Dangerous Ladies (34 page)

G
uns appeared in every Fossera hand, pointing at Brandi, at Roberto, at one another.

Mossimo snatched the diamond away from Roberto. “Kill her!”

“Don’t shoot,” Roberto shouted. “For the love of God, don’t shoot!” He ran toward her, knocking chairs aside.

One chair took Greg out at the knees.

Greg’s pistol blasted. Ceiling tile and insulation rained down.

Another chair sent Ricky backward over a table.

In Roberto’s hands, the chairs were weapons.

He raced halfway across the restaurant. One of the customers tackled him. They crashed to the floor and slid along the linoleum, hitting chairs like dominoes.

“Kill them all,” Mossimo shouted.

He left Brandi no choice. She leveled the pistol at Mossimo.

From behind, someone grabbed her by the hair.

She went down on one knee, the pain bringing tears to her eyes.

“I got her,” the guy yelled, and twisted.

Her hat slid over her eyes. She shoved it off.

Joseph. It was Joseph, Mr. Nguyen’s murderer, the little prick who’d tried to kill Roberto and Brandi.

How had he gotten here? Where was Tyler? What had he done to her mother?

Getting her foot under her, she stomped on his instep, sinking her stiletto heel deep into his shoe.

Yelping with pain, he let her go.

“Brandi, get down!” Roberto shouted. “Drop to the floor!”

So Joseph could kick her to death? No way.

“Bitch. I’m going to kill you!” Joseph grabbed for her again.

Ballerina Brandi performed a grand jeté that would have made George Balanchine proud. In stilettos. She hit Joseph right in the chest.

He went down, arms flailing.

She landed off balance, fell against the counter. She righted herself, but when she tried to put her weight on her foot, her ankle twisted.

She glanced down. Her mother’s shoe. When she kicked Joseph, she’d broken the heel on her mother’s favorite Jimmy Choo shoe. Furious, she turned back to Joseph.

Pandemonium reigned in the Stuffed Dog. Another chair smacked the wall. Fists hit flesh, and something cracked. Men and women were shouting, “Drop it! Drop it!”

Joseph’s livid gaze had settled on Roberto. He lifted his knife, aimed it with the skill of a professional—

So she shot him.

The recoil slammed her elbow into the counter. The retort blasted her ears.

The knife whistled past so closely it sliced off a piece of her newly highlighted and beautifully cut hair.

Joseph screamed. Screamed like a little girl. He writhed on the floor clutching his thigh. Blood seeped through his jeans.

Incensed, gun raised, she turned back to the room.

The whole scene had changed.

The rag lady was pointing a pistol—not one like Brandi’s, but a big long one—at Mossimo Fossera. The waitress held a shotgun. The
two customers were pointing guns at the younger Fosseras, who were carefully putting their pistols down on the floor. People—agents—were pouring into the restaurant from the back and from the front, and they were all carrying guns. Shotguns and . . . well . . . some kind of really long guns.

Roberto leaned against a table, shaking his hand as if it hurt and glaring at Dante, who was flat on the floor and holding his bloody nose.

Brandi was a smart girl, but it didn’t take brains to figure out that Roberto had never faced a threat here. He couldn’t be any safer in a monastery.

The agent who had been guarding the hotel, the one Tiffany had lured away, walked in. He looked at her in disgust. “You and your mother. Couple of smart-asses.”

By that she assumed Tiffany was fine.
Thank God.

Roberto looked up at her. He sagged with relief.

Then his expression changed. He frowned, and a fire lit his eyes.

Yeah, she would bet he was mad. She’d interfered and screwed up his whole heroic operation.

Too damned bad. Maybe he should have trusted her, like he kept saying she should trust him. “Bastard,” she said.

With the noise in the restaurant, he couldn’t have heard her, but he read her lips. He walked toward her.

“You double-crossed me!” Mossimo shouted, clutching the diamond to his chest. “You bastard son of an Italian whore! You double-crossed me!”

Roberto stopped. He turned back to Mossimo. In a move so clean Brandi never saw it happen, he knocked Mossimo’s feet out from underneath him. The whole restaurant shook as Mossimo landed flat on his back.

