Ultimate Weapon (27 page)

It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know that she was a vengeful bitch. She’d made no effort to keep it a secret.

“I will take a shower, and we will get some dinner,” he said.

Right. Like it was a good idea for her peace of mind to have a romantic candlelit dinner with this man in San Vito, of all places. Pound the final nail into her coffin, why didn’t he.

“I’m not hungry,” she said. “You go on. I want to rest.”

“
Stronzate
.” His voice was curt. “You ate nothing at breakfast at the Huxley, nothing at the Portland airport, nothing on the plane but coffee and water, nothing at the Rome airport, nothing in the Autogrill. The last food that you ate were four bites of pasta at the wedding buffet. I counted them. You cannot continue to function like this. You are acting irresponsibly and unprofessionally. You will come with me, and get some fucking dinner.”

She bristled. “Do not order me.”

He sighed, and tilted his head to the side, as if praying for patience and inspiration. “Tamar.
Bellissima,
” he said wearily. “Please. Be reasonable. This is Italy. You need have no fear of the food here.”

“That’s not it,” she snapped.

He raised an eyebrow. “Ah. Fear of me, then?”

“Fuck, no!”

“Well, then? An eating disorder? A bid for control over your life? How sad. Let us discuss your feelings now, get to the bottom of this problem, so that you can eat before you collapse, no?”

She laughed at the thought in spite of herself. “Picture it. Thrashing through my emotional issues on the couch with Dr. Val. I can just imagine what you would prescribe as treatment.”

His eyes gleamed. The corners of his lips curled up. His penis lifted eagerly.

Tam rolled her eyes, and threw up her hands. “All right, fine,” she said. “Dinner. If it makes you happy.”

“It makes me ecstatic. Five minutes,” he said.

She yanked on her sweater, the jeans he’d bought for her at a boutique on the main drag of one of the little towns they’d passed through on the winding coastal highway of Amalfi. She slipped on the black suede half-boots from yesterday’s catalog adventure, her default earrings, the ones with the hypodermic and the soporific, and the multiblade ring, the one she had named for Liv Endicott, Sean’s wife.

It wasn’t much in terms of weaponry, but it was better than nothing. She decided not to bother with makeup. She didn’t have the energy to create illusions. Tonight was all about the truth. Being real.

Then she sat down facing the loggia that framed the sunset over the Mar Tirreno and put in a call on her cell phone to Connor and Erin.

Erin picked up. “Hello?”

Tam winced. Rachel was making noise—a lot of noise—in the background. “Hey, Erin, it’s me. We just arrived. How’s it going?”

Erin sounded resigned. “It’s going,” she said. “She’s a tough cookie, but she has to give in sometime.”

Hmmph. Tam had her doubts about that, knowing Rachel the way she did, but there was no point in saying so. Let Erin hope for the best. “Did she sleep? Or eat, at all?”

“No, and no. She’s on strike. Hold on, let me see if she’ll talk to you. She’s on a speech strike, too. Hey, sweetheart, calm down. You want to talk to Mamma?”

Rachel was startled into silence, and then gave a cry of heartbreaking rage and abandonment.

Aw, shit. Tam slumped, and put her face into her hands. She felt sorry for Rachel, for herself, and mostly for Erin and Con and Sveti, who had to be bug-eyed by now. No one knew better than Tam how stressful a wigged-out Rachel could be.

Erin came back on the line. “Looks like she’s not up for a chat.” She sounded exhausted. “We have had some good moments, though. She’s a sweet kid. But she misses you.”

“Erin, I’m sorry.” Tam felt helpless and guilty. She missed Rachel like crazy. It was hitting her hard.

“It’s not your fault. I understand, and we will all live.”

Conversation was impossible under the circumstances, so they signed off. Tam rested her face in her hands and wondered how long this depraved drama was going to take. And if Rachel could weather it.

She had to, she told herself. She had to.

Val touched her shoulder. She jumped. “Shit, you startled me!”

“
Perdonami
,” he murmured. “Bad news?”

She shrugged, feeling overwhelmed. “Rachel’s miserable,” she said bluntly. “So’s everyone around her. Big surprise.”

He was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

She got up, and turned her back to him. “And thrilled to be thousands of miles away from it, right?”

