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Chapter 1
“Christ, she’s a handful.”
Bobby slumped into an armchair. “What did we do before Gemma? Did we have free time? Were we sane?”
Angelo smirked. The weight of responsibility had interesting effects on Bobby, who had, for the most part, been free to terrorize all of creation as he pleased. Making Gemma his problem had been a masterstroke. It was a distraction and a job, and it was teaching him so many things that belonging to Angelo alone would never have taught him in a million years.
“What has she done now, boy? Not back on the roof, I hope?”
“You know, when we talk about her, we could literally be talking about a cat.”
“She does have a certain feline quality about her,” Angelo agreed. “Cats aren’t as loyal as dogs. They go where the food is. She’s fully healed, boy. Doctor has cleared her. You can take her in hand any time.”
“I know.”
Angelo put his book down. “What is it, boy? Why are you letting that girl walk all over you?”
Bobby shrugged dramatically. “Shouldn’t there be one thing in the world we don’t ruin?”
“You are not going to ruin Gemma. She is not that delicate. And she is not that innocent. She has spent a lifetime inside a clandestine spy group so secret that I haven’t heard of it.”
“Because they’re UK-based,” Bobby added. “And who cares about British conspiracies?”
“I do. You do. Probably one or two British people do,” Angelo drawled. “Regardless, Gemma is not made of glass. And if you do not start getting a handle on her, I will.”
“I’ll deal with her. I just need a break.”
“A break from letting her run rampant? A break from hoping someone else will deal with her, so you don’t have to?”
Bobby scowled and pouted at the same time. “Since when do you object to dealing with someone?”
“Since I gave you Gemma and allowed her to stay against all sense, and since you agreed to keep her in line.”
“I don’t like being the bad guy,” Bobby sighed. “I mean, I love being the bad guy, usually, because I like hurting people. But I like Gemma, so hurting her isn’t fun. It hurts me too.”
Angelo smiled to himself as Bobby attempted to come to grips with the notion that his responsibilities weren’t going to entirely evaporate just because things had settled down. In the past, Angelo had ruled over everyone with an iron fist, and Bobby had been at the very bottom of the food chain. That was no longer the case. The blonde British girl was Bobby’s prisoner and his love - though interestingly, not his lover. Not yet, anyway.
“You will find, in time, that it is far more painful to do nothing than it is to punish those who deserve it, boy. Now. It is time we did some work. The Organization intel needs to be collated and examined. We have a rare opportunity to understand a group which has remained in the shadows since King Arthur sanded the edges of his table.”
Gemma really had brought them a virtual treasure trove of information about her previous employers. She might have been driving Bobby crazy, but that was a minor and very domestic problem compared to the immense value she had otherwise provided.
Leaving Bobby to mull over the many difficulties of responsibility for others, Angelo went to his office to start work. There was much to be done if he wanted to achieve his goal of reuniting the House of Vitali. That would involve neutralizing every single significant enemy and returning them to a collective place of strength with strategic alliances which could be counted upon.
He sat down behind his desk and began to work. He much preferred paper copies to digital files, but Gemma had been kind enough to provide a cache of data on a USB drive, and he had been going through the various files, painstakingly printing them out and reading them.
Now. Where was it? He could have sworn it was attached to his computer the last time he saw it.
Not anymore, though. It was gone. He looked under things. He looked over things. He became increasingly irritated, because in Angelo’s world, things did not simply disappear. He knew where everything was, always.
Angelo emerged from his office to find Gemma and Bobby standing around arguing.
“Gemma, have you seen a USB drive that looks like a black duck? The one you provided me?”
“Black duck? No.” Gemma’s reply indicated she had almost no idea what he was talking about.
“The one with all the Organization files on it? The irreplaceable cache of information?”
“Oh. That black duck! No. Sorry. Haven’t seen it.”
Bobby hoped Angelo hadn’t heard their bickering. Bobby was supposed to be in charge of Gemma, but Gemma was basically impossible to be in charge of. It wasn’t that she wasn’t submissive - she very much was. It was that she was somehow slippery. Every time he thought he was getting somewhere with her, she did something to really fuck his day up.