Roberto leaned over the wheezing bully. “The nice FBI agents are going to take you away now, Mossimo, and while you may not be happy to go to prison for two hundred years, I know one Fossera who will be glad to see you go.”

“Fico. That turncoat Fico,” Mossimo said.

“No,” Roberto said, “I was talking about your wife.”

The FBI agents laughed.

Brandi didn’t.

“That jewel you’re clutching? It’s cubic zirconium,” Roberto said. “The real Romanov Blaze left the country three days ago.”

Mossimo unwrapped the stone. He held it up to the lights. The facets glittered with glory, mocking him.

Mocking Brandi.

As hard as he could, Mossimo threw the fake diamond at Roberto.

Roberto caught it, and in a gesture that celebrated his triumph, tossed it in the air. It landed in his open palm, and with a grin he closed his fingers over it.

Celebration. Sure. If Brandi had pulled off a sting this complex, with the faked theft of a phony famous Russian diamond, the real theft of an authentic ruby, and the fall of an entire family of his grandfather’s enemies, she’d celebrate, too.

For the whole time she knew him, Roberto had been working for the FBI. Had been working to trap Mossimo Fossera and his men in the process of stealing and receiving the Romanov Blaze and put them away forever.

And like a cat in a fan belt, she got caught up in the plot.

All of this—the worry about her job, the unwanted socializing, Roberto’s swaggering, her angst about having unethical and totally great sex with a client, her fear he would die and this wild chase across Chicago at night armed with a pistol and the resolve to rescue Roberto from his own folly, her mother’s broken shoe—had been for nothing. For a sham.

The damned diamond she’d put her life in jeopardy to protect wasn’t even the real thing.

Tonight, when she had woken up and thought Roberto had broken his promise to her not to steal the Romanov Blaze, she had felt like a fool.

Now she knew the promise he’d made, the one that had made her heart trill—never to steal anything again, to live on the right side of the law
for her
—was as big a fake as the cubic zirconium he held.

Because, hell, how could he steal the diamond out of the Art Institute when it had been out of the country for three days?

Carefully, before she could give in to her desire to shoot Roberto right in the chest where his nonexistent heart should reside, she placed his pistol on a table. She turned toward the door.

From the floor, she heard Joseph shout, “For you, Mossimo!”

Off balance, she spun and saw him aim a pistol at her head.

Roberto hurled the cubic zirconium.

With a thump it hit Joseph right between the eyes. He fell backward, unconscious, a huge, bloody welt on his face.

One of the FBI agents scooped up the pistol.

She stared at Joseph’s prone body.

She was
so glad
she’d shot him.

Of course, he was only a substitute for the man she really wanted to shoot—Roberto.

Roberto, who again started toward her. He looked wary. He looked furious. He looked like a man who’d been hiding the truth from her almost since the moment she’d met him.

She held up her hand. In a clear, carrying voice, she said, “I’m going home now. I won’t be seeing you again. I’d wish you a good life, but actually I hope you step outside and get hit by a flaming meteorite. That would be fitting retribution for what you’ve done to me.”

Roberto continued to stride toward her.

She limped out the door.

A gust of wind hit Roberto in the face. It smelled of rain and felt almost warm.

The cold snap had broken.

Aiden grabbed Roberto by the arm.

Roberto turned on him, furious to be stopped.

“Let her go. She’s pissed off and you can’t blame her.” Aiden was
a stocky man with short, sandy hair and hazel eyes, and Roberto’s collaborator for the whole operation.

They’d known each other for years, and when Roberto had heard the rumor that Mossimo Fossera intended to steal the Romanov Blaze, he took it to Aiden. Aiden had had the authority to make the deal Roberto wanted, and Roberto had the expertise Aiden needed. They had been a good team—until now.

“She can’t walk around Chicago at two thirty in the morning looking for a cab,” Roberto said impatiently.

“One of my guys is taking her back to the hotel. No, wait.” Aiden put his hand to his earpiece. “She wants to go to Charles McGrath’s. She’ll be safe there. More than safe.”

