5
Lily feigned not to see the
smile he blazed at her before he went off about his business.
Razzle-dazzle. The man was dangerous, but for none of the reasons
she’d expected. She’d been through hell the last few weeks, but
who’d think it to look at her? Giggling. Simpering. Fluttering, for
God’s sake. She must be suffering from hormonally induced brain
damage to be acting this way. Hey, what’s mortal danger next to a
superlative piece of man meat, right?
Not that she could characterize Bruno
Ranieri as meat. Far from it. He was special. He blew her mind, or
what little was left of it, after the stress of the last six weeks.
And she’d thought writing papers for cheating students had been
stressful. Try life as a penniless fugitive.
Her first thought, during that dazed
subway ride to nowhere, had been to go to the police, but something
blocked her. A sense of looming danger, pervasive as a bad smell.
The bad guys had been following her, listening to her. They’d known
she was going to Nina’s for dinner. And Nina’s address. They’d
murdered Howard and covered it up so easily.
No. No police. She was on her own. She
scooped up more rice pudding, and her eyes dropped to the red scar
curved across her forearm. She adjusted her arm to hide the wound.
She probably should have worn long sleeves, but he didn’t have many
wardrobe options.
She was lucky she hadn’t gotten
tetanus. She’d bought gauze and disinfectant, and mopped up in a
Starbucks bathroom, keenly aware of how much emergency rooms cost
after all of Howard’s near suicides. It would cost hundreds of
bucks to get her cut stitched. Plus, anyone who could terrify Howie
into silence, murder him the same day he broke that silence, and
then put out an instant contract on her had the resources to watch
emergency rooms. And cop shops.
Besides, what could cops do? Give her
an armed guard? Send her to a safe house? Please. She was of no use
to anyone. She wasn’t poised to testify against a big mob boss.
She’d end up filling out a report, and then she’d go home alone,
and sit there, shivering. Waiting for the door to rattle, the
window to shatter. Until it did.
So she’d stopped at a bank, taken as
big a cash advance as her credit card would allow, bought a floppy
hat, sunglasses, an oversized jacket. Caught a night bus for Philly
at the Port Authority. She remembered the address of a women’s
shelter there, a relic from those nights when Nina used to rope her
into volunteering to man the hotline.
Her cut and bruises corroborated her
story about a jealous boyfriend attacking her with a knife. It got
her a place to sleep, an offer of crisis counseling. But she
couldn’t tell those people anything, either. No more than she could
call Nina. She’d put them in danger, too.
She’d run, as soon as she dared. She’d
been running ever since.
She ached to call Nina, tell her
friend she was safe. But she had to assume that they’d monitor
Nina’s snail mail, e-mail, landline, cell.
Besides. She wasn’t safe. So why lie?
Why say anything?
She didn’t even know where to begin.
She was so small and clueless, and her opponent so huge and
mysterious. But Howard had given her a starting place. He’d paid
for it with his life, too. So that cryptic clue had to mean
something to somebody.
Magda Ranieri and her death were
connected to this mess. God alone knew how. Or maybe, just maybe,
her son Bruno knew.
Bruno walked by, flashed another
mind-melting smile. She smiled back before she could stop herself.
Hard to get, she reminded
herself.
She’d done what research she could.
Magda Ranieri had been murdered in 1993, in Newark, New Jersey. Her
obit had stated that she was survived by her mother, Giuseppina
Ranieri, and her son, Bruno Ranieri. No further mention of her
murderer being found or prosecuted. No speculation as to why she’d
been killed. That was as much as Lily had been able to glean from
the library newspaper archives.
But Bruno might have a clue. He was
supposed to “lock it,” whatever “it” could conceivably be. So he
must know what “it” was. And by association, who “they” were. What
“they” wanted. Right?
Her search ended here, in Tony’s
Diner, where she ran up against a wall with a splat. Because asking
Bruno if he had a clue was not a simple matter. In fact, it was
flat out unthinkable. She pictured it.
Nice to
meet you, Bruno! I’ve been stalking you for a while now. Someone is
trying to kill me, and I think this is somehow related to the most
traumatic event of your entire childhood, so would you please tell
all the details of your mother’s brutal murder to a complete
stranger?
Right. Talk about a conversation
stopper.
She’d considered just telling the
truth, begging for his help, but she couldn’t risk a flat it.” Or
worse, a get the hell away from me, or
I’ll get a restraining order. Which was what she
herself would have said, in her former life, if someone approached
her with a request like that.
