one day. Jon had woken her to that fact.
Jon wouldn’t leave her alone, now that he knew where she was. If she persuaded him to go now, he’d come back. Then her family would find out, and she’d be back to being a penniless princess. Maybe she should try Venice. Or Milan. Her heart sank. She hated trusting anyone, and she couldn’t trust Jon to leave her alone. Not now. Not after what they’d done and what she’d told him.
Oh shit, she was screwed. In more ways than one. Unless she could make him see sense, and leave for good. “Look, Jon, it’s been fun. We’ve enjoyed ourselves, haven’t we?” Grabbing up her clothes, she continued to dress, as hastily as she could manage. Not that she had much to put on. “But you have your life, I have mine. I don’t belong in your world anymore. I don’t have any money, I don’t have friends there, there’s nothing for me. I want to stay here so much and study, make something of myself.” She sighed. “You’re my last fling before I go back to the convent. I really want to do this. Don’t screw it up for me.”
She went to walk past him but he reached out and dragged her close, slamming his mouth down on hers before she could pull away. They were both panting by the time he drew back. “You can walk away from this? From everything we have? From your mother, the only family you have left?”
That finished the conversation as far as she was concerned. “Fuck off, Jon. Let me do this. If you come back to the café, I’ll disappear again. You know I can, and you won’t find me this time.”
She pulled away, grimacing at the way he’d wet the front of her dress. It’d soon dry in the sun.
She grabbed her bag then strode to the door. “Thanks, Jon. I’ll think of you in my cell. But it’s a vocation. You or Jesus. I guess Jesus won.”
She didn’t look back.
Jon stared after her, eyes narrowing in speculation. A nun? Yeah, maybe, but to his mind that was going too far. She obviously felt she had to make reparation of some kind, for Byron’s death. She’d always enjoyed extremes. Perhaps she hadn’t changed as much as he thought.
Or— But one thing remained clear. He’d have to leave her alone. For now. He’d take Byron home and then come back for her. And this time he wouldn’t let her walk away. Already his groin ached, reminding him how much he wanted her.
Then there was the shit back home to clear up.
The hotel phone rang and he crossed the room to answer it, catching a whiff of Lina’s perfume as he passed the rumpled sheets. A pang of longing gripped him, and need—need for what, he wasn’t sure. Sex, yeah, he could fuck her until she’d drained him, but more, something else. To hold her, to make sure she was okay. And it went bone deep. Far too deep.
“Yeah?” he barked into the receiver.
“Mistaire Brantlee?” The guy had an atrocious accent, but at least he spoke English.
“Yes.”
“Thees ees the cor-on-er.” He said every syllable carefully, as if he’d looked it up. He probably had. “I am ready to release your brother Byron for transpor-tation as we agreed, but I wanted to speak to you. Something abou
t my examination was a little strange. I have put it in the report, but there is not enough for us to detain the body.”
What the fuck? “Explain, please.”
The careful but incorrect pronunciation continued. Jon had to concentrate to understand every word. “Your brother had taken a kind of heroin I have never seen before. You know most heroin, when it reaches the streets, it is not pure?” He pronounced the last word so badly it took Jon a moment or two to process it.
“Yes, I know that.”
“This was. I can find no trace of anything else. I cannot be sure but I am including a description in the report. I am saying he died of an overdose, which he did, but Mr. Brantley—How close were you to your brother?”
“Not very.” He didn’t want anything the coroner was about to say clouded by sentiment. He wanted it straight.
“Very well. You knew he was an addict?”
“Yes, I did. Where would he get uncut heroin from?” Alarmed now, he needed this information.
The authorities would do their best to smooth this over. The death of an American citizen from Italian drugs, especially from such a prominent family, could prove awkward for them. They’d try to get the unfortunate body out of the country and into someone else’s jurisdiction. By the time he saw Byron again, his brother would be in a jar and any evidence destroyed. He needed to know if he should stop the cremation.
“It is possible that someone wanted your brother dead. But he was an addict and it is almost impossible to prove anything in court. He bought the drug and he injected it, not knowing it was pure. It would be hard to prove otherwise. However, I thought I should tell you.”
“Can we arrange to have his body transported as it is, without cremation?” Maybe he could get someone in New York to reexamine the body, to try to find something to go on.
A pause. “I am sorry, sir, but it is already too late. His body went to the crematorium this afternoon.” A pause. “And anything I have said in this conversation I will not support if I am called to court. Except that he died of an overdose of the drug he had been addicted to for years.”
“Of course.” He could understand, with gangs as violent as the ones here, why the coroner would not wish any involvement.
As far as he knew, heroin didn’t hit the streets pure. It was always, always, cut with something else. Giving an addict pure heroin wasn’t an accident.
It was murder.
Chapter Nine
Jon traveled back to the States with his mind caught in a rat trap. He went around and around but could find no answer. Two questions obsessed him.
How had Byron known where to go to find Lina? Jon didn’t believe his brother had accidentally gone to the same place as Lina. He’d gone there deliberately. Maybe he’d asked the nuns, or tricked them into revealing Lina’s whereabouts, or maybe he’d only gone because he needed money to feed his habit. Nonaddicts were the best source, because they had things left to sell.
Or maybe someone had sent him.
And then to contact his murderer before he’d left the station—someone waiting for him, or an accident? Were they waiting for Byron, or was he collateral? No, that kind of coincidence didn’t convince him. Shit, he couldn’t find anything out in midair, couldn’t even jot his suspicions down in case someone found them. Paranoid much?
Where did that leave Lina? Was someone trying to find her, or just using her to get to Byron, to flush him out into the open?
