Betrayal

by Christina Dodd

  Chapter 5

  Penelope arrived at Joseph Bianchin’s estate at precisely nine a.m. Thursday morning—late enough that she couldn’t possibly be rude, but early enough to catch Bianchin before he left to run errands, or go to work, or go golfing, whatever eighty-one-year-old extremely wealthy men did with their time.

  But no matter how many times she rang the electronic buzzer placed outside the closed gates, no one answered.

  Stone lions glared down at her from atop limestone pillars, their claws raised and threatening, while she stood like a beggar, her hands gripping the cold metal bars blocking the wide driveway. She stared across the wide swath of grass at Joseph Bianchin’s house, stared so hard her eyes hurt.

  House?

  No, it wasn’t a house. It was a mansion, built in the style of a formal Italian villa. Its pale yellow stucco walls rose two stories to a flat roof. Along the top, a balustrade ran like a series of stone teeth, and in the forward left corner a narrow watchtower rose, surveying the countryside with cold authority.

  Penelope was an interior designer; architectural classes had been a requirement for her degree, but she so loved the craft she’d taken extra credits. So she knew her stuff. She knew the building before her was perfectly designed, perfectly proportioned, a monument to good taste. But its perfection repelled rather than attracted… or maybe it was simply that she had stood here for ten minutes, fruitlessly pushing the electronic buzzer and getting no response, and so she hated the place.

  She supposed she shouldn’t have expected Joseph Bianchin to open the door to her so easily. She’d thoroughly investigated him, reading every biography she found online and following up every rumor.

  The verdict was unanimous: The man was like the house that stood before her: arrogant, cold, friendless, and uncaring. His wealth had been handed to him by his family and he had ruthlessly increased it by fair means and foul.

  The dense shade of the live oak trees that dotted the lawn increased the gloom that hung over the place, and although at a distance she could see a single, tall, thin, aging Asian gardener who clipped the spent blooms off the rhododendrons, she had to admit the house had an air of abandonment.

  Joseph Bianchin wasn’t home. From the looks of things, he had been away for a while.

  But in her life, she’d been rejected so many times… and to have come so far, to be standing at this gate and have to leave without saying what she’d come to say…

  A dreadful thought brought her up short.

  Oh, God. What if he was dead? She’d packed and loaded the car and made the drive from Oregon without allowing herself to think too much about what she meant to do. Because if she really thought about it, she was afraid she would chicken out.

  But she knew the facts. Joseph Bianchin was eighty-one years old. He could have died yesterday, or the day before, or while she visited her mother’s grave and tried to express her frustration and unhappiness in a manner both respectful and firm. Because somewhere, she knew, her mother was listening.

  Pulling out her phone, Penelope checked the local obituaries.

  No. There was no death notice for Joseph Bianchin. He might not be here. But he was alive somewhere.

  She sighed with relief, then brushed at her wet eyes. She shouldn’t be surprised that her mind had jumped in that fatal direction. For far too long, she’d been surrounded by death in all its forms.

  It was hard to be alone.

  Squaring her shoulders, she made a new plan.

  The thing was… all those years ago, when she left Bella Terra, she hadn’t truly understood how she had come to be there in the first place. Now she knew.

  Now she wondered whether she could ever forgive her mother. For anything. For everything.

  Bella Terra wasn’t huge. About forty thousand people—and in the wine-growing season, a whole lot of tourists—so Penelope would be able to find someone who could tell her where Joseph Bianchin was hiding.

  As she turned away, she cast a last wistful, resentful glance toward the house—and saw a flash at the upstairs window.

  She turned back and stared.

  Was someone watching her?

  But nothing stirred, not even the leaves on the live oak trees.

  Maybe it had been the reflection of a bird’s white wing.

  Maybe she had imagined it.

  Maybe Joseph Bianchin was skulking in his house and refusing to speak to her.

  But that made no sense at all. He had no idea who she was—why wouldn’t he at least answer his intercom, if only to tell her to go away?

  Resolutely, she turned away, made her way to her car, and drove into Bella Terra.

