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Immediately all her instincts went to a higher stage of alertness. She couldn’t play Rodrigo the way she had Salvatore. For one thing, as wily as Salvatore had been, his son was smarter, tougher, more cunning—and that was saying something. For another, Salvatore had been attracted to her, and Rodrigo wasn’t. For the father she had been a younger woman, a conquest, but she was three years older than Rodrigo and he had plenty of conquests of his own.
She was wearing a set of her own pajamas, brought from her flat yesterday, but she was glad of the extra covering of the thick Turkish robe she’d found hanging on a hook in the bathroom. Rodrigo was one of those overtly sexual men who made women very aware of him, and she wasn’t immune to that facet of his personality, even though she knew enough about him to make her cold with disgust. He wasn’t innocent of the majority of Salvatore’s sins, though he was innocent of the murders that had moved her to vengeance; by chance, Rodrigo had been in South America at the time.
She struggled to the bed and sat on it, clinging to one of the posts at the foot for support. She swallowed and said, “You saved my life.” Her voice was thin and weak. She was thin and weak, in no shape to protect herself.
He shrugged. “As it happens, no. Vincenzo—Dr. Giordano—says there was nothing he could do to help. You recovered on your own, though not without some damage. A heart valve, I believe he said.”
She already knew that, because Dr. Giordano had told her the same thing that very morning. She had known the possibilities when she took the risk.
“Your liver, though, will recover. Already your color is much better.”
“No one has told me what was wrong. How did you know I was sick? Did Salvatore become ill, too?”
“Yes,” he said. “He didn’t recover.”
Some reaction other than, “Oh, good,” was expected of her, so Lily deliberately thought of Averill and Tina, of Zia with her adolescent gangliness, her bright, cheerful face and nonstop chatter. Oh, God, she missed Zia so much; it was an ache in the center of her chest. Tears filled her eyes, and she let them drip down her cheeks.
“It was poison,” Rodrigo said, both his expression and tone as calm as if he’d commented on the weather. She wasn’t deceived; he had to be in a rage. “In the bottle of wine he drank. It appears to be a synthetic, designer poison, very potent; by the time the symptoms occur, it’s already too late. Monsieur Durand from the restaurant said you tasted the wine.”
“Yes, one sip.” She wiped the tears from her face. “I dislike wine, but Salvatore was insistent, and he was becoming angry because I didn’t want to taste it, so I did . . . just one very small sip, to please him. It was nasty.”
“You are lucky. According to Vincenzo, the poison is so potent that had you drunk any more than that, if the sip hadn’t been very small, you would be dead.”
She shuddered, remembering the pain and vomiting; she had been that sick without actually swallowing any of the wine, just letting it touch her lips. “Who did this? Anyone could have drunk that wine; was it some terrorist who didn’t care who he killed?”
“I think my father was the target; his love of wine was well-known. The eighty-two Château Maximilien is very rare, yet a bottle mysteriously became available to Monsieur Durand the day before my father’s reservation at his restaurant.”
“But he might have offered the wine to anyone.”
“And taken the risk that my father would hear about it and take umbrage that this rare wine wasn’t offered to him? I think not. This tells me the poisoner is very familiar with Monsieur Durand and his restaurant, and the clientele.”
“How was it done? The bottle was uncorked in front of us. How was the wine poisoned?”
“I imagine a very thin hypodermic needle was used to inject the poison through the cork. It wouldn’t have been noticeable. Or the bottle could have been uncorked, then resealed if the proper equipment was available. To Monsieur Durand’s extreme relief, I don’t believe either he or the waiter who served you are culpable.”
Lily had been out of bed so long that she was trembling with weakness. Rodrigo noticed the tremors that shook her entire body. “You may stay here until you are fully recovered,” he said politely, rising to his feet. “If you need anything, you have only to ask.”
“Thank you,” she said, then uttered the biggest lie of her life: “Rodrigo, I’m so sorry about Salvatore. He was . . . he was—” He was a murdering asshole son of a bitch, but now he was a dead murdering asshole son of a bitch. She managed to produce one more tear, thinking of Zia’s little face.
“Thank you for your condolences,” he said without expression, and left the room.
She didn’t do a victory dance; she was too weak, and for all she knew there were hidden cameras in the room. Instead she climbed back into bed and tried to seek refuge in strength-restoring sleep, but she was feeling too triumphant to do more than doze.
Part of her mission was accomplished. Now all she had to do was disappear before Rodrigo discovered Denise Morel didn’t exist.
3
Two days later, Rodrigo and his younger brother, Damone, stood beside their parents’ graves at their boyhood home in Italy. Their mother and father were once more side by side in death as they had been in life. Salvatore’s grave was covered in flowers, but both Rodrigo and Damone had taken some of the flowers and put them on their mother’s g
rave, too.
The weather was cool but sunny, and a light breeze was blowing. Damone put his hands in his pockets and stared up at the blue sky, his handsome face drawn with grief. “What will you do now?” he asked.
“Find who did this and kill him,” Rodrigo said without hesitation. Together they turned and began walking away from the gravesite. “I’ll also put out a press release about Papa’s death; it can’t be kept quiet much longer. The news will make some people nervous, wondering about the status of various agreements now that I am in charge, and I will have to deal with that. We may lose some revenue, but nothing that we can’t absorb. And the losses will be short-term. The revenues from the vaccine will make up the difference, and more. Much more.”
Damone said, “Vincenzo has made up the lost time?” He was more of a businessman than Rodrigo, and it was he who handled the majority of their finances from his own headquarters in Switzerland.
“Not as much as we had hoped, but work is progressing. He assures me he will be finished by next summer.”