She had no other leads. She had to be
sneaky, get close to him, gain his trust. That was the plan. But
the perfectly defined shape of the guy’s ass wiped her hard drive
clean like a powerful magnet. This lust attack was so unlike her
usual modality with the male sex, which was mostly fear and
loathing. The men she’d hooked up with so far had been good for one
thing only, and even that only on alternate bank holidays that
happened to coincide with a blue moon.
She forked up another banana cream
oral orgasm. She’d eaten more than half of both desserts. One would
think running for one’s life would be a real slimmer-downer, but
no, disillusioned again. On the run meant convenience stores, bus
stations, hot dogs, Mickey Dee’s, pizza slices. It meant zero
access to a decent kitchen, a stocked refrigerator, or any sort of
vegetable. It meant all carbs, all the time. It meant desperate
sugar compensation for loneliness and fear.
And here she was, compounding her sins
with two desserts. The wretched man had not done his part in saving
her from her own greed.
Bruno hadn’t been hard to find. His
business had a big, fancy interactive Web site. He was smeared all
over Facebook and other social media. For God’s sake, there was a
magazine cover with his gorgeous, grinning face on it, framed and
hanging right there in the diner. She’d read the article from the
Portland Monthly probably
a dozen times. It was one of the first hits she’d made on the
Internet when she’d begun to research him. It was all out there on
a silver platter, for anyone who wanted to know about
him.
All except for the info that she
needed. The monsters in his closet.
In any case, she was following him now
for all the wrong reasons. Which was to say, just to get a better
look. To see if it was a trick of the light, or if he really was
that criminally hot. To check out that perfect build. Not swollen
gym-rat bulk, which she abhorred, but sinewy, trim perfection.
Pantherish power in his long legs, his defined thighs. The jut of
his butt made her want to just sink her nails into his ass and
palpate the wedges of muscle in his back with a feral squeal of
delight.
Three nights ago, she’d risked The
First Approach. She’d steeled herself for the close-up reality. Bad
breath, enlarged pores, body odor, anything. She almost hoped for a
fatal flaw, just to break the spell.
Nope. No flaws. The guy was perfect.
She’d had to grit her teeth and look away when he took her order,
and remind herself to breathe.
Information flooded in even while
ignoring him. That big barrel chest. His black hair, buzzed very
close, would be curly if he allowed it to be, but he was having
none of that. His heavy-lidded Italian eyes were the velvet brown
of rum truffles dusted in fine cocoa. His biceps distended the
sleeves of a crisp white T-shirt. The sweeping pattern of body hair
against sinewy golden forearms, the pattern of veins, tendons, the
shape of his hands, it practically hypnotized her. And his smell. A
knee-weakening blend of tapioca, coffee beans, and dish
soap.
Fortunately, being speechless was part
of the plan. She’d given a lot of thought to his handling, once
she’d gotten a grip on his strange schedule, which did not include
sleep. Fortunately, her schedule didn’t include sleep, either.
She’d broken it down. Fact: Any guy that fine-looking had to think
he was God’s gift. Therefore, frigid indifference was the way to
go. It was guaranteed to pique his ego, spark his
curiosity.
Of course, the corollary to this was
that she herself had to be a stunning sex goddess. Yow. A tall
order, on her budget. Beauty and glamour were expensive,
financially and emotionally. A constant I’m-so-smokin’-hot vibe
took a lot of vital energy to project and maintain.
But she was highly motivated. She
really wanted to live.
She had lots of practice at frigid
indifference, but tonight she was bombing on it, big-time. She
couldn’t stop peeking at the sexy beard shadow that accented the
angle of his jaw. Those jutting cheekbones, the creases of twin
dimples. The throbbing force field of his sexual energy, bumping up
against her personal space.
This crush was just a distraction her
mind had grappled onto so that she didn’t have to think about how
lonely she was, how scared. So she wouldn’t have one of her stress
freak-outs, or start to obsess about Howard and his shard of glass.
It was much less painful to obsess about Ranieri’s luscious bod
instead, and mull over The Approach.
Her problem was, once she’d hooked his
attention, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Aside from the
screamingly obvious.
She tried to breathe. She needed to
get close to him. There was a tried and true way. Though sex did
not necessarily mean closeness.
Ranieri was neither married nor
engaged. Slut or no slut, there she drew the line. She supposed she
could try to strike up a friendship, but how the hell was that even
done? Like she had time to join his health club, chat him up at the
juice bar, run into him at the bookstore. That kind of thing was so
vague, so random. It could take years.