He couldn’t leave this alone. But he had to leave Lina where she was until he could get her away. Not because of her reason, or not just because of that. He’d inadvertently brought trouble to her because of his stupid boasts to be a knockoff merchant. He owed her. He’d have her tailed for a while, if his investigator could find someone to do it discreetly. Just in case anyone showed too much interest in her.
He opened his eyes when someone fiddled with his lap blanket and stared straight up into soft, brown Asian eyes. The flight attendant smiled. “Is there anything I can get you, sir?”
“No. No thanks.”
“Just press the buzzer, sir. I’d be only too pleased to—serve you.”
Before that last remark and before he’d hooked up with Lina, he’d have been tempted. But her last comment struck him as too blatant, and anyway, she didn’t stir anything inside him.
He watched her walk away, her tiny ass confined in a neat, black pencil skirt and thought of Lina’s lovely curves. It wasn’t that he preferred his women slim; it was that he preferred her.
Not that she wanted him. It still stung, the way she walked away after they’d shared the hottest sex he could ever remember, leaving him hungry, panting for more. Perhaps that was it. She’d left him hungry.
He must have dozed because when he opened his eyes the light had changed and the captain was speaking, asking them to fasten their seat belts. A fourteen-hour flight wasn’t too bad in first class, but he didn’t envy the cattle-class passengers. That was one option he’d never had the urge to try. Although six thousand dollars was a big premium. His brother’s fare had cost a lot more, and he’d anticipated having to grease a few palms to get the formalities dealt with quickly. But at the end, he hadn’t even needed to offer. They wanted him out of the country, and fast. If the gangs had become involved, that didn’t entirely surprise him.
He gazed out the window, watching the plane land, with a smoothness only big airplanes managed. He’d take the return flight as soon as he could and this time he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Her last threat, to disappear, had been only too real. He’d bet she had a small rainy day fund put away, enough for transport and new ID if she needed it.
He couldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t.
After collecting his jacket and the plastic urn containing what was left of Byron, Jon left the plane. He blinked in the bright sunshine pouring in through the plate-glass windows, then went into the artificial atmosphere of the airport.
Jon had a weak spot for airports, places of uncertainty, nearly-there oases between one existence and the next. He had the chance to get some work done where people couldn’t get hold of him easily, if he switched off his phone and claimed he’d just forgotten. Not today, though. He couldn’t wait to leave.
Customs was relatively smooth. It was worth paying the first-class fare for that, at least. He collected his suitcase and headed for the VIP lounge, while he waited for them to bring yet more documents for him to sign.
His last journey with his brother. He remembered times from their youth, when he and Byron had just been ordinary kids, playing in the park or the backyard of their New York brownstone. The brownstone now formed the offices of the company he ran, while his mother lived in a swish penthouse, but he’d loved that house, and so had Byron. That was the reason they’d never sold it, although those buildings fetched small fortunes these days.
He placed Byron next to him and leaned back. He was alone here, most of the passengers hurrying to get on with their lives. A woman in a pink jacket on a large flat-screen TV silently mouthed the news and he reached for the remote. At least he could understand what they said here.
Getting off a plane made him feel as if he’d temporarily left civilization, and now he returned to the fold. The broadcaster went through the same-old, same-old political arguments, financial news. He paid attention to that, mentally making note of the way the market was swinging. They’d had some bad times in the retail trade, but with his core business solid, his company had weathered the storm. He’d cut the lines a little, taking sharp note of stock levels. Now things were picking up once more and he was considering a new venture, a development from his company’s core business. He’d bought a couple of companies at the market’s nadir, if this wasn’t a double-dip market. He had slightly different plans for them. It felt good to get back to work, to get back to what passed as normal.
The financial news ended and the broadcaster announced the world news. The British Prime Minister was visiting Pakistan, the state dinners and formal meetin
gs no doubt cover for more serious dealings. Another bomb had gone off in one of the world’s trouble spots.
Then the broadcaster blithely shattered his world. “And in Naples, Italy, gang activity appears to have started again after a period of relative peace.” A picture of a shattered building flashed on the screen, the green wall next to it so familiar his throat tightened. He fought to suck in a breath. “A small café away from the tourist areas was firebombed yesterday in renewed gang warfare. The police believe the café was a center of illegal activity. It may signal a return to the bad old days when judges and high-ranking police officials were murdered if they got in the way of the gangs that infest that part of Italy.”
There was nothing left of the upper level of the café, the empty windows open to the sky, drapes that he knew so well flapping in the light breeze. Anyone inside that apartment when the bomb went off wouldn’t have stood a chance.
He stopped listening, his mind racing, although he knew exactly what he had to do. And fast.
His mother waited at the barrier, with Alice, a girl he’d escorted to a few parties last month. The old girl had found him another potential match. She wanted an heir, but the right heir, and Alice Landon’s pedigree was impeccable.
They stood a little apart, flanked by men who couldn’t look more like bodyguards if they tried. Dark suits, sunglasses, narrow ties, which Jon would bet were clip-ons—too much. His mind preoccupied with the devastating news he’d just received, they looked like travesties of the real thing to him.
After he passed through the barrier, he walked right up to his mother before she gave him any sign of recognition. She wore red, with a hat that kind of framed her face. Her face, previously prematurely lined, now smoothed out by some chemical or other and maybe a facelift, still reminded him of the woman who’d always spared time from her busy social scene to spend at least an hour a day with her sons. So he forced a smile and she forced one back. A quiver of perfectly lipsticked mouth, anyway.
Learning to Trust Page 9