by Camilla Monk
A brief kiss silenced my protests. “I need you to stay here. The room is safe, and I won’t be long.”
“But I—”
Another kiss. Why was I getting the feeling that sweet March was the same dissimulative guy as douchey March, only with much more convincing weapons? I straightened up, a frown replacing my enamored gaze. He read me effortlessly and brushed his thumb against my lips before I could voice my discontent.
“I trust you; we’ve established that. Do you trust me?”
What was I supposed to reply? When I had not only lured the guy into bed minutes ago, but also relinquished my stockings to him!
“I trust you, March.” I sighed, squeezing his hand and looking at him in the eyes. Despite my best efforts, though, it sounded more like I want to trust you, but I’m not sure I can . . . and maybe you can’t trust me either.
March nodded and pressed one last absent kiss to my forehead before he got up from the bed. I watched him retrieve his jacket from the long wardrobe, locked the suite’s door, and within seconds, he was gone.
I felt wet. And silly.
TWENTY-SIX
The Case
“Why did Tyler hide from me that he was a billionaire? Why did he pretend to be a mere cowboy? Are things ever what they seem?”
—Stacey Maverick, Texas Billionaire in Disguise
March eventually came back at some point during the night, but I had gone to bed and didn’t hear him. So much for my glorious sexual canoodling prospects.
I woke up to the sound of his voice and the feeling of his fingers caressing my hair. He was kneeling beside my bed, already dressed, and he smelled of coffee and aftershave. As my vision cleared, I registered his face, so close to mine I could count the little crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. I was tempted to kiss him, but fortunately, Cosmo had raised me well, and I knew that I was a vile creature cursed with all sorts of icky bodily manifestations, including, but not limited to, morning breath.
He rose to a standing position and leaned against the wall opposite to the bed with his arms crossed, allowing me some space to fully shake off the morning’s drowsiness. “Did you sleep well?”
I let out an affirmative grunt in response, sat up, and stretched, stirred by the pleasant aroma of toast and eggs floating in the air. Once out of bed, I wobbled my way to the living room. There, on a low table facing the sofa, an appetizing breakfast tray rested. All I had on were a tank top and a pair of panties, and I realized that March was following my every move with a slight gleam in his eyes. The idea that he might be checking out my body was equal parts embarrassing and flattering: I decided that I could learn to enjoy it.
“I’m sorry for what happened last night,” he said, sitting on an armchair across from me as I wolfed down my breakfast with a cup of hot cocoa.
I looked up from my cup. “You mean . . . sorry for what you did, or sorry for leaving like that?”
“A little bit of both, I suppose.”
“Ah.” I made no effort to conceal my disappointment. “Do you still think it’s too soon? Or too fast?” I asked with a dejected sigh, pouring myself a glass of orange juice.
He leaned back in the soft leather cushions and appraised me with impish eyes. “I think we need to finish what we started . . .”
I held my breath.
“And find that diamond.” He winked.
I gulped down my glass of orange juice, slammed it back on the tray like a whiskey shot, and rose from the couch to get ready. “You’re awful. If Dries manages to kill me and I die a virgin, I’ll come back to haunt you.”
Miyamoto Bank was located on a small artificial island in the Tokyo Bay. Not my favorite area of the city, I have to say: too cold, industrial, filled with big companies’ headquarters. The round glass building was sandwiched between the Sumida river—which emptied into the bay—and a large, empty square of lawn I assumed had been meant as some sort of minimalistic garden. It was an unusual choice of location for a bank, but I figured that if they welcomed clients like my mom, it was a good thing they were close to the sea. That way, if shit hit the fan, they could all jump into a boat and make their escape.
March parked in front of the building, and we were about to get inside when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He frowned at the caller ID and picked up. “Good morning . . . Again, this is not the best time . . . You know who to call for this . . . No one cares that you brought a bathing suit! This is not Cancun! . . . I’ll keep you updated if there’s any emergency.” He hung up with an aggravated sigh.