She didn’t have years. She was going
insane, treading water. Cocktail waitressing under the table,
crashing at a squalid downtown youth hostel. Carrying her netbook
everywhere because she had no safe place to leave it. Always
looking over her shoulder for the guys in the SUV. Because
eventually, they’d find her, and shove her into the back of their
car, and skewer her. It was just a matter of time.
She had to find out what Bruno Ranieri
knew, now. Ergo, they had to become best buddies, fast. Seducing a
guy was a simple, step-by-step process that she could wrap her
imagination around.
She would sacrifice her, well, call it
virtue, for lack of a better word, in exchange for her life. She’d
do penance later. If she had a later.
Then she saw his dimples, his ass, his
eyes. Smelled his scent. She’d had that provocative, intimate
conversation that she had actually started to enjoy. And suddenly,
she couldn’t remember what she was trying to accomplish anymore.
Her agenda just flopped on its head.
She watched Bruno pour coffee for a
guy hunched at the bar, and scraped up the last of her rice
pudding. Wow. She was officially taking this to the next level,
after a fifteen-minute conversation. She had to keep it light,
playful, but how? Her hands shook. No, correction. Her whole body
shook. He was going to notice that. It was hard to
miss.
For God’s sake. The man was not scary.
In fact, he seemed really sweet. Who’d have thought that Dudley
Do-Right vibe could be so arousing? Her champion, indeed. And he
made a wicked banana cream pie, too. What a honey bear. A kissable,
squeezable, positively lickable—
Cool
it. She pressed her hand to her mouth, until her
teeth bruised the inside of her lip. She could wait, of course. But
for what? To get pissed off at him, and then alienate him with her
hostility? This being as inevitable as springtime, death or taxes.
Considering her track record with men.
Bruno glanced over. His dimples
deepened the grooves bracketing his mouth. Something expanded in
her chest, hot and breathless.
Worse yet, she could fall in love with
the guy. God help her.
He pointed at the clock, held up five
fingers. She clenched her thighs. Realized, to her dismay, that she
was already wet. Her brain buzzed around in tight, frantic little
circles. And the rest of her ignored her brain utterly and just
kept staring at Bruno Ranieri. Salivating.
Wanting him for his own sake. Wanting
to feel the way he made her feel. So alive. Burning with life
force. Fierce, vital, hungry. Hopeful.
No rule
says you have to fuck the guy, a dry voice in her
mind said. At least not until you know
him better. He offered to help you. Protect you, even. How sweet.
You have options.
Shut
up, she told the voice. She didn’t want to think
about her options right now. Her brain wasn’t functioning
anyway.
She might as well use the parts of her
that were still operational.
The elegant young man dressed in a
crisp white dress shirt and figure-hugging black trousers took away
the cheese and fruit plate without making a sound. He presented new
wine goblets, poured a new wine.
Neil King spared him an appraising
glance, pegging him in time and vintage. Had the briefest of blank
moments before retrieving the boy’s name from his memory banks.
Julian. Yes, that was it. Seventeen or so. Coming along nicely, if
he was trusted to serve King a late supper.
Julian was one of King’s special
series trainees. His gaze lingered on the boy’s height, the line of
his jaw, his dimples. Handsome. And admirably self-possessed. Often
the young, inexperienced ones got nervous and clumsy in King’s
presence. He found it annoying.
Today, he was in a benevolent mood and
giving his full attention to Zoe, the young woman across the table.
She’d earned it for her smooth handling of the Howard Parr affair.
Or her part of it, anyway. It was not her fault the rest of it had
gone so unexpectedly sour.
Zoe was one of his oldest operatives,
from his first crop. In fact, she was the only one left alive of
her pod. The cull rate had been much higher in the old days. It was
impossible to pinpoint her exact age, since she had been scooped
out of the slums of Rio de Janeiro as a toddler, in contrast to his
younger trainees, who had begun their training in utero. Zoe had no
last name, no birth certificate. Despite the deprivations of her
early childhood, she’d shaped up beautifully. And like all his
operatives, she was invisible, ready to assume any identity
convenient to him. She was his, body and soul.
He’d kept Zoe waiting for this debrief
dinner for almost four hours, primped and ready. It had been a busy
day, and it was well past midnight, but when he finally walked into
his private dining room, she’d leaped up in barely controlled
delight.
