Luciano cupped her chin so that she had to look into his eyes. “The polizia caught him at the airport,” he said quietly. “There was a gunfight. He lost.”
“Please, stop!” Angelina jerked away and buried her face in the pillows to block out his brusque dialect, which was sure to creep into her nightmares for years to come.
“Bellezza, he was leaving you,” Luciano’s hand was on her back. “But you are not alone.” His hand traveled lower, skimming her bottom.
She reared up and slapped him across the face. “Get out!”
Luciano grabbed her hand, which was stinging, and forced her backward. He raised her hand above her head on the pillow.
“Give yourself to me, and live!” With agile swiftness, she would not have thought someone his size capable of, he settled over her.
His mouth was inches from hers. She smelled the roast beef on his tongue. It was intimate and offensive.
“I will take responsibility for your actions. You will be forgiven, and admitted into the family.”
He was as heavy as a cement slab resting on her chest. She bucked against him, trying to push him off. He just spread her legs wide with his lower body and ground himself against her.
Luciano spewed passionate curses against her neck and she went still. She did not want to incite him with her movements, but he continued to move rhythmically, pushing her down into the bed.
“P-please, don’t.”
He showed no signs that he’d heard her as he untied the hemp around his waist and wrenched it free.
A scream welled up in her throat only to be cut off by his tongue, which he shoved into her mouth. His hands were everywhere, kneading her breasts, roaming over her belly, lifting her up against his obscene erection.
The robe opened to reveal the beast’s hairy chest, and his heavy breathing rumbled against her. He was squeezing out what little strength the food had given her, but she pushed against him in one final attempt to be free.
Luciano grunted in satisfaction, and took a nip of her lips. He wanted her to fight him like this.
Angelina turned her face away, willing herself to black out. She did not want to be conscious when he did this. I will not live through it.
“Sì, Bellezza, it is better this way. I do not want to hurt you.” Luciano’s thick tongue snaked down her neck into the top of her nightgown, leaving a gross trail of wetness.
There was something gleaming on the satin sheet. The dinner knife had fallen off the china plate. The knife was only an arm’s length away.
Angelina shut her eyes but her arm moved slowly out from underneath him, over the sheet, searching for the knife.
Luciano pulled the silk gown up over her hips. She moaned when his rough woolen robe scratched her legs.
“Ti prego, perdonami,” he murmured a sincere apology as his hand stroked up the inside of her thigh.
She reached for the knife, but it was farther away than she had thought.
Luciano palmed her mound with a hairy hand.
“No!” With fingers extended, she reached again and as if pulled by an invisible cord, the knife slid across the red satin, into her hand.
* * * *
Falcon and Granger approached what looked like a large pile of rubble. The hem of Falcon’s pants was soaked in muddy waist-high grass. The only comfort in this sludge was the coolness of it in his squelching boots. At least his feet were cold.
The change in season had no effect on the weather here in northern Italy. Summer clung stubbornly to the first week of October.
With his bulletproof vest and ammunition belt on, the rest of him was baking in the oppressive heat of the field.
“What are we doing here?” Granger squinted at Falcon. “Falcon?”
“What?” Falcon pulled his gaze away from the burned out shell of the caretaker’s hut. Granger was his twin in attire, save for the cap pulled down over his blonde spikes.
“This isn’t the place for the rendezvous.” Granger followed his gaze to the cottage they had broken into.
Someone had gotten there years ahead of them. Ruggiero’s people had long since ransacked Natale’s home looking for either the Strad or the two million euro. Even the floorboards had been pulled up in their search.
The current owners of the property had boarded up the windows and doors but left the interior a charred, splintered, hacked-up mess of wood furniture and debris. The farmer they’d spoken to had mentioned some kind of superstition as the reason for leaving the place untouched.
“That was just the drop-off. This is where they’ve got her.” Granger looked around. “You think they have her in an olive orchard? When the sidewalk in Naples connected with your head, it loosened a few screws.”
Granger looked past Falcon’s shoulder to the other side of the field where three team members lay in the grass.
“They shouldn’t be here,” Falcon squelched along without sparing Granger a glance. Darien had insisted on the team being present to assist in case there was trouble. So they waited, and would come closer on command.
Falcon wouldn’t let the team members come any further onto the field. Two of them were ex-Navy Seals and the other he’d trained himself, but he was worried about them getting hurt. As far as he could tell, they didn’t have any experience with dragons and murderous black fog.
“Falcon, tell me this is not going to be another one for the books.” Granger squelched alongside him, and then slowed. “A tunnel?”
They were within five feet of the debris. There was a depression in the soil and beyond that, an opening in the ground.
“It leads to the catacombs under La Verità,” Falcon said.
“Under what?”
“It’s where il Dragone worship here in Forlì.”
Granger searched his face. “How do you know this?” When Falcon didn’t answer but jumped down into the earth instead, Granger smirked. “Don’t tell me, the book?”
“The book” was the only answer Falcon had for Granger. No need to drag his partner into this nightmare when there was still a chance Granger and the team might make it out of this alive.