He wisely left her alone to think and got dressed. She did not watch him clothe his spectacular nakedness. The bathed, shaved, combed, scented, designer-clothing-draped, mind-blowing finished product was enough for her nerves to take. Naked, he blew her circuits.

He took her to a restaurant that he knew well, judging from the authoritative way that he led her through the steep, twisting streets, and from the deferential way that they were treated once they arrived. The place was small and out of the way, but quietly beautiful. The food and wine were superb, although Val regarded her choice of green salad, roasted vegetables and grilled fish with dark disapproval.

“Not enough,” he growled. He tried to load her up with some of his
tagliolini alla boscaiola
, and a slice of his enormous, bloody
tagliata di manzo
.

Nice try, she thought, staring at the snarl of oily, garlicky fresh pasta and the hot pink slab of tender meat he had dumped on her plate. He couldn’t make her eat it, though. He had better luck with the wine, making it his business to keep her glass very full.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I am hoping to relax you. Would it work?”

“No,” she informed him. “I never relax. And by the way. I might as well tell you right now so you can wrap your mind around the concept. There will be no more sex tonight. Zero sex. So forget it. OK? Don’t even give me that look. I don’t want to see it on your face.”

But he didn’t obey. That sexy, devastating smile showed no signs of fading. He sawed off a chunk of his
tagliata,
chewed it as he studied her thoughtfully from beneath those hooded eyes, and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “Ah. No?”

“No,” she repeated firmly, fending off the urge to repeat herself. Bleating like a fluffy lamb, losing credibility with each repetition.

He sipped his wine. “You seemed to like it,” he observed.

“Whether I liked it or not is beside the point. I’m exhausted. I can’t face another blitzkrieg. I want sleep. Peace, quiet, and privacy.”

“It does not have to be that way,” he remarked, his voice bland. “I can be gentle. I can be playful. I can do it any way you want it.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she blurted.

He gazed at her. “You’re afraid to find out what you really want?”

That suave, superior air irritated her. “Stop with the fucking psychoanalysis, Val. You’re a hit man. Not a shrink.”

“I am not a hit man,” he said mildly. “But all this talk of sex reminds me of something that I meant to ask you.”

She braced herself. “Ask,” she said.

“Why no contraception? I would have thought a woman like you would be prepared for anything.”

Her hackles rose. “A woman like me?” she repeated slowly. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

He waved his arm in that eloquent way that only Latin men could without seeming effeminate. “Professional, pragmatic. A risk taker.”

She dangled her wineglass between her fingers and considered the novel concept of telling him the flat, unbeautiful truth. She was too tired, too wired, too jet-lagged to sidestep the question.

“I’ve been celibate for years,” she said. “I had every intention of staying that way for the rest of my life. And as such, I didn’t see the point in loading my body up with useless artificial hormones.”

He looked discreetly shocked. “Really? You? What a waste. It is criminal, the very idea. Why, for the love of God?”

She was about to tell him to piss off and mind his own goddamn business. The words stopped somewhere along the pipeline and petered out into a long silence. “Did you know Kurt Novak?” she asked.

His mouth tightened in disgust. “Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “He was vile.”

“Yes, he was. And Georg?”

“No better,” he said. “Kurt’s slobbering lap dog.”

“Exactly. I should never have gotten mixed up with them, but I did. I was trying to get revenge for someone Kurt had killed. It blew up in my face.”

“I see,” he murmured.”

She was unable to meet his eyes. “Those two clinched it for me. I was done with men. I thought they were both dead that day that Kurt got killed. I wish I’d checked Georg more closely. I would have been happy to do the honors myself after what he…well. Whatever.”

“I’m sorry.” Val’s voice was careful and neutral. “It is terrible.”

She stared down at the blank white tablecloth and forced herself to endure silence. If he had oozed practiced sympathy, she’d have thrown it back in his face, but his plain, matter-of-fact comprehension was bearable. She breathed and bore it. For a minute or so. Then the intense, significant silence started driving her mad.

Time to break it and introduce an extreme change of subject.

“My turn to ask the invasive questions,” she said crisply. “So tell me, Val. How did you get to be the way you are? I’m dying of curiosity.”

He slanted her an amused look. “And how am I?”