Ah, yes. Control had always been Zoe’s
issue. Even so, he was cautiously pleased with her. Babysitting
Howard had not been an easy assignment, requiring specialized
training and years of tedious undercover work at Aingle Cliffs. But
things had ended well. When Lily Parr institutionalized her father,
he’d been very tempted to have Howard put down then and there. But
something held him back. He hated to go back on a decision. And
Howard was truly cowed. And a hit should always be matter of last
resort. King wasn’t a ham-fisted Mafia thug, even if he was
compelled to do business with them. He conducted his affairs with
more delicacy than that. The extra cost was worth it.
Howard had been committed shortly
after Zoe had almost bungled one of her assignments. She’d been in
disgrace and in need of a long, teeth-grinding purgatory. What
better than babysitting Howard? It was static, boring, possibly
endless. Just the thing to teach Zoe a lesson in control while she
put in the hours of hard reprogramming time.
His scheme had paid off. He had
salvaged a multimillion dollar investment. Zoe had been patient,
vigilant. She had executed her orders flawlessly, with only a few
minutes’ lead time. No one at Aingle Cliffs suspected foul play.
He’d analyzed the issue of the word-rec bot and had judged that the
technical delay had not been altogether Zoe’s fault. Equipment
failure. It was impossible to anticipate everything.
He studied her with pleasure as she
chattered blithely on. She was giving him too much detail, but he
was not inclined to be harsh. He lifted his eyes from contemplation
of her décolleté—bony, but the lush swell of bosom was appealing,
surgically enhanced though it probably was; he didn’t remember from
her file. And her gold skin tone and lush lips were lovely. He
lifted his gaze to her animated face.
“. . . thing that I was concerned
about was my physiological responses, right after the job,” she
confided earnestly. “I tried, but I couldn’t control my heart rate
or my body temperature, and I started to sweat. It didn’t affect my
performance, but still . . . I’ve been doing the Group XIII
Advanced KAM Biofeedback course again, both the A and B sections,
but I wondered if you had any other suggestions for—”
“I’ll tailor a new program for you
personally,” he said.
She flushed with delight. “Oh,” she
breathed. “I . . . I wasn’t thinking that you should . . . I
just—”
“I would be pleased,” he told her. “I
would consider it an investment well worth the time and
thought.”
“Oh, thank you!” she gushed. “It’s the
one thing I feel uneasy about, and I was hoping to find a permanent
solution. In a way, the excess emotion came in handy, when it came
time to discover the body. I needed to have a huge emotional
reaction, so I channeled it all there.”
She was over-congratulating herself,
but he would let it pass. “Of course,” he said. “Well, my dear.
There you go. Balance is key, and positive attitude as well. You
took what you thought was a weakness and turned it into a strength.
Brava.”
His phone made a discreet burble at
that moment, while Zoe carried charmingly on about how she didn’t
want to waste his valuable time. The ring tone was muted, chosen
not to be intrusive or irritating, but when he looked at the name
on the display, he was irritated. Reggie. From his first
special-series pod. He was so angry with Reggie. He gave Zoe a
dismissive gesture that shut up her babble. “Yes?” he said into the
phone.
“We’ve located Lily Parr.” Reggie’s
voice was flat, but there was an underlying tension that hinted at
relief. As if he thought by redressing his mistake, he’d be off the
hook. How innocent of him.
“Really,” King said.
“Where?”
“Tony Ranieri’s diner, in
Portland.”
“Ah.” King made his voice crystal
sharp. “So they have already made contact. You were not able to
prevent that from happening.”
“No,” Reggie admitted. “They’re
together now. Inside.”
King made the adjustment for the time
difference. It was early morning in Oregon. “And are you
therephysically?”
“No,” Reggie said, after an
infinitesimal pause. “I’m driving from Seattle. But I’m close. I’ve
sent people. Tom, Cal, Martin, and Nadia.”
Oh, God. King stifled a groan. Cal,
Reggie, and Nadia were all special series. He would not have chosen
to bunch those three on this particular assignment, but it was too
late. There were no other operatives close enough to replace them.
“How did you find her?”
“It was a word-recognition app we
rigged at Ranieri’s diner. We got the signal about a half an hour
ago. She was talking with Ranieri there, and some key words popped
up. The bot caught them, and, ah . . .”
“A bot? A word-recognition app? You’ve
been conducting a passive
surveillance on Bruno Ranieri? With Lily Parr on the
loose?”
