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I eyed the truck.
“PTSD?” Leon asked.
“Yep. Wondering if it might explode.”
I looped around the island, parked on the other side of it, facing the way back to the entrance, and shut off the engine. Despite the controlled construction chaos on both sides of the street, the park itself was deserted.
“You know that I wasn’t a fan of the guy when the two of you started,” Leon said. “He did stupid shit, and he hurt your feelings. However, I changed my mind. The man works hard, covers his bases, and he loves you with fairy-tale love.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“The kind of love that you’re supposed to find but most of us don’t. He isn’t going anywhere, Catalina.”
“I’m not worried that he’ll leave me, Leon. I’m worried they will hurt him.”
I opened my door and stepped out. Leon got out of the transport and the two of us took a spot on a bench by the table.
Bern had run a quick background check on Christina Almeida while I was trying to get all my ducks in a row for this meeting. House Almeida was the seventh richest House in Portugal, and Christina was the youngest of the current generation. By all indications, she was adored by her family.
House Almeida mostly stayed out of the limelight. The Magus Praelia area of magic covered a lot of ground. In general terms, it meant a mage who used melee weapons, summoned or real, and altered their bodies to make themselves better killers. Some praelia made themselves faster or stronger, others boosted their reflexes. Some were capable of unleashing bursts of magic with their weapons.
The taco truck opened its window. About a dozen construction workers lined up to order.
“Incoming,” I told Leon.
He smiled a slow dreamy smile.
A silver Audi slid to the curb across the street with a soft whisper. A tall, lean white-haired man got out of the driver’s side and went around the car to the rear passenger door. His skin had an almost ochre tint, and his features were sharp, as if struck from stone by an impatient sculptor. I couldn’t tell his age from his face or the way he moved. Somewhere between thirty and fifty.
Leon whistled the opening tune from A Fistful of Dollars.
The white-haired man opened the car door, and a woman stepped out. She was a year older than me, with pale skin and long dark hair, a cooler brown with carefully chosen highlights. Tall, about five ten, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds, long waisted, long legs, long arms. And she walked like a fencer, balanced and light on her feet. Her dark pantsuit fit her perfectly but was loose enough to let her move freely.
Huge grey eyes on an oval face, straight nose, a large mouth she toned down with pale pink lipstick . . . She was quite beautiful, in that upper-class slightly generic way. If you googled European heiress, you would find a slew of girls just like her, with big eyes, lovely smiles, and perfectly applied makeup designed to elevate their features rather than emphasize them.
She walked over and sat across from me. The man took position behind her. I sent my magic out. It spiraled from me, carefully slipping around Christina to the man behind her. Not a mental mage. His mind was unshielded and vulnerable. Probably an aegis. That’s who I would bring.
“I’ll get straight to it,” Christina Almeida said in her accented voice. “Alessandro’s family and my House have made arrangements. We are able to meet their financial demands.”
They sold him. Again. As expected.
I let a single tendril of my power gently brush against Christina, its touch featherlight. An antistasi wall.
Interesting.
“How much did you pay for him?” Leon asked. “Just wondering what a good-looking Prime antistasi goes for on the open market these days.”
Christina ignored him. “Your feelings for him and his feelings for you are immaterial to this arrangement. This is about family, obligation, and children.”
She wasn’t as strong as the basalt rock that was Alessandro’s mind. She must’ve ranked lower, probably a Notable. Antistasi plus a Prime praelia. Summoned augmented weapons, maybe?
Christina leaned back, raising her chin slightly. “His family will never accept you.”
“Not the greatest argument considering they excised him,” Leon said.
“It’s not just a matter of money but of class and pedigree. You have neither. Furthermore, you have no idea how to handle a Sagredo or how to navigate their family dynamic. His grandfather is an insufferable, toxic man.”
On that, we agreed.
“If you marry Alessandro and travel with him to Italy, his grandfather will make you miserable until you either quit or die by his hand. If you marry Alessandro and keep him here, his excision will become permanent. He will lose all contact with his mother and sisters. The guilt will eat him alive. We both know duty to his family is his Achilles’ heel and the benefits of a pretty face and intense sex only last so long. No vagina is magic.”
