Page 11 of Fastest Kill

"That was the original plan, yes." Dario glanced across at Frederica. "Actually, she was meant to come and ask you for them. I was just her taxi."

"You want information about Lucius Foscari? I thought you might come knocking after you asked me about that opal ring." He looked at Dario steadily. "I have decades of records. Everything he acquired, everything he rejected, everything he told me about what he was looking for and what he said he was trying to keep out of the wrong hands."

"And what will it cost me to get them?" Dario asked, knowing where this conversation was headed. They were all mercenaries at heart.

Tore leaned back in his chair. "You stay in the guest room until you've been through them. They aren't allowed to leave this house. This isn't one afternoon's work, and I won't send you off with half the picture."

From the counter, Despina said, without turning around, "I've already made up the bed in the spare room for you."

Frederica's expression soured, then went blank, as if she knew there was no point in arguing with her parents.

Dario kept his own face very carefully neutral. "I don't want to put anyone out."

"You brought my baby home," Tore said simply. "The least I can do is give you a room to sleep in, and Rhodes hotels are too expensive this time of year."

"Baba," Frederica said. If she had used that tone on Dario, he would have been looking for a weapon or an exit.

Tore blinked at her with an innocent expression. He was aware of exactly how pissed his daughter was and didn't care. "What, my darling?"

Dario looked between them as they stared each other down to see who would break first.

"The guest room is at the end of the hall. Tore will show you. You can sleep, and tonight, maybe we can talk business. Yes?" Despina said from the sink.

"Yes, ah… Thank you. That would be great," Dario replied quickly, because as much as Frederica unnerved him, he was more afraid of upsetting her mother.

Frederica pushed her chair back and stood. She said something in Greek, directed at her mother, at a volume suggesting she had stopped caring whether Dario understood. Despina responded with a single word that clearly functioned as a full stop. Frederica took her water glass and went back upstairs. The door at the top of the stairs closed with a slam.

"Let me show you the guest room," Tore said, getting to his feet with a smile.

Dario followed him out of the kitchen. The hallway was narrow, bright with morning light, and covered in photographs. He stopped walking without meaning to.

The Colleoni villa had photographs too. Commissioned portraits, mostly. Gabriella was at the center of every frame, her boys arranged around her with the stiff, careful posture of people who had been told where to stand. The photographs in the Venice house were more relaxed, but nothing like these.

The first one to stop Dario was a baby, perhaps eighteen months old, sitting on a tiled floor, holding a diamond necklace. She was studying it with a deep, focused interest. Tore stood behind her, grinning with complete, uncomplicated joy, and saw nothing unusual about a baby playing with a necklace of diamonds the size of her little baby fists.

"She kept pointing at the wall where I was keeping it for a client," Tore said, from just ahead. He had stopped too, looking back at the photograph with an expression so warm, it was almost uncomfortable to witness. "Every visit to that room. Point, point, point. So I let her hold it."

"And you weren't worried about her breaking it or anything?"

Tore shook his head. "No, she was very gentle with it, so we let her wear it until the client came to pick it up."

The next photograph: Frederica, five or six years old, in a dress so elaborately frilly and pink that it dwarfed her slender frame. She was holding a stuffed rabbit, and radiating annoyance.

"This was a job in Paris," Tore said, smiling. "We needed her to look unthreatening at the handoff. She was perfect. The people we were dealing with spent the entire meeting watching her and pinching her cheeks instead of watching Despina."

Dario chuckled. "Smart."

"Very, but Frederica threw the rabbit at my head in the hotel afterward." He said like he was describing a fond memory of a summer holiday. "My girl had a good arm, even then."

The third photograph was of Frederica, eight or nine years old, in the back seat of a car. She had an ice cream cone in one hand. She was eating it with the serene, unhurried focus of a child who was very pleased with life.

Through the rear window behind her, the blue and red lights of police vehicles strobed in the distance, blurring with speed, the gap between the car and the pursuit already substantial.

Dario looked at that photograph for a long time. There was something about it he couldn't immediately name. Not the comedy of it, though it was funny. It was the absolute serenity of that child loving her ice cream, despite the sirens, because the people in the front seats had the situation handled. She had simply eaten her treat and waited for the noise to go away.

That kind of certainty could only be built over the years by people who showed up every time they were needed.

If any of his brothers fucked up on a job or training, Gabriella never bailed them out because she never wanted them to rely on anyone but themselves.