Reggie struggled to reply. “I, ah . .
. I had people following him for four weeks straight,” he
explained. “Then we decided to shift the focus of our search, so I
redistributed manpower, and we—”
“Do you have a visual?” His voice
chopped off the puling excuses.
“I will in a few minutes. I have
people arriving in less than—”
“Is his car under
surveillance?”
“Of course. Car, condo, diner, his
business, everywhere,” Reggie assured him. “Everything he says has
been snarfed and sifted. He hasn’t tripped the word-rec bots once
since we rigged them. Until now.”
“Don’t trust those apps so blindly,
Reggie,” King lectured. “They’re no substitution for human
intelligence. Though you yourself might give that theory a run for
its money.”
He paused, waited for Reggie to come
up with a reply.
Reggie coughed, hemmed and hawed
miserably, until King’s patience came to an abrupt end. He did not
want to kill Bruno Ranieri. Yet. Not while there was still a chance
to eliminate the danger of exposure that sneaky bitch Magda had
threatened him with, years ago.
He loathed loose ends. Lily and Bruno
could solve the puzzle Magda had set, tie those ends off for him,
close that issue definitively.
But those two could not be out there
loose, in circulation. Not now that they’d made contact. “Take
them, and bring them to me,” he said. “Do not injure them. And
don’t make any more mistakes.”
“Sir, we’ve done all we could since
she vanished, and we—”
“We? What’s this ‘we’? You were in
charge, Reginald. You were team leader. Take responsibility. Say
‘I.’ It’s what you would have done if things had gone as they
goddamn well should have. Am I right?”
“But we . . . ah, but I—”
“One girl, alone,” King mused. “No
weapons but a can of Mace. And she evaded two of my agents, with
their incredible training, their bottomless budget, their limitless
resources. For forty-two days. Do not expect a pat on the back for
fixing this. Be grateful to stay alive.”
King closed the connection,
remembering Zoe’s presence. Her eyes were speculative over the rim
of her wineglass.
“So they found her,” she said softly.
“At last.”
“At last,” he said. “In Portland, at
Ranieri’s diner. Unbelievable incompetence. After decades of
intensive training. So disappointing.”
Zoe preened, perceiving the criticism
of her peers, by reverse association, as a compliment to her. He
decided to encourage the impression. Ias a delicate balancing act,
the application of carrot and stick. His elite cadre of operatives
were spectacular specimens, but they required deft handling. Zoe
had been a good girl. This time.
“I told them that Lily Parr was
unusual,” Zoe mused. “She struck me as extremely capable. Perhaps I
didn’t state it strongly enough. It was in the file. I made a
report after every one of her visits.”
“I should have sent you after her,” he
said. “Not those idiots.”
Zoe’s bare shoulders twitched in a
modest shrug. “Reggie isn’t an idiot,” she murmured. “And I could
only be in one place at one time.”
“Pity,” he said. “Your performance was
truly exceptional.”
Her face glowed. He became aware of a
pleasant tingling sensation. He hadn’t been consciously planning
sexual indulgence in this debriefing session—in fact, he very
rarely indulged, being naturally ascetic. But Zoe deserved a treat.
He could exert himself for her.
He took pains not to consider his
agents as sexual objects. It seemed extravagant to utilize an
instrument in which he had invested tens of millions, decades of
his life, for what amounted to a plumbing task that could be
performed by a call girl for a few hundred dollars.
But Zoe’s eyes were dilated. Her bosom
heaved. She had emotional and physiological control issues, his
critical diagnostic eye could not help but note. But now wasn’t the
time to scold her for them.
Zoe was as skilled as any courtesan,
and he’d worked all his life to inculcate her fervid desire to
please him. No call girl could provide that, no matter what she was
paid. Since toddlerhood Zoe had been immersed in Deep Weave
programming, a virtual world that was a product of his own
psychological and pharmacological genius. Designed to augment and
develop certain characteristics, and suppress others. Entirely free
of any inconvenient ethical or moral oversight.
His experiments hadn’t always worked
out, but they had worked often enough for the project as a whole to
be considered a resounding success. He had a winning recipe, now.
After much trial and error.
Zoe’s lashes fluttered. “May I ask a
question?”
He chuckled. “I may not answer, but
you can always ask.”
“Why did you wait so long, sir?” she
asked, eyes wide. “To finish Howard and the girl, and Bruno
Ranieri?”
The question was not an unreasonable
one, since Zoe might well end up replacing Reginald as team leader,
tonight’s results pending.
