by Camilla Monk
Still, lots of shortcuts and self-victimization there. I turned around to rest my elbows on the railing as well. “I already told you it doesn’t work like that . . . Just because you think March owes you doesn’t mean you get to choose who he sees. And it’s the same for me—I liked him before I even knew you existed.”
“He can sleep with you over my dead body.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “You do realize you sound like some crazy bigot who hunts down his daughter’s suitors with a shotgun, right?”
“Isn’t it what Simon does?”
Simon? As in Simon Halder? “Hold on, you know my dad?”
He shrugged. “Shared a drink with him once.”
“Seriously? Where did you—”
“In London. It was a few years after your birth. I was curious to meet him. I joined him at the Kensington’s bar, I believe.”
I was trying to picture them sitting together at a table. Night and day, the hyper-anxious banker and the glacial hit man. “How did it go?”
“Well enough. I asked for some financial advice. He seemed to know what he was doing. A very cautious, analytical mind, I remember.” A curve that wasn’t quite a smile appeared on Dries’s lips as he went through his memories. “Toward the end, I told him he was raising my daughter. And I told him what I did for a living.”
Cold spilled in my stomach. I’d always wondered how much my dad knew. That much. No wonder where all that helicopter parenting came from.
“He said he wasn’t afraid of me,” Dries went on with a snort. “He was lying. His hands were shaking.”
“Glad to hear you had fun,” I said cuttingly.
“I didn’t. He told me he pitied me.” He paused, staring down at the glitter of the moon on ink-black waters. “I thought of following him back to his hotel and slicing his throat.”
Blood rushed to my head; I grabbed his arm. “Don’t talk about him like that!”
Dries looked at me then. The same way he had in Tokyo—like his walls were down and those expressionless eyes, that emptiness, they were his true self, and all he’d ever have to give. My chest hurt, as if my heart were physically breaking.
“But I didn’t kill him,” he finally said.
My mother had been in my place. She had seen the emptiness too, dug until she hit that same icy kernel, and she thought he couldn’t let her in, could never change. I understood now how powerless she must have felt. I didn’t want to talk anymore—I didn’t feel strong enough for that at the moment. Dries watched me back away with hesitant steps, until he seemed to make up his mind and moved to stop me.
His hand hovered over my shoulder without touching it, as if he feared I’d leave for good if he did. At first I just looked at his neck, the silvery stubble and the wrinkles there. The tiny flat moles, just like mine. I forced myself to meet his eyes. In the dark, they no longer seemed so golden, just a sad hazel.
“Why didn’t you kill him, if it was so easy?” I asked.
“Because you needed a father.”
I breathed fast to stop the prickling in my nose. I wouldn’t let him make me cry again. “Then why the fuck didn’t you do the job?”
“Léa went off the grid without even telling me she was pregnant. I took it as a clear message that my presence was not needed, or wanted, for that matter.”
It sounded like another of the shortcuts he liked so much, a convenient blanket thrown over God knew how much rage and how many tears. The tension in his voice, the way his hand lingered on my forearm though, those were real.
“Maybe she wanted you to find her,” I said softly.
I practically heard iron gates slam shut as he moved away. “I did, and I got her killed. Any other insights to share for tonight?”
Jan’s voice echoed in my ears as he recounted the circumstances of my mother’s death, the trail of bodies Dries had left behind him after that, to make sure that no frumentarius would ever have a chance to betray him again. Was there any going back from that?
I blinked back those goddamn tears and steadied my voice. “You’re making everybody pay. Alex’s father, all the other frumentarii, me . . . Did Anies pay too?”
A smirk tugged at his lips; he shook his head. “Dikkenek . . . always there to help. Always talking too much.”
“This has nothing to do with him. I’m asking you—”
“About things that are none of your business!” His sudden bark startled me. Regaining his composure, Dries let out a weary sigh and averted his eyes. “Now go back to your room and”—he waved a hand to the stairway leading back inside the yacht—“not with him. You can do better, little Island; trust an old Lion on that.”