“Was that your little nephew again?” I asked, my eyes narrowing in interest.
“Yes.”
I shook my head as we passed the door. “Terrible liar . . .”
Once we were standing in the lobby, my eyes widened. “Wow, I bet you like it here!”
He shrugged nonchalantly, but I didn’t miss the slight twitch of his lips. Of course he liked it. Everything was white and impossibly clean, like an alien spaceship. The walls, the floor, the long desk behind which an elegant lady waited for potential visitors: they were all covered with the same pristine stone-like material, the only touch of color a couple of irises in a glass vase on the counter.
Combing my hair with my nervous fingers, I smiled at the woman. “Good morning, I think my mother had a safe at Miyamoto, under the name Léa Chaptal, maybe. Could you check that? We would like to access it,” I asked, praying that my mom hadn’t used a stupid alias like March did all the time. If she had, we were done.
Behind me, March waited as the long-haired girl started typing on a keyboard under the counter. Her eyes skimmed through some data, and she raised her head. “Mrs. Chaptal never possessed any safe here,” she announced with a slight crease of her brow.
Blood rushed to my temples. “Are you sure? I . . . It was my understanding that she did, and I was given a safe number.”
An expression of shock registered on the attendant’s ivory face, but she quickly schooled it into a courteous mask. “No safe was ever registered to her name. Perhaps you should discuss the issue with her account manager.”
“Miss Chaptal will do so.”
I looked up at the same time that I felt March’s hand on my shoulder. I nodded to confirm his statement.
“Do you have an ID?” she asked curtly.
I froze.
Why, yes, of course I have an ID. I’m Mrs. May!
Before I had the time to stutter some lame excuse, I felt March push me aside and pull a passport from his inner pocket. “There it is. Thank God I think about these things. One day she’ll forget her own name!”
He patted my shoulder affectionately, and I stared up at him, winded. Just how many fake passports had he purchased from Paulie? Obviously one with my real name, among others. Did I also get one for each month of the year? The young woman took “my” passport, and instructed us to wait while she made a brief call to somebody named Mr. Sakai.
A few seconds later, the doors of an elevator opened to reveal a tall, black-haired guy with a navy-blue suit and a short beard. Mr. Sakai didn’t look one bit Japanese. He gave me a friendly smile and greeted us . . . in French. “Bienvenue, Mademoiselle Chaptal. Je suis Patrick Sakai, c’est moi qui m’occupe des comptes de votre maman, je vais vous accompagner à la salle des coffres.” Welcome, Miss Chaptal. My name is Patrick Sakai, and I’m in charge of your mama’s accounts here. I’ll take you to the vault.
I blinked and returned his handshake. He acknowledged March with a curt bow and gestured for us to follow him into the elevator. As we did, I noticed March turning around to slant the receptionist a suspicious glance before entering the cart. She was on the phone, and when their gazes met, she seemed a little unnerved and jerked her eyes away.
As the elevator took us to the eleventh floor, I examined Sakai’s round features with curiosity. “Are you Franco-Japanese?”
He nodded with a big grin. “Yes! I miss good cheese when I’m here in Tokyo!” Then he went on in an apologetic tone. �
�Please excuse my young colleague. Léa’s safe is one of those we don’t register in our database. I’m sure you understand that exclusive clients can have . . . exclusive needs.”
“I guess . . .” No. I did not understand, to be honest. But the safe was here, and I could breathe again, so I just walked along.
Upon exiting the elevator, Sakai turned back to look at me. “Back when she registered the safe, Léa was still in the process of reorganizing her accounts and authorizing you to access them once you reached your majority. It’s been a long time, but have you been able to read the will since? Or would you like a summary of the assets currently being held or managed?”
I shook my head, a cold sweat breaking on my skin. “No . . . I’ve seen the notary, but there’ve been . . . um . . . complications.”