But she was not yet entitled to the
whole truth. He lifted his glass, smiling. “Let us talk about you,
my dear.”
She flushed in embarrassment at her
overstep. “Yes, of course. Please excuse me. I just wanted to be up
to date, so that I’ll be—”
“Ready to serve?” he supplied silkily.
“Oh, but I have no doubt that you will be, my dear.”
His throaty tone made her brown eyes
dilate to pools of black.
Julian served their panna cotta, set
out tiny cups of espresso.
“You may go,” Neil told
him.
Julian vanished. Zoe stirred a
spoonful of sugar into her coffee. He listened to the sputter of
the candles while Zoe’s heavy lashes swept low over her flushed
cheeks, fluttering, shadowing the perfect curve.
“Shall I, ah, lock the door?” She
sounded hesitant, girlish.
The glow upped to a throb. “No one
here is stupid enough to open that door. And if they are, their
death will be no great loss to us.”
She giggled and rose to her feet,
stumbling. Performance anxiety. She peeked, to see if he’d caught
it. He smiled, letting her know that, of course, he had. But it was
all right. No one was perfect. And with his help, she’d come closer
to perfection than any other human creature.
But there was always room for
improvement. Effort. Striving.
Her breath sped up. Her excitement was
very real. He was an attractive man, youthful for his late fifties.
Trim, fit, and strong. Aware of how attractive the mantle of
immense wealth and power he wore was to women. Men, too, of course,
but he’d never been so inclined, aside from some insignificant
adventures involving drugs and group sex, back in his wild youth.
The idea of using drugs in such a haphazard way now filled him with
disgust. Drugs were an instrument of such power, such precision.
Not to be flailed around like berserker idiots with a battle
ax.
She took an unsteady step in his
direction.
“The dress,” he said.
She glanced down, artful locks of hair
dangling around her face as she reached to struggle with her
zipper. Bosom straining. The dress dropped, slowed by the lush
curve of her hips, then fell around her ankles. She was naked
beneath it, clad only in stiletto-heeled sandals and diamond drop
earrings. The earrings were a gift given to all his female agents
upon the occasion of their first outside assignment. The girls all
treasured their earrings. Her breasts were full, high, and perfect.
Her pubis was trimmed to a delicate swatch, as carefully shaped as
an eyebrow. Her musculature was almost overly defined. Lean,
taut.
King scooped the plates with their
uneaten dessert carelessly to one side with his arm. “Put your foot
up on the table,” he demanded.
Zoe did so. He studied the elegant
foot, nude in the scarlet peep toe. Her nails were lacquered a
savage scarlet that matched her parted lips. Her eyes were heavy
lidded, breasts heaving. She teetered on the single stiletto heel.
The table wobbled, wineglasses trembling.
He did not steady her. She had to
learn control.
“Do you want me to say it?” he
crooned.
Her eyelids fluttered wildly. She
sucked in a gasping breath. “Y-y-yes,” she quavered.
“P-p-please.”
She shuddered, leg quivering as he
slid his hand up the inside of her thigh, teasing his finger along
the tender seam of her vulva. She was hot, damp, slick. He parted
her naked, hairless labia, and thrust his fingers sharply into her
slippery depths.
A sound came out of her that did not
please him. Too strident. Zoe was an instrument that needed
constant calibration. Perhaps he could make a tiny adjustment on
her maintenance meds to make her more steady, more consistent. But
he didn’t want to dull her edge.
He would have to give the matter some
thought.
Penetration was not strictly necessary
to give her what she needed. His voice alone would suffice. In
fact, he could perform this service for her over the phone, from
another continent. He often gave remote rewards to his agents in
the field, both male and female.
But not tonight. Tonight, he wanted to
feel wet heat. Rippling contractions clutching his fingers as he
exercised his power over her.
“Now?” he prompted.
Tears streaked with mascara streamed
down her face. She could barely gasp out the word.
“P-p-please.”
He smiled, stroking her clitoris with his
thumb, and recited one of the phrases that had been assigned to
her. A verse of ancient Aramaic, from the Old Testament. His
current criteria was that the code be in a dead language from a
text at least eight hundred years old.
With each line, her tension tightened.
She shook so violently, he was sure she would fall, or at least
knock over the table. But she held together, stayed on her feet. On
the final line, the wave crested. She threw her head back,
shrieking as the climax wrenched through her.
