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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It took more restraint than Enzo thought he possessed to resist skewering the brigand through the heart on the very stones of the piazza.
However, there remained just one thing in all the world he desired more than revenge—to have his Fiore back alive.
And so he checked his seething rage and settled for merely having him bound, gagged, and shoved into the gondola for transport back to Ca’ Scaevola.
The journey passed swift and silent. Within the hour the gondola drifted through the archway beneath the palazzo into the cavernous stone chamber that held the dock. Carlotta awaited them at the foot of the stairs leading up into the house proper.
“The chirurgeons have arrived,” she told Enzo before he’d even disembarked.
“Good.” Indeed, the first favorable report Enzo had received since the ransom note had arrived. Everything would be in place to tend Fiore upon his return. Just as soon as Enzo got him back. Which he would, damn it all. His heart threw itself against the shriven piece of Fiore still in his waistcoat breast-pocket.
Enzo turned back to the gondola and saw the guards had wrestled the brigand out of the felze. He motioned for them to follow and led them into the pianterreno of the palazzo. Down an unremarkable corridor lay a store room packed with crates of raw silk. This left just enough space in the center of the chamber to bring in a kitchen chair for their prisoner—and would dampen his voice besides, once they removed the gag. Enzo ordered this done only after Zanetta and Ferruzzi had bound his ankles to the chair legs.
“I don’t know anything!” the brigand spat out alongside the gag. “They just sent me to pick up the loot!”
Enzo stared down at him. Then he unsheathed his dagger from his belt. “If you know nothing, then you are worthless to me.”
The brigand’s eyes flew wide. “Wait!”
Enzo waited.
“I—I may know a thing or two that could help you,” the brigand spluttered. “But I’m just a simple errand-runner—messenger-for-hire—I’ve nothing to do with—with whatever it is you’re angry about.”
“Of course you don’t,” Enzo deadpanned.
“Ask Portia!” the brigand blurted. “She’ll vouch for me!”
Enzo turned to Carlotta.
“One of the kitchen-maids,” Carlotta supplied.
The thought that one of his own household could have conspired against him to this extent sent another pulse of boiling fury through Enzo’s veins. Still, shouting wouldn’t help matters. And so, in a voice flat with the effort to keep quiet, he commanded, “Bring her here.”
Carlotta departed with a bow.
Enzo turned to the brigand as the door shut behind her. “You said you may know something. What do you know of this?”
And as he spoke, he withdrew Fiore’s finger from his waistcoat breast-pocket and held it up before the brigand’s gaze.
The brigand’s eyes flew wide. He swallowed hard. His gaze flitted from Enzo’s face to Fiore’s finger and back again. “Friend of yours?”
If Enzo didn’t need information, he would’ve sheathed his dagger in the brigand’s throat then and there. “Indeed. Do you know who did this?”
The brigand hesitated.
A horrible suspicion took root in Enzo’s mind. “Didyoudo this?”
The brigand shook his head vehemently.
“Your grace,” Zanetta spoke up. “We have his blade.”
Enzo turned to find her holding out a simple dagger sheathed in brown leather. He tucked Fiore’s finger back into the pocket over his heart where it belonged and took the dagger from her. Grasping its cord-wrapped handle and drawing it from its sheath didn’t reveal any tell-tale bloodstains. Those would be easy enough to wipe away.
The fire-scale and soot-stains, however, remained.