March came to the rescue. “M. Étienne was a little swarmed and could not find the time to complete all the necessary paperwork. His work is killing him. Perhaps you could provide Miss Chaptal with a written list once we’re done?”
He gave a little nod. “All right, we’ll stop in my office afterward to print your account statements.”
I thanked Sakai, and he led us through a series of white hallways until we were standing in front of a massive circular security door equipped with a fingerprint authentication system. I watched in amazement as he pressed his hand on what looked like a glass screen that flashed with a bright green light.
The heavy door opened to a shorter corridor that led to a second door of the same type. We followed him into the small passage, and something clicked in my mind. I looked up at March, my voice down to a whisper. “There must be metal detectors in here. Aren’t you worried that—”
“I know. That’s why I’m not carrying any weapon, Island. Everybody knows that there are no such things as ceramic and polymer firearms,” he whispered back while Sakai unlocked a second, foot-thick security door. I cast March a questioning glance, and the wink he gave me told me that there were such things as ceramic and polymer guns.
“On y est! Le Saint des Saints!” Here we are! The Holy of Holies! Sakai announced, turning to us.
All those Uncle Scrooge comics are a goddamn travesty: there was no money pool, and no complimentary towels in Miyamoto Bank’s vault, only a vast circular room with a high dome ceiling, and hundreds of shiny black doors on the otherwise pristine walls.
I pulled the crumpled paper with the safe’s number from my pocket and showed it to Sakai. “2120. Is it—”
March spotted the safe on the opposite wall; he pointed to it before our host had the time to answer. Sakai nodded in confirmation, and as we crossed the room to examine it, I realized that there was a tactile screen merged with the door’s sleek surface. It lit up when I grazed it, revealing a row of twenty empty squares and a touch keyboard whose virtual keys glowed with a soft bluish hue.
Awesome.
Twenty-digit code, numbers and letters: only a few billion possible combinations. I cast a distressed look at March, shaking my head to indicate that I had no idea where to start.
“Is everything all right?”
Behind us, Sakai’s gentle voice made me jump. March and I both turned to him, amicable smiles plastered on our faces. Better not let that guy guess that we didn’t have the safe’s combination, and in the unlikely event that we’d manage to open it, no need for him to know what was inside either. I gave him my trademark big sad eyes, those same eyes that had saved Antonio’s life—although admittedly they hadn’t been much use with Creepy-hat. “Yes, we’re good. This is little private, though. Could you give us a moment?”
He hesitated for a moment before retreating into the short corridor leading to the vault. There, he turned his back to us, the rhythmic tapping of his foot echoing faintly in the vault.
Once we were safely out of Sakai’s sight, March placed his hands on my shoulders, massaging them gently. “Relax and think, Island. She wouldn’t have set a combination you couldn’t figure out.”
Oh God. Killing people and kissing weren’t his only skills. He was also an accomplished back rubber. I closed my eyes, feeling the tension in my shoulders ebb under the pressure of his talented fingers. I just hoped he wouldn’t send me the bill.
Now, if you had to pick a twenty-digit code that would be both incredibly hard and incredibly easy to guess, what would you pick? Perhaps something involving the position of each letter of the alphabet? No, twenty-six letters, too many possibilities. I racked my brains for things that could be associated with the number. Fingers and toes? It could be, but how would that translate into a code? Dammit, I couldn’t think, even with the help of March’s backrub.
Even years after her death, my mother was still challenging me. I sighed at the memory of our games together, and how she would teach me how to play Find the Lady and bend the cards right, or napalm me at chess but always explain all her moves afterward so I could learn them. I hadn’t discovered Nutella until the age of thirteen because she had decreed I would only be allowed to have some if I could reproduce her favorite trick—solving a Rubik’s Cube with my hands behind my back.
So little Nutella, so many tears, so much frustration, and years later, I was exactly in the same place, except this was no Rubik’s Cube, just a fricking twenty-digit number.
A twenty-digit number . . .