They had come a day early to catch Ruggiero by surprise. The drop-off location was actually outside of the city limits, but Falcon wasn’t going to waste time searching the surrounding area.
Angelina was here. He could feel it.
He and Granger worked to pry off the new beams across the stone archway entrance. The beams weren’t exactly new, but they weren’t the same rotted planks of wood from that time before when Marchese Falco and Signor Tarcisio escaped the catacombs.
These weathered beams had a wood manufacturer’s name branded into them. This estate had belonged to the Invernizzi family for the last hundred years. Signor Invernizzi was the farmer Granger had grilled for information a week ago. The man was not il Dragone, but like the other inhabitants of Forlì, he harbored their centuries-old secrets in return for his family’s safety.
Giovanni Natale and his wife had lived on this land most of their lives. The maestro traveled extensively but always came back to the fold. He and his wife had been devout members of il Dragone. Like other il Dragone, they had remembered.
The last wood beam broke in two as he ripped it off.
Granger put a calming hand on his shoulder.
The town of Forlì had not overcome the cult. In spite of the Marchese Falco’s and Signor Tarcisio’s almost fatal investigation into il Dragone, the cult had managed to survive.
The memories were shrouded. If he thought about it, he could not pinpoint detail. But the veil lifted as a curtain in the breeze of his mind during idle times; when he walked, or ate a solitary meal at the little table in the apartment’s kitchenette.
He knew without a doubt that he, Tarcisio and his father, with the help of Signorina Livia and the Swiss Guard had searched the catacombs beneath the city. The dank walls around him now brought back that frenzied search when they had captured four—no—ten more il Dragone, who had thought to wai
t out the hunt in the warren of dark passages.
They had found several more by going door-to-door to identify the missing il Dragone of that fiery night. Images played in his mind as waking dreams, as if dubbed and saved, hotwired to his soul, of pounding on wood-planked doors. Finding homes abandoned, hearths still warm.
Here in this hole in the earth Falcon could still smell the scent of overripe food and vegetables left in cabinets as they searched homes of former inhabitants who’d fled the city, fearing the wrath of the duke and his powerful brother King Vittorio of Sardinia.
That night, men and women of il Dragone who were not killed or captured and carted off to Rome fled under cover of darkness, leaving their families behind.
Falcon knew also that he had married the young, generous-hipped Signorina Livia. Her father had been the first to die that night in the ceremonial hall. Three guards had pulled the man off his oldest daughter and still he’d fought until he had been run through with a sword. When Marchese Falco had accompanied Livia home with her father’s body, the signora stood crying by the door, and Livia’s four younger siblings stared solemnly at the shrouded figure in the cart.
Falcon could not remember what had happened in Forlì after he took his bride back to Rome. It was as if his psyche did not think it important enough to retain.
His fingers flexed, ready to punch the stone wall leading into the catacombs when he thought about how Signor Tarcisio must have lived in turmoil in the divided city thereafter. He saw Tarcisio’s brown eyes—Darien’s eyes—and knew they were one and the same.
Darien, the Ivy League barrister, was his brother in this eternal fight of good versus evil. He understood Darien’s fire now, his need for justice was intrinsic.
The same flowed through his veins. He had been taken back in time, given the gift of sight for the sole purpose of saving Angelina, his soul’s twin. Without the knowledge of the catacombs and all that had happened at La Verità, his love would have been lost to him once again.
Falcon attached the speaker to his earpiece; he was live. Granger would be able to hear everything that went on while keeping watch.
“Catacombs. I don’t like this, Falcon. What if you get lost down there? I should come with you.”
“Just watch your back.” Falcon was already striding into the gloom.
“If I lose you, I’m coming in.”
“Give me two hours.” It wouldn’t take that long to get through the tunnels with Angelina, but he didn’t want Granger getting lost in the catacombs considering what he had planned for later.
Chapter Five
“Luciano!”
A brown robed man strode through the stone archway. He shut the heavy double doors and walked swiftly over the flagstones. He stood near the bed with his face partially covered by a hood.
“He is looking for you.”
Luciano stiffened, his hand stilled against her.
Angelina gripped the knife in her hand. She was half afraid it would leap away or worse, cut her. She eased the knife into a satin fold of the rumpled sheets.
Luciano leaned up on one elbow to look at the man, her chance to slip from beneath him. It was a short-lived hope. Without turning in her direction, he removed his hand from between her legs and placed it on her belly, pushing her back down.
He glanced up at the dark stone archways above, and once again, she wondered who or what was up there. “Whoever told him I am here will go to their eternal death.”
The other brown robe glanced at the fiery pit. “You are not only horny, but stupid, as well!” The man came closer, but Angelina was beyond humiliation.
“Please, help me!” she cried.
The brown robe ignored her and picked up the length of rope Luciano had thrown to the floor. He tossed it atop the bed in disgust. “She is one of the Others.”
Luciano caressed her cheek, and she turned away. “She is…”
“Fool!” The brown robe shouted.
‘I am what?’ Angelina wanted to shout. Their words were confusing.
“She is mine now, Jacopo. I will speak for her.”