  Chapter 6

  “Who was that girl at the gate?”

  Joseph Bianchin sat in his leather club chair in the master bedroom and glared resentfully up at his kidnapper, that cruel, damned blond giantess—his jailer.

  He didn’t dare call her a giantess to her face. He called her that only in his mind, because like it or not, he was afraid of her.

  She called herself Liesbeth Smit. When they were both standing, she was tall enough to look him in the eyes, and although he’d lost two inches of height since he turned seventy-five, he was still six feet tall. Liesbeth played up her athletic figure, her long blond hair, and beautiful green eyes as part of her carefully cultivated Nordic aspect.

  After his confrontation with that little upstart Noah Di Luca, Joseph had decided it was best to revisit the European sights he’d enjoyed before. In Amsterdam, he met Liesbeth, but she wasn’t Nordic; he would swear to that. He didn’t for a minute believe her true hair color was blond. As old as she was, it was probably gray. Or white. But hell, he didn’t even believe her eyes were blue. Or that her name was Liesbeth Smit. Nothing about her was real. Nothing.

  He did believe she was athletic. When he’d gotten suspicious of her intentions—he’d thought she was a chance-met whore, then realized she had stalked him—and he refused to go with her to her hotel, she had taken him down as if he were a weak old man.

  He was not. He was in excellent health.

  “Who is she?” Liesbeth stood over him, asking questions. Always asking questions, interrogating him as if she had the right.

  He hated her. He resented her for overpowering him. “I don’t know.”

  “She rang the bell for ten minutes.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “She wanted to see you badly.”

  Liesbeth was a woman, younger than him, but not young. He didn’t know her exact age, but he guessed she was at least sixty-five. Yet she controlled him with the use of some goddamn fancy karate moves that made him buckle from the pain. He was pretty sure she used pressure points. He needed to learn them ASAP.

  “She probably wanted a job as a maid.” He didn’t give a crap who the girl at the gate was. She couldn’t help him out of this mess, so she was useless to him.

  “She was dressed awfully nice for wanting a job as a maid.”

  When Joseph had met Liesbeth, her English had made him think she was from London. As soon as the private plane he’d hired had landed in the States, her accent changed, became purely American English.

  He didn’t know how she did it, but it was spooky to watch her move from one environment to another and adapt so smoothly that everyone in the vicinity thought she was a native.

  “Khakis and a button-down shirt?” He raked Liesbeth with his gaze. “You’ve got low standards.”

  Unfazed by his condemnation of her denim capris and tight T-shirt, Liesbeth asked, “Is she your current lover?”

  “No. I told you. I’ve never seen her before.” Although there was something vaguely familiar about her.…

  He stared into space, trying to remember. Whom did she look like? A business associate? One of the damned Di Lucas? Or some movie star he’d seen on the Internet?

  Liesbeth studied him, knew every nuance of his expressions. “You do know her.”

  “Let me use the phone, and I’ll cal
l around and see what I can find out.”

  “If I did that, and you called the wrong person, I’d just have to kill you.” She smiled kindly and without an ounce of compassion.

  And he believed her. “Look. The trouble with being our age is, there aren’t that many different kinds of faces. Everyone looks like someone I’ve already met.”

  Liesbeth waggled her head as if admitting he had a point.

  “I don’t understand what you want with me. Why me?” he asked, not for the first time. “I’ve offered you money. And yet you refuse and continue to keep me prisoner here. What was your reason for kidnapping me?”

  “You’re the one who put that ad on the Internet and made it necessary for me to move on this job before I was ready.” Her green eyes gleamed like an icy glacial stream. “So you might as well provide us room and board while we take care of the matter, and keeping you here—well, it’s easy to ensure that you don’t get your hands on our little prize.”

  It’s not your little prize. But according to her, it was.

  He simply didn’t give a crap what she thought.

  Liesbeth glanced up a split second before one of her young male cohorts wandered in. “What do you want, Hendrik?”