A huge-ass number. One that conjured hours spent in the kitchen moping as I watched my mom eat Nutella spread on a slice of bread with a smug look on her face.
I raised my hand to type the first digit. Even if my guess was wrong, I had no other idea anyway. With a long exhale, I started filling the empty fields one by one.
43252003274489856500
When the safe’s door clicked, I nearly had a heart attack, and I felt March’s grip on my shoulders tighten. I craned my neck to look up at him over my shoulder, both terrified and excited.
“What is that number?” The astonishment was clear in his voice.
“The number of possible permutations for a classic Rubik’s Cube: forty-three quintillion or so.”
March let out a whistle of admiration as I pulled the heavy black door. There was a big metal case in the safe, which he took out carefully. I noticed the way he used both hands to support the case while carrying it to a small desk that stood against the room’s wall: whatever rested in there was heavy. He undid the clasps sealing the case and opened it. My heart skipped a beat. There it was. Uncut, but still shiny, with a few well-defined angles and looking every bit like a rough block of glass.
March and I were looking at four billion dollars.
Yes, four. You read that right.
There were two identical Cullinans in my mother’s case.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Flowers
“An army of a thousand men couldna stop me if I’m fighting for ye, my love. I swear on my kilt that I’ll return to ye!”
—Diane MacRoth, Claimed by the Impetuous Highlander
So. As I was saying, two Cullinans, and hopefully, at least one genuine diamond among them. I leaned conspiringly toward March, my voice down to a whisper. “That knife, the one you have on your leg, what is it made of?”
“Ceramic.”
“Wow, I thought they only made those for cooking!”
“Very resistant, won’t trigger metal detectors.” He shrugged.
“Good.” I nodded. “Then if one of these diamonds is fake, there’s a good chance we’ll know.”
“Scratch test?”
“Yup, go for it.”
Within seconds, March had bent to his side and produced that small incurved knife with the black blade—which reminded me of that poor guy at the Rose Paradise, and I cringed a little. He grabbed one of the stones, steadied it with his left hand, and proceeded to scrape the knife’s blade against the smooth surface. There was no suspense. A visible scratch mark immediately appeared, like a white wound on the translucent material.
“Glass, very likely,” I concluded.
Taking the second st
one, he carefully repeated the same experiment, except this time the shiny material resisted the blade admirably. We exchanged knowing looks. Two billion dollars’ worth of flawless natural diamond. That Queen person March worked for was going to be happy. “Well, that was an easy shell game!”
“No. The rules specify that you need three shells to make it a shell game,” March observed.
I shook my head with a smile as he concealed the knife back under his pants leg. Sakai turned to check on us; March slammed the case shut before our host could see what was inside and took it with him. I pushed the safe’s door closed.
Sakai led us out of the vault, and we were almost at the elevator when March stopped in front of one of the hallway’s windows to look down at the street. On the Harumi Dori, two black cars and a white van had stopped, the sleek black surface of their tinted windows reflecting the building’s glass facade. Several men jumped out of the vehicles. Black jackets, sunglasses. Those were not Jehovah’s Witnesses touring the neighborhood. I watched them stride toward the bank, and one of them gestured to the others to separate into two groups. March’s eyes narrowed, and he stopped me before I could enter the elevator. “We’ll take the stairs.”
Sakai shot us a suspicious look. “What’s going on?”
“Ring the alarm, order everyone to go to the top floors and stay there. Don’t follow us.”
I think our host was about to protest and say something like, “Who died and made you my boss?” but seeing March fish several dark gray objects from his pockets and start to assemble a gun before our eyes, Sakai closed his mouth, nodded, and then ran down the white hallway before disappearing behind a set of French doors. A few seconds later, the shrill sound of the alarm started echoing rhythmically in the building.
I looked at March, panic rising in my chest. “Do you think they’re here for the Cullinan? Did they follow us?”
“I didn’t think I had been tailed, but I’m willing to bet that young lady downstairs is the one who called them.”
