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The earl picked up a gleaming stiletto from his desk top, and glided his fingers gracefully along its razor edge. Without warning, he stepped forward and slashed it twice cleanly through Giacomo’s shirt from his neck to his waist.
Giacomo cried out, more in shock than in pain. He watched his shirt fall open and saw a long, bloody X carved on his chest.
“I have done nothing!” Giacomo stopped struggling, for he felt the muzzle of a pistol pointed in his back.
“Tell me, Giacomo,” the earl asked thoughtfully, “how many of you did it require to hold her down?”
Giacomo licked his lips. He was afraid of this man, very afraid.
“How many?” the earl said again.
Giacomo stared
at the stiletto, its tip red with his blood.
“Three,” he said. He could taste death. There was no hope for him.
“You mean that three of you held her down while the fourth raped her.”
He nodded, mute.
“Who was the man I killed?”
“Giulio,” he whispered.
“And Andrea, your leader, he was the one who tore her apart?”
Giacomo was suddenly confused. He shook his head, and words rushed from his mouth. “Tore her? Giulio must have done that. She was too slippery, so he took her from behind.”
Oh my God, Scargill thought wildly, as his master’s face went white. He would plunge the stiletto in the man’s miserable heart. He held his breath, waiting for the blow to fall. But the earl’s long fingers merely caressed the blade.
“Take off his clothes.”
For a moment, Mr. Donnetti stared uncomprehendingly at his master.
“Now,” the earl said more sharply. “I wish to see this marvelous specimen.”
Giacomo struggled, but within moments he stood naked, his breeches in a dirty pile about his feet.
The earl looked him up and down, and Giacomo felt himself tremble.
“How very odd,” the earl finally remarked. “You have blood on your member. Do you not think that strange, Francesco?”
“Si, my lord,” Mr. Donnetti croaked, his eyes falling to Giacomo’s limp penis.
“And the tattoo on your arm, Giacomo. A serpent twined about a sword. Your rotting friend in my stable has the same mark. Your career as a bravi has been successful?”
A hired assassin, Scargill thought, his wits jolted by the knowledge.
Giacomo did not answer.
“I will ask you only once to tell me who paid you and your three companions.”
Giacomo was doomed, he knew it. He had been a bravi for five years and knew he would die horribly by another bravi’s hand if he broke their unwritten code. And only Andrea knew the name of the man who had hired them. He licked his dry lips, and prepared himself. To die because he had fallen off his horse, faint from the wound in his thigh. It was a twist of fate that brought him no amusement.
“I do not know,” he said. He forced himself to straighten and pull his shoulders back.
“The name of the fourth man?”