I could have dealt him the finishing blow by observing that he was the one who had brought March and me together in the first place. I chose not to. I was shaken; he looked bitter and tired. Maybe it was best we both get some sleep.
“I’m sorry to hear you say that,” I simply said, before turning away.
When I looked back through the bay window, I saw him standing alone on the deck. He ran a hand across his face. Dries still wasn’t very good at the whole parenting thing.
There was no trace of March in my cabin, so I crept down the hallway to his, avoiding the suspicious look Dries’s men shot my way when I walked past them. I turned the doorknob with excruciating care, even if I knew he wouldn’t sleep through someone intruding in his nest anyway.
He was still awake, resting in his bed with a tablet in his hands. With a smile, he set it on his lap and tapped the mattress to invite me under the covers. It would have been rude to decline; within seconds, I was pantsless, sucked in by the warmth of his body and, well, the comforter.
March draped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. Our animalistic urges temporarily curbed by Dries’s intervention, I reveled in the growing sense of intimacy between us, a pull that was physical yet not necessarily sexual. As his palm skimmed up and down my arm, I kissed his shoulder and stroked the outer ridge of his lion scarification, the rough tissue catching my fingertips.
“How did it go?” he inquired. “I assumed you’d scream if you needed help.”
“It was okay . . . We talked a little. I think he wants to be able to play the dad card when it suits him, to stick his nose into my business. By the way, he said you can sleep with me over his dead body.”
A heavy sigh fanned against my cheek. “Then let us live on borrowed time.”
“Exactly.” I eyed the tablet still lying on his stomach. “Were you working?”
“Well, I reread your report about Lucca Gerone. I assume Dries will do the same once he’s done—”
“Sulking.”
March shook his head. “Something to that effect. In any case, I’d be lying if I said I was working when you came in.”
I watched in curiosity as he unlocked the tablet’s screen, and a crossword grid appeared. Sitting up, I scanned the jumble of words with no small amount of admiration. He’d beaten some pretty tough definitions. Some of those I could have found out, but others I had never heard of. “Levantine coffee cup”: a zarf? That sounded like Star Trek stuff. “Tuberous crop”: Excalibur . . . Sweet Jesus!
The grid was almost complete, save for a few squares awaiting the last missing word. I gathered that’s what he had been torturing himself with before my return. I raised the tablet to get a better look at the definitions.
“Try monadic.”
March’s fingers hovered above the screen. “Are you sure?”
“Pertaining to a programmable semicolon, in seven letters. Trust me, it’s monadic. It’s functional programming stuff.”
He filled each square diligently. Once he was done, the grid flashed twice, and applause boomed from the tablet’s speaker, prompting a self-satisfied smile on his lips. A pop-up with a timer announced that March had conquered the crossword app’s ultimate monthly puzzle in record time. As a result, he’d won a twelve-pack of diet Mountain Dew and a branded green-sequin cap. I watched him
close the pop-up without claiming his prize.
“You don’t want the cap?”
His lips pursing in the slightest hint of regret, he considered the finished grid. “It’s the first time I ever won, but it wouldn’t be fair. You helped me.”
I was tempted to argue that we should share the prize then, but with a steady tap on the screen, he opened the app’s menu and deleted the grid. I checked the high scores; somewhere in Oklahoma, Grmaof4_39 had just beaten the puzzle too. A gold star appeared next to her name.
“She’s getting the Mountain Dew,” I noted.
“I know.” March placed the tablet back on his nightstand before he gathered me in his arms. “But I already have everything I need.”
His unexpected candor took me aback. My mouth worked in vain. All I could feel building was a premature declaration of total love, something so intense I feared it couldn’t be contained in my body and might ooze out in some horrific way. I think I eventually said something lame like “me too,” and I just held on to him, caressed the bristles on his nape, kissed the fuzz I loved so much on his ear.