“How will you speak without a tongue?” the brown robe sneered at their entangled bodies. “And that won’t be the only part of your body he’ll cut off and feed to the Master.” Lowering his voice, Jacopo pleaded, “Come, or you will get us both killed.”
Luciano let loose a stream of curses. Although they were not as frightening in anger as in lust, Angelina held her breath until he moved off her.
While he re-tied the belt around his waist, she pulled the nightgown down over her hips. She tried to get up, but couldn’t. Her legs had gone to sleep but she could breathe easier now that his weight wasn’t squeezing the life out of her.
Without a backward glance, Jacopo walked to the double doors.
“I will come to you later, Bellezza,” Luciano bent over her.
She turned her head away, but he grabbed her chin and turned it back toward him, giving her a savage kiss on the mouth.
The nauseated moan she heard was coming from her own lips.
“He waits!” Jacopo called from the door.
The two men left the cavern, talking low, excitedly.
Angelina was not the least bit interested in what developments had called Luciano off her. She was just grateful it had been in time, before he’d killed her with his lust.
It was several minutes before she could move her legs, but when she was able, she walked gingerly to the small pit in the corner, where she heaved up the delicious meal she had eaten earlier.
Dizzy and weak, she lay with her cheek pressed to the stone floor and stared into the blaze across the cavern…
Flames from the fiery pit curled over the ground, snaking towards her until they licked at her feet, blistering them, and melting her toes like candle wax…
Angelina screamed, jerking upright.
She rubbed her toes, which were numb from the cold stone.
How long have I lain here?
Purpose cleared her head. She got up and walked swiftly to the bed. Choking off a cry of triumph, she stopped herself from looking up into the dark alcoves on the second level.
She had feared someone might have come in and taken it, but the knife was still there. Angelina lay down on top of the knife.
Luciano’s heavy bulk depressing the bed must have made the knife slide toward their bodies like that.
Angelina pulled the sheet over her and turned on her side, away from the eyes she felt on her. She slipped the knife under her pillow. Now, more than ever, she had to concentrate on staying awake.
The next time Luciano came to her, she would be ready.
* * * *
Through his earpiece, Falcon could hear Granger settling in for the wait.
With this high-tech equipment, Granger could hear his footsteps. He wanted to tell Granger not to worry, but how could he when he couldn’t explain why his partner shouldn’t worry?
Falcon turned on the tiny high-powered headlight on a leather band around his forehead. It cut through the inky blackness ten feet in front of him. He was about halfway through when he reached a Y-junction. His step never slowed as he veered left, the path clear in his mind’s eye.
Today he was il Dragone. He knew their secrets; the slithering wetness where snakes moved out of his path, the chirping mice scurrying away from his intrusion into their domain, and the running water … no, someone was running towards him through the tunnel, coming up fast from behind, from the path he’d bypassed.
Falcon turned. The brown robed man’s face contorted in rage as he lunged with an arm upraised. The serrated edge of a blade arched towards Falcon’s chest.
He sidestepped as the twelve–inch dagger sliced at the air in the space he had just vacated. He grabbed the brown robe around the neck and squeezed.
His insulting mutterings about the brown robe’s mother stopped when he heard … gurgling. It sounded familiar, he thought, when the dagger fell from the man’s hand. He looked at the
brown robe more closely when the hood fell back and saw the damaged earlobe where Angelina had pulled out the earring. It was the mute.
“What’s happening?” Granger asked. “It sounds like somebody’s choking.”
“Give me a minute, Grange.” Falcon cut off the man’s air supply with thumb and forefinger. The gurgling stopped. The body fell heavily to the ground.
“Why do I feel like somebody is going to die today?” Granger shouted.
“There wasn’t anything I could do, Grange. The guy came out of nowhere.” He removed the dead man’s robe and slipped it on over his artillery belt.
“Wait a second, did you just kill somebody? Darien needs them alive, all right? Remember the mess you cleaned up in Hong Kong? Max could have been sold into slavery had it not been for the cool-headed Falcon. That Falcon is missing in action! What we have here is the wrong Falcon. The Falcon in love isn’t the in the right frame of mind for this job!”
“He had a dagger, what did you want me to do, make friends? I don’t have time to sweet talk them, and besides, I needed his brown robe.” The brown robe had come from the right, so he’d leave that passage clear in case other il Dragone traveled that route. Falcon rolled the body up against the wall and kept moving.
“Brown robe? For what?” Granger was getting upset again. “Falcon, you’re talking code I don’t understand. Clear your head, man.”
Somewhere in him the other more levelheaded Falcon knew Granger was right. He could easily have avoided the brown robe. Instead, he chose to cross paths with the brown robes on his way to Angel. He wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. One less brown robe in Darien’s courtroom wasn’t going to make a difference.
Granger turned silent. If it seemed to Granger that he was following his own agenda, his friend was right.
There was a faint light up ahead and it was growing brighter.
Falcon turned his headlight off. He could make out two brown robed figures walking single file towards the central chamber about twenty feet ahead of him. He was in luck. There was another intersection coming up before they entered the chamber with its six portals.
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