  In his singsong Dutch accent, Hendrik said, “This is a very nice bedroom. I think I should take it.”

  Joseph growled like a lone wolf who had been challenged. “And do what with it? Spit on the floor?” As far as Joseph could tell, Hendrik was Liesbeth’s enforcer: big, ugly, and mean. He seemed to have no sophistication, no manners at all, and the lustful way he eyed Joseph’s possessions made Joseph want to slap him. Hard.

  “I would sleep here, of course.” Hendrik strolled over to Joseph’s seventeenth-century baroque Italian antique bed and caressed the wood with covetous fingers. “You must imagine yourself to be a king, lolling around in such a valuable piece of furniture.”

  “I do not loll,” Joseph said coldly. His designer had created this room as a reverent homage to Joseph’s importance in the world, with a fireplace, a sitting area, and that bed, raised on a dais and enfolded with velvet bed curtains. To be here, insulted and disdained, cut off from the world, his privacy stolen by gangsters who wanted a place to stay and the bottle of wine he so deservedly coveted—it was almost more than he could bear.

  “Enough, Hendrik,” Liesbeth said. “What do you want?”

  “To find out what you want on your pizza.” Hendrik grinned like a half-wit and rubbed his stomach in a crude imitation of hunger.

  Joseph snapped in bitter irritation. “I don’t want pizza again. My God, how often can you eat that crap?”

  Hendrik’s grin widened. “Why shouldn’t I, old man? And in fact, why shouldn’t you? You’re Italian. Don’t all Italians like pizza?”

  The cold rage of helplessness burned in Joseph’s gut. “No wonder you work for her.” He pointed a shaking finger at Liesbeth. “You are so stupid.”

  Big, bulky, mean, and so fast Joseph never saw him move, Hendrik lunged.

  Liesbeth punched her elbow hard in his chest, and the move made a sound like thumping a ripe watermelon. “No, Hendrik. We need him.”

  Hendrik lunged again, trying to get around her, snapping like a junkyard dog.

  She stiff-armed him, knocking him against the wall. One of Joseph’s finest pieces of art, an original Klimt art nouveau painting, rattled and turned sideways on its hook.

  Joseph gasped in horror, and snapped, “Be careful, you careless fool.”

  Liesbeth stilled.

  Joseph had been an only child, one of the privileged Bianchins of Bella Valley, and he said whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, and never worried who was hurt.

  But now, as Hendrik pushed off from the wall and stood staring at him, chin thrust forward, hands in loosely balled fists, looking like a bull about to charge and gore him, it occurred to Joseph that he was the fool. Perhaps this time he should have held his tongue.

  Liesbeth stepped back. “He’s an old man,” she said. “Don’t hurt him too much.”

  Hendrik’s eyes narrowed. He straightened. He grinned into Joseph’s face.

  For the first time Joseph saw a cunning intelligence there.

  Turning slowly, Hendrik faced the wall. He cocked his head at the same angle as the painting.

  An icy, incredulous thought trickled into Joseph’s mind. He fumbled to place his gnarled hands on the arms of his chair, to lift himself from his seat, to stop Hendrik before he dared to…

  Hendrik’s big fist rose.

  “No!” Joseph’s left palm, sweaty with anxiety, slipped off the leather. “No!”

  Hendrik slammed his knuckles through the canvas, splitting the art from top to bottom, destroying its value, stealing it from Joseph with a single blow. Then he tore it from the wall and smashed it to the floor.

  While Joseph sat gasping, holding his chest, Hendrik turned to face him. Blood dripped from his split knuckles, but he still wore that offensive grin, and in a genial tone he said, “I’ll order Canadian bacon with pineapple, and a thick crust. Hope you like it, old man. It’s my favorite.” He swaggered out of the room, his big feet clomping in his black leather boots.

  Liesbeth watched him leave, anxiety and love clear on her face.

  Something about the two of them tugged at Joseph’s mind, a thought struggling to escape. It burst from his brain and into words. “He’s your son!”