Zoe swayed, staying upright by some
miracle. She was flushed, damp with sweat. She sobbed silently. “I
can’t help it,” she quavered.
He withdrew his hand from her body and
wiped it with the snow white linen dinner napkin. “You’ll learn,”
he assured her.
He considered what to do with her
next, stroking his penis. He was erect, but it had been a long day.
Intercourse was so strenuous.
Fellatio was a pleasant alternative.
He tugged her until she sank to her knees. Buried his hands in her
hair as she worked on the opening of his trousers. He’d just
settled back into the experience and was admiring the inspiring
spectacle of Zoe’s full lips fastened around his penis when a knock
sounded on the door. They froze, astonished.
Zoe’s eyes went wide at this
unheard-of presumption.
“Who is it?” he snarled.
“Sir, it’s Julian.” The boy’s voice
was tight with apology. “Please excuse me, sir, but Michael Ranieri
is here to see you.”
Oh, for God’s sake. A hiss of
annoyance escaped from between his teeth. He gestured for Zoe to
get up, and tucked himself back into his trousers with a peevish
glance at the clock. One twentyseven A.M., what an ungodly time to show up. But
Michael Ranieri was the one person on earth who could demand to be
seen by King. Let alone at this hour.
Dealing with this thick-headed goon
grew ever more intolerable. It bothered him that Michael Ranieri
fancied himself King’s equal.
Their fortunes had been linked since
they’d met in college. Neil King’s brilliance at cooking up
recreational drugs and Michael Ranieri’s huge appetite for them had
guaranteed a long and profitable association. King bankrolled his
graduate studies with the business that Michael provided, and with
King’s help, Michael Ranieri had slowly transformed his family’s
traditional mafioso prostitution and extortion rackets, and evolved
the family business into something new. Michael was now acting head
of the Ranieri family, marketing much-sought-after, limited-edition
designer drugs that King created exclusively for him.
The net of avid users was ever
expanding. As were the profits.
Even so, King always knew that he was
destined for more than fueling the ego fantasies of the very rich.
His dream was not merely to synthesize drugs that make people feel
perfect. No, that fell far short.
He wanted to synthesize true
perfection. In a human being. To actually improve on the normal
human blueprint, with all its inherent flaws. A human was a
haphazard rough draft. It needed molding. Careful, mindful
sculpting, with an eye toward towering profit.
His project had grown and flowered
into something extraordinary over the years. Zoe was a shining
example. Arousal made her literally glow in the dark. His body
hummed with frustrated sexual desire.
His operatives now made more money out
in the field than Michael Ranieri ever dreamed of, discreetly
shaping the history of the world while earning billions in fees.
And every last cent belonged to King.
But this was none of Michael’s
business. The man knew of King’s private creative project, in a
vague way, but wasn’t bright enough to grasp the true scope of
King’s work. So why burden him with it?
Zoe was pulling her dress back on. He
held up his hand. “No, my dear. Stay exactly as you
are.”
The dress dropped. She straightened,
ribcage tilted to show off her breasts to the best advantage as
Julian pushed open the doors. He took note of Zoe’s nudity and gave
them a look that implored forgiveness before stepping aside to
admit Michael Ranieri.
Michael was tall, stocky, in his
fifties, like King, and blessed with the swarthy good looks that
graced most of the Ranieri clan. He opened his mouth to complain.
It froze open when he saw Zoe. Whatever he had been meaning to
complain about evaporated from his mind.
King’s mouth twitched. Michael was so
predictable.
The man cleared his throat. “Ah . . .
did I interrupt anything?”
Such a stupid, annoying question. King
gave him a friendly smile. “Oh, nothing that won’t keep and be
perfectly enjoyable later. To what do I owe the pleasure of this
visit, Michael? And at this unusual hour?”
“Can I speak in front of . . . ?” He
pointed at Zoe.
“I trust Zoe absolutely,” King said.
Zoe’s eyes shone with delight.
Michael flapped his hand. “I was at my
father’s eightieth birthday party,” he said fretfully. “I couldn’t
get away until late. They’ve been busting my balls the whole past
month. Ever since we heard about Parr killing himself in the
nuthouse.”
King’s mouth tightened. “So sad, isn’t
it?”
“Hah.” Michael snorted. “The only
reason Howard Parr would die, and his daughter go missing, is
because he talked. So did he talk?”
Every now and then, Michael showed a
brief flash of inconvenient intelligence. “I’m taking care of it,
Michael,” King said.