“Safe from me.” Roberto knew Aiden was right. He was right, but Roberto hated it. She’d seen the whole operation go down, and right now she despised him. No explanation he made could change that. He had to rely on her own good sense to soften her feelings toward him.

Brandi was a rare, very rare woman—one who used logic on a daily basis. When she thought about it, she’d know he had had no choice but to lead her on. And she’d probably understand that he’d wanted her close as he went to those parties to be feted as an infamous jewel thief.

Hm.
Perhaps it would be best if he took her flowers when he went to explain.

Mossimo Fossera was on his feet, his hands cuffed behind him, the rag lady holding a gun to his back. “This is entrapment! I didn’t steal anything!”

“You accepted stolen goods,” the rag lady said. “The Patterson ruby and the Romanov diamond.”

“It wasn’t the Romanov diamond,” Mossimo screamed.

“Could have fooled me.” The rag lady smiled.

“I want my lawyer,” he brayed. “I want my lawyer!”

“Shut up!” Roberto told him.

So Mossimo changed to, “You’re dead to us. You betrayed us. None of the thieves will speak to you again. Traitor!”

“Yeah, Count Bartolini here is really worried about that,” the rag lady said.

“Count?” Mossimo laughed hoarsely. “He’s no count. Everyone thinks he’s so smart, so rich, so continental, but he’s a bastard. Everybody knows it! The bastard son of Sergio’s whore of a daughter.”

“Get him out of here,” Aiden said.

The rag lady and one of the customers shoved Mossimo out the back door.

“I hate that guy,” Aiden said.

“Yeah, but I got what I wanted from him,” Roberto said.

“Revenge for what he did to your grandfather?”

“That, too.” Roberto touched his pocket.

New agents entered with cameras and tape measures to document the crime scene.

Aiden kept a close eye on the proceedings. “Let me tell you, Roberto, when my man at the hotel realized he’d been suckered into following Miss Michaels’s mother to the police station, and my agents here realized the woman watching Mossimo was Brandi, no one knew what to do. They were screaming in my earpiece like I could do something when I was following you.”

“Couldn’t they have gotten her out of here?” At least then she wouldn’t have actually seen the sting.

“If we’d had another five minutes, but we didn’t. We planned for everything except
her.
”

“That makes two of us.” She’d worn the strangest expression when she looked at him. Angry, yes, he expected that. But pained, too, as if she’d been hit below the belt too many times and was bleeding internally. “I’ve got to go after her.”

“Not right now. There’s someone here you want to meet.” Aiden nodded toward a tall, gangly young man who’d come in with the agents.

He sat in the booth, observing Roberto with keen curiosity.

“Who is it?” Roberto asked.

“He’s the guy with the information you did all this for.”

The news shook Roberto to the core. “He knows who I am?”

“He knows it all.” Aiden shook his head. “The poor son of a bitch.”

“He’s here to tell me now?” Roberto glanced around. The fluorescent lights glared onto the upturned tables and shattered chairs. The agents worked, talked, and took pictures. Blood stained the floor. When he’d begun his quest, he’d never imagined it would end in Chicago in the Stuffed Dog at two thirty in the morning.

Aiden obviously saw nothing odd about the scene. “We made a deal, didn’t we? You did your part, and I thought you wanted to know as soon as possible.”

“I do.” Yet Roberto wasn’t ready. He didn’t know if he’d ever be ready to know the truth about the man who had really fathered him.

A Chicago patrolman stepped in the door. “What the hell is going on?”

Aiden shouted, “Hey, the restaurant is closed. This is an FBI crime scene!”

“The hell it is!” the patrolman bellowed.

Aiden walked over to fight with the indignant, pugnacious policeman.

He left Roberto to introduce himself.

The young man was about twenty-three, tall and broad-shouldered. His hair was as dark as Roberto’s; his eyes were dark and intelligent. He watched as Roberto walked toward the booth, scrutinizing Roberto as Roberto scrutinized him.

“I’m Roberto Bartolini.” Roberto extended his hand.

The young man shook it. He looked into Roberto’s face as if seeking something. In a voice tinged with the accent of an East Coast aristocrat, he said, “My name’s Carrick Manly. I’m your half brother.”