“Slick, urbane, charming, well spoken,” she said. “The languages, the crazy mind control. Your background doesn’t explain any of that. You don’t fit the profile of a punch drunk mafiya thug at all.”

He twirled
tagliolini
around his fork, his eyes averted. “I was given intensive training from PSS,” he said finally. “They invested a fortune in me. But the important things…that was all Imre’s doing.”

She was the one this time to use the silence to refill his glass and prod him to continue. “Your friend? The one who…” She stopped, unwilling to invoke the monster and let him take over the conversation.

“Yes,” Val said. “The one that I want to save. He welcomed me into his home.
Che Cristo
, he must have had nerves of steel. An illiterate, violent, thieving, louse-ridden, twelve-year-old rent boy. He fed me, played me music, let me sleep in his apartment. I would never risk it myself.”

“He must be an unusual person,” she said.

“Yes.” A faraway smile flashed over his face. “He taught me to use my mind. And about the world outside. He taught me that I might have some value, other than just a…” He stopped, shook his head sharply. “Something besides picking pockets, selling cigarettes, dealing drugs. Or sucking cocks in the backseat of a car under a bridge.”

Tam was startled. That was the first glimpse of bitterness about the past that he had ever let her see, but that one glimpse hinted at a hidden ocean of it. “So he was the reason that you didn’t go under.”

“Yes.” He stared intently into the bulb of his wineglass as if it were a crystal ball. “He was my refuge. He was…” His face contracted. He looked away from her, Adam’s apple bobbing.

Tam dropped her gaze to give him privacy. She gazed at the wobbling candle flame and waited for him to break the silence himself.

“I was fortunate to have Imre.” His voice sounded halting and forced, as if he was convincing himself. “But for all his efforts, I drag it behind me, like a ten-ton anchor. If he dies, because of me…”

And me
, Tam thought, but she shoved the thought away. She could not carry Imre on her shoulders, too. She had enough burdens.

“I know what you mean about the anchor,” she said.

Val’s hand had been inches from hers on the snowy tablecloth, but it had drifted closer. The tip of his finger made contact with hers, the faintest touch possible, yet a shock ran through her. Without any conscious volition on her part, one finger after another made contact with his corresponding ones, lifting until they were palm to palm.

The delicate connection shimmered and glowed. Neither of them acknowledged it with word or glance. It was a tiny miracle that would hide its face in embarrassment if looked at too closely.

“And you?” His eyes met hers, full of somber challenge. “I could ask the same question of you, knowing what I know about your past. About Zetrinja. What made you the way you are?”

She laughed and echoed his own words back to him. “What am I? Besides being a monster pain in the ass, you mean?”

He ignored her teasing. “Brilliant, creative, rich, successful. And powerful. You didn’t go under, either.”

Not yet
, she thought bleakly, thinking of Novak, Georg, Stengl. She shoved the thoughts away and gave his question the consideration it deserved after his own naked honesty.

“I got my strength from what I had before,” she said. “My family. Not perfect but…wonderful. I knew I had value because they had thought so, even if they were all gone. So I clung to that. And I survived.”

They weren’t looking at each other at all, now. It was too much. But his fingers slid down between hers and closed, clasping hers. A rush of heat. Exquisite, understated intimacy.

“You are fortunate,” he said.

She realized that it was true. Amazingly. Everything was relative. She’d once had something precious. Something he had never known.

“As for the rest of it…” She shook her head. “It was random. I didn’t care about the scams I ran, the banks I robbed, the men I slept with. I didn’t care about getting rich. It just happened. It was like a video game. Robot Bitch, looking for a thrill. So I’m bored? Fine. Depose a dictator or steal twenty million euro, just for laughs. It gets old, though. I got really bored. I just…didn’t care.”

“What do you care about?” he asked.

She thought about it. “Rachel,” she said. “My friends. My freedom. My privacy. And my work. I care very much about my work.”

“The jewelry? A strange craft for you to choose.”

“Not really,” she replied. “My father was a metalsmith. I was his apprentice. He was an artist. He should have been a world-renowned designer for the talent he had, but he didn’t care about being famous. He just loved the craft. He didn’t even care about being paid. Which drove my mother crazy.” She smiled at the memory.