“Oh, fuck,” Michael snarled. “So he
did talk. So, this Parr girl, what was her name, Lily? Is she dead?
Tell me she’s dead, Neil.”
“I said, I’m taking care of
it.”
Michael threw his hands in the air.
“That’s just great. So she’s on the loose, looking for Bruno
Ranieri? You do remember that you can’t touch Bruno. You know what
would happen to us if you did, right?”
King sighed. “I’m not planning on
killing them,” he lied smoothly.
“So it’s true, then? You were the one
who did Howard?”
King gestured at Zoe, giving credit
where it was due. “She did.”
Zoe preened, displaying her perfect
naked self with a queenly nonchalance that made Michael Ranieri tug
at his collar.
King caught Zoe’s eye, made a twirling
gesture with his fingertip. Zoe gave him a smoky smile and spun on
the balls of her feet. She did a three-sixty, and another half
turn, placing her hands against the wall. Arching her back, legs
parted. Oh, that naughty, slutty, clever girl.
Michael jerked his hypnotized regard
away from Zoe’s ass and shook himself like a wet dog. “So. About
Bruno. You remember—”
“The famous letter, yes. More than a
year has passed since Tony Ranieri was killed. They haven’t sent it
yet. Why are you so nervous?”
“BLily Parr is on the loose!” Michael
yelled. “And if Howard spilled the beans to her, and she tells
Bruno, then you’re going to want to make a move, right? But if you
do, we take it up the ass, Neil! Rosa Ranieri is a jealous bitch
who’ll fuck us just for spite!”
“Italian families,” King said softly.
“So colorful. Cousinly love.”
“Second cousins.” Michael stressed the
distinction. “They’re only second cousins. And they’re poison. I
was the one that opened Tony’s package twenty years ago, Neil,
remember? With the severed fingers?”
King made his voice soothing,
reasonable. “Michael, please. Think about it. Will anyone really
care about that letter, after all these years?”
“Fuck, yes, they’ll care! Didn’t you
hear about Sonny Franzese? He was put away at fucking ninety-three!
I do not want my father to go to prison, Neil! He’s eighty years
old! And he’s not well!”
It was clear from Michael’s
wine-flushed face that he was under the impression that this was
all somehow King’s problem. But now was perhaps not exactly the
moment to make this clear. Perhaps Zoe could deliver the message
some dark night. With a long knife.
And in the meantime, Zoe could also
provide some badly needed distraction. “Zoe, my dove,” he said.
“Pour Michael a glass of wine.”
Zoe obliged. Michael stared at her
breasts, his face going hot and lumpish with lust. “Is she one of
your, uh . . .” He trailed off, took the wine, his limited
vocabulary failing him. “Will she, uh—”
“Do anything I ask?” King finished
softly. “Yes, Michael. She will.”
Michael gulped wine, staring. His
erection was painfully evident.
King sighed, yielding to the
inevitable. After all, Zoe was not made of soap. And at least this
way, Michael could do the requisite grunting and sweating. King
needed only to lean back and do the honors, reciting Zoe’s reward
codes. “Would you care to partake?” he offered
politely.
Michael’s eyes flashed. “Don’t mind if
I do. Is there a room—”
“Right here. I need to be close to
her, so I can use her codes.”
“Codes? What the fuck? You mean, do
her right in front of you?” Michael shook his head. “That’s sick,
Neil. We’re not eighteen anymore.”
“The code gives her orgasms more
powerful than anything you’ve ever felt,” King coaxed. “Quite a
sensation, for the man on the inside.”
Michael’s face reddened. “It’s just
too fucking kinky weird for me.”
For Zoe’s sake, King pulled out the
book that held his sex drugs and selected a performance enhancer
from the pages of transdermal dots. He stuck the dot on the inside
of his business partner’s wrist.
“Uh?” Michael stared at the green dot,
suspicious. “What’s this?”
“A token of my esteem.” King gestured
at Zoe. “Feel free.”
Zoe turned, bracing herself against
the table and arching her perfect buttocks invitingly. Michael
unfastened his pants, whipped out his stiff member. He took the
plunge, with a piglike snort of satisfaction.
King sat down across from Zoe, gave
her hand an encouraging pat, and recited another of her reward
verses. She was squealing with pleasure in less than twenty
seconds, shuddering with waves of delight as Michael pumped away
heavily behind her, huffing and grunting.
Unpleasantly noisy, but King
steehatimself and soldiered on.