  She laughed, laughed long and hard and spitefully, until Joseph shriveled in embarrassment. “No, he’s my nephew.” She waved a hand toward the interior of the house, where three men and two women lounged with their feet on Joseph’s furniture, eating and dropping crumbs wherever they wished, drinking and putting their cans down on his polished wood tables, scratching themselves and laughing—at him. “They are all cousins or nephews or nieces.”

  “Your gang is all family?”

  “Of course. Who else could I trust?”

  “They’re thugs!”

  “Don’t be silly.” She airily waved Joseph’s insult away. “We are not thugs. We contract for a job and we do it well. Each of us has a specialty. Each of us is highly trained.”

  Information. Information could help him. “Who hired you for this job?”

  Her smile faded. “This is personal.”

  “Personal? What do you mean? Why do you care about a bottle of wine?”

  “You know perfectly well why. Don’t pretend you don’t.” Her smile was back. “I care for the same reason you care.”

  He didn’t want to discuss what he knew or why he cared. They weren’t partners. By all that was holy, the bottle was his. “So you have a gang, and each of you has a specialty. What are you trained in?”

  “I’m the leader. I make the decisions. I make the plans.”

  “Lousy plans.”

  “Oh, I think this one is working out very well. Brigetta is our munitions specialist—she knows weapons. Grieta is our computer programmer—she can break through any security system in less than five minutes. Klaas does disguises.” Liesbeth laughed. “He transforms himself and us, and not even facial recognition software can tag us. Rutger knows the worth of every piece of art and every precious stone, and he can spot a fake from a distance of one hundred yards.”

  Liesbeth gave up the information so easily, Joseph knew she considered him no threat. And that infuriated him more. But he was descended from the Borgias, and his legacy of shrewd cruelty would overcome this upstart. “Who’s the Incredible Hulk?” he asked.

  “Hendrik? Hendrik took his father’s place as my right-hand man.”

  “He’s the muscle.”

  “A good way of putting it.” She gestured at Joseph’s ruined painting. “His father had a terrible temper, too, and I’m proud of Hendrik for his restraint.”

  “His restraint?” Rage bubbled like acid in the pit of Joseph’s stomach. “He destroyed a priceless painting!”

  “Not priceless. Everything has a price. That painting is small, an early, lesser Kli
mt, a simple ink drawing without gold ornamentation, and unless a bidding war set up, at auction it would have gone for no more than one hundred thousand dollars, one hundred and twenty-five at the most.”

  At that cool, precise appraisal of his art, Joseph’s mouth opened and closed in silent shock. Fifty years ago he’d bought it from an Englishwoman. He’d paid a mere five thousand pounds and laughed at her ignorance. He’d had it appraised every year since, gloating as it gained value. He knew what it was worth, what he had it insured for—but how did this brute of a woman know? Know that it was genuine? Know with a single glance? How was it possible that this Amazon warrior possessed the eye to successfully evaluate art from the turn of the twentieth century?

  Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe she was the brains of the operation because… because she deserved to be.

  “You know”—she leaned over him, put her hands on the arms of his chair—“you’re old, and your bones are brittle. If you’re going to infuriate one of my people, it would be wise to choose one of the others. Hendrik is a throwback—more Russian than the others, demanding the respect owed a man of his noble ancestry.”

  Joseph seized on that shred of information. “You’re Russian?”

  “Aristocrats who oppressed the peasants for centuries until they rose in revolt and killed us. Not all of us—some of us escaped and have since made our living on our wits.”

  “That was a hundred years ago,” he said spitefully. “So don’t tell me you’re anything but a washed-out version of a failed aristocratic system.”

  “So true.” She caressed his hand. “And yet I rule you with a tyrant’s touch.” She straightened. “Hendrik says we don’t need you. That we can kill you, stay here and use your credit card, and not put up with your sour face while we search for that bottle of wine. My heart is soft and sweet; I tell him there’s no need to commit murder unnecessarily. But you’re convincing me Hendrik might be right. Remember that next time we want to order pizza.”

  Chapter 7

  Penelope drove toward town like a woman who feared nothing.