After March had turned off the lights, it took me a little while to fall asleep. I kept thinking of Dries and my mother. I listened to his steady breathing, felt the weight of his arm on my hip, and I told myself I never wanted to make the same mistakes they had.
19
The Ritual
He threw her on the bed roughly and tore off his embroidered vest. His eyes were dark and smoldering with molten desire. “Darling, I’m going to teach you how to play the Alphorn,” he said hoarsely.
Kendra Sparkle, Surrendering to The Swiss Cowboy
When people conjure up visions of heavenly European sceneries, of old stones, verdant maquis and turquoise waters, they’ll usually think of the Mediterranean Sea: the French Riviera or the Italian coasts, that kind of thing. You seldom—if ever—hear them bring up the Adriatic. Too bad, because Vis, a ten-mile-long jewel stretching off the Croatian coast, possessed all the wild charm and idle insouciance of Saint Tropez’s backcountry and none of its insufferable jet-set drama-lama shit.
Dries’s yacht was anchored south of the island, at a safe distance from the coast. On the deck, I watched the sun rise over a handful of tiled roofs scattered along pine trees and sandy beaches. Perched atop a cove enclosed by tall rocks, a complex and uneven geometric structure reflected the golden light on its glass exterior. Novensia’s research facility shimmered like a giant crystal; the irony wasn’t lost on me. I munched on a brioche roll, observing the occasional speedboats gliding through the natural stone arch guarding the cove.
Meanwhile, Dries was basically planning Pio Maraì’s kidnapping.
“The entire area is privatized. They control the creek, and access to the north trail is restricted. The security perimeter is three hundred meters,” he explained to March, zooming on a satellite map on his laptop’s screen. “You have a series of underwater caves connecting to the creek’s lagoon. The DPV will take you there easily.”
I wanted to ask what he called a DPV, but first, I preferred to hear the rest of what sounded like a plan to kill March under the guise of finding Pio Maraì.
Dries swiped to display pictures of a crescent-shaped beach stretching at the foot of a cliff. “Once you’ve reached the creek, as long as they don’t detect you, the rest is child’s play: just a little climbing,” he concluded as a sinuous green line appeared on-screen, tracing the optimal path up a hundred feet of steep rock and all the way to the glass façade of Novensia’s building.
“But how does he get inside and find Maraì? And aren’t you going with him?” I asked.
“I’m not going because it is my understanding that someone needs to stay with you,” Dries replied, sending a sharp glance in March’s direction. “And for hell’s sake, if he can’t break through a window and find an unarmed clown in a science lab, what do you see in him?”
Neither of us took the risk to comment on this. Dries was evidently still sore about the prior evening’s incident, even after three cream-filled cornetti and a pint of cappuccino.
“March, are you sure about this?”
His arms crossed, he gazed at the maps and calculations on-screen. “It’s feasible but admittedly a little daring.” It’s complete bullshit, and I don’t want to have to do this. “But Island is right: the facility is about four thousand square meters on ten stories. I’ll need a way to locate Maraì precisely.” Why don’t you ask me to kidnap the entire Duggar family instead?
“Actually, he doesn’t know us. Why don’t we just go there and say we believe his company has something to do with the crash and see how it goes from there? If he kicks us out, then you can always go scuba diving and climb up a cliff to break into his building and kill everyone,” I suggested.
March looked at me curiously at first, but after a few seconds, he seemed sold on the idea.
Dries got up from the couch and towered above me as if I were some bug he was about to squish. “Young lady, that’s not how we do things in this family.”
I held my head up high and sustained his icy glare. “Then maybe we should do things differently, because our plan sucks and might get March killed.”
The briefest flutter of his eyelids the only sign that he was in fact upset, Dries ignored me to speak to March instead. “I see your earlier point more clearly now; let’s lock her up.”
I retreated behind March, just in case.
“I believe,” he said cautiously, shielding me from paternal wrath, “that we have enough cards in our sleeve to approach Maraì.”
“What do you do with the welcome committee?” Dries asked, tilting his head to the laptop’s screen, where a zoomed picture revealed armed guards.
“I’ll go alone, and if discussion isn’t possible after all, they will be my problem.”
Dries frowned. “No. If you manage to meet Maraì, I want to be there.”
“Me too.”
Two pairs of eyes rolled at the same time to stare down at me. I still wasn’t welcome in the little killer club. Oh well, worth a try.
March confirmed the sentence. “I’d prefer you wait for us here, Island.”
Remembering my earlier pledge to let him keep me safe, I bit back my frustration. As I considered asking him to wear a wire for my benefit, a black-clad figure emerged from the stairs leading to the aft deck: Moritz, Dries’s cook and overall handyman.
I’d run into him a couple of times on the ship. He’d smiled at me, and we’d even exchanged a few words: a considerable improvement from the silent treatment I got from the yakuza guy or the pilot and engineer. He was about my age and originally from Bern; I found him oddly lean for someone who baked so many pastries. Speaking of which, he was bringing another tray of Nutella-filled cornetti—Dries was in excellent shape, but I was starting to fear that Moritz meant in fact to fatten him for some dark Helvetic ritual.
I smiled when I saw the Nutella. Moritz smiled too, just a little too sweetly—maybe I was scheduled to be part of the ritual sacrifice too.
March didn’t smile. At all. He considered the newcomer warily and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Perhaps you’ll be safer with us after all.”
And so, the wheel of destiny spun, because even in the heart of the most civilized gentleman sleeps a red-ass baboon.
20
The Emperor’s Wife
Ramirez squeezed one of Rica’s luscious and perfect breasts with a salacious smile. “At long last, Rica, you are mine!”
She looked away and wiped a tear from her beautiful eyes. “No, Ramirez. I am only your prisoner.”
—Kerry-Lee Storm, The Cost of Rica III: Shackles of Lust
Forty minutes after our family had made the decision to not only renounce violence but also support women in the workforce, Dries’s yacht was anchored ashore from the seaside village of Marinje Zemlje. We rented an old white Mercedes from a local garage whose owner didn’t seem to care much for a valid proof of ID. Soon we were drivin
g up a trail among fragrant pine trees and cypresses, surrounded by a bunch of cicadas shaking their asses—sorry, their timbals—like there would be no tomorrow. We passed a few houses and vineyards, until a tall barbed wire fence barred the trail.
Maraì had chosen to isolate his facility completely: beyond the fence, the only land access to the glass building was a footpath zigzagging through dense maquis shrubbery. A steel gate guarded the entrance to the compound. There was no visible intercom, but less than a minute after we’d stopped the car, a pair of bodyguards clad in dark-gray fatigues appeared on the other side of the gate.
I had a moment of mild embarrassment when I realized that I was the only one not wearing sunglasses here, so these guys would immediately know I wasn’t the real deal. From the back seat, I glanced at March’s aviators and made a mental note to find myself a pair of those. Dries and I watched him step out of the car and stroll to the gate. Once there, he produced a printed version of one of Falchi’s scans from his jacket that he slipped through the steel bars. “Good morning, gentlemen. Can I ask you to give this to Mr. Maraì and tell him we would like a word with him about Sabina Falchi?”
Hard to tell what could be going on behind the guards’ own sunglasses. They took the paper and disappeared down the footpath without a word. March returned to the car and leaned against it, waiting. It took almost ten minutes before they returned, this time with a couple of friends, who weren’t even trying to conceal their holsters and the guns inside.
Dries lowered his sunglasses and winked at me in the mirror. “Shall we?”
Too late to chicken out. I didn’t want to wait alone in the car in the middle of nowhere anyway. I followed him out of the car, puffing my chest to inspire some measure of respect from our hosts. We earned a body search before being allowed past the gate. I worried that March’s and Dries’s best friends would be a problem, but the guards just took those and placed them in barcoded Ziploc bags, and that was it. As if it were a common occurrence for Maraì’s visitors to conceal carry. What kind of world do we live in?
