Chapter 8 #2
Shops and houses lined the tightly packed streets, locked up and lights off. This place was oppressively cramped.
“I went to boarding school and came home on holiday,” she volunteered, picking back up that conversation about friends in the city. “Orvieto is built like a fortress.”
“No kidding.”
“It’s separated from the surrounding lands, so it was not easy for me to reach.
The shopkeepers know me, but I’m not friends with them.
Izetta was my dearest friend, but she was from school.
Came home with me so I would have company, since her life was anything but nice.
But we often spent holidays in Greece with my uncle. ”
“A real hardship, I’m sure.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he didn’t really care.
He stopped short, knowing the longer she stuck around, the harder it’d be to ditch her.
Granted, she was really easy on the eyes and sharp as a tack, but it was hard enough taking care of himself without money or promise of tomorrow.
He didn’t want the responsibility on his shoulders for her too. “I can’t take you.”
“I’m not asking you to,” she countered sharply. “But maybe…maybe you need an admin.”
“I don’t—”
“Someone to watch your back.”
“You?” he challenged, stopping to stare down at her. “You’re going to watch my back?”
Chin lifting, she drew up. “I’ve been watching it for the last hour.”
He bit back a laugh and resumed course, peering down each tight alley, checking if he could see the land beyond the fortress-like village.
“Someone who has connections would be useful to this mission of yours, right?”
Dillon clenched his teeth. Wouldn’t answer that. It wasn’t happening. He didn’t want her getting hurt, and there was a lot of hurt where he was going.
“Someone who could provide a couple thousand euros.”
He stopped cold, half ticked that she was trying to buy her way. “So you think I can be bribed? Bought?”
Brown hair in disarray, she shrugged casually. “It is only fair I pay my way.”
He considered her, noting even shadows couldn’t hide her beauty. “Pay how? You just told me you didn’t have money.”
Cove wet her lips. Pointed up the ever-sloping cobblestone road.
“You’re climbing up instead of going down.
I assume that means you’re trying to get somewhere high.
” She brushed the hair from her face. “To see Vigneto Corallo, yes? You are planning to go back to the villa.” With a staggering breath, she offered, “I can access my papà’s safe. Get money, clothes, and a phone.”
“No phone. They’re homing beacons.”
She gave a ghost of a smile and drew in a steadying breath. “D’accordo.”
“No idea what that means.”
“‘Agreed,’” she translated.
He frowned. “That wasn’t me agreeing.”
“Niente ripensamenti!”
He blinked. “What?”
“No second thoughts—it, eh, means you cannot take it back.”
She was adorable. He wanted to laugh at the childish challenge.
Then holy fire, if he wasn’t reconsidering letting her come.
He cursed himself for not being stronger.
But man, the idea of having someone with him, someone who had a brain and knew how to think—that sounded nice.
Real nice. Especially since it was Gelato.
What’re you thinking? It’s asinine! You’ll have to keep her alive.
He’d have to do that anyway, since she didn’t have anyone to shelter with. While he didn’t like the plan, he would not abandon her.
“This way,” she said, throwing him a smile that said she was relieved and pleased, before slipping down a darkened alley that wasn’t any wider than their shoulders.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered, eyeing the tight space.
This was when he had a deep appreciation for the wide-open spaces of America.
Drawing a breath for courage—and to shrink his chest cavity like she’d taught him in the tunnels—he ducked in and followed her.
Each step thickened the darkness and filled him with a heady suspicion that he’d follow her to his death, if she’d just flash that smile again.
A moment later, they were skirting a path that had stone-walled structures on the left. On the right, a rail that protected them from a deadly drop. Trees and scrub obstructed their view, but then she turned into another shadowed alcove.
Dillon tripped, not realizing there were stone steps.
“Sorry—steps.”
He gritted his teeth. Really had to talk to her about those late warnings. The stairs led to a roof terrace.
“We’ll have to be quiet,” she said, waiting for him at the top. “There’s an apartment below, but I thought…” She motioned toward the blackened sky.
No, not the sky… The terrace offered an unobstructed view of the southern valley. “Yeah…nice,” he whispered. Light on his feet, he went to the stone half wall that served as a rail and scanned the area. Even with the moonlight, the valley and rolling hills seemed to drink in the shadows.
Cove came alongside. Indicated more to the right. “Vigneto Corallo is there.”
Though Dillon squinted, he couldn’t see the villa. But then it struck his tired, confused brain. “No lights.” Dots of illumination peppered the surrounding area, but there was a literal blackout where the villa sat.
“Sì,” she said softly. “It is very strange—it would normally be very bright. So, if the lights are still out, maybe they are no longer there?”
Dillon shifted and hiked a leg up, sitting on the wall. Took a load off his feet. “Maybe.”
Copying him, Cove sat next to him and folded her arms as she considered him with a long look. “You sound doubtful.”
That wasn’t the first time she’d acted like she knew him well enough to call him on things. The bigger surprise was that each time she’d been right. “It’s possible they left after not being able to find you.”
“Or?”
He met her gaze and felt that strange feeling in his gut. “Or they’re using the darkness to conceal their positions as they lay in wait for you.”
“Oh.” Wariness crowded her expression as she studied the void in the terrain.
A certain defeat dimmed the brightness in her eyes that’d been there a second ago.
Then her jaw set firmly and intensity radiated through the gold eyes that found him beneath the moonlight.
“I would make a deal with you, Achilles.”
Dillon mentally braced. Not because he dreaded what she’d ask but because he dreaded his ability to tell her no.
He had, after all, followed her through a tunnel and back into the suffocating passages of the old city.
That, and despite his determination not to get saddled with the responsibility of someone else, he knew he owed her for saving his bacon when that compression point happened.
Without her, he’d still be stuck there. Or he’d have gone back and tried to fight his way out through the house, only to end up dead.
“For the last two years, I have been trying to prove my papà’s innocence. Since you have been following him, it is not a surprise to you about the…scandal.”
“That he’s funding the Houthis, taking payoffs?”
“Massimo Galtier would never fund terrorists!” She glowered and flared her nostrils, looking once more in the direction of her family home, then back to him with a fire of determination.
“I will fund your search to find your papà if you will help me find what I need to exonerate mine. You saw—they kidnapped him. Whatever is happening, he is not willing or complicit.”
“I saw they took him,” Dillon conceded. “I did not see anything that proves he’s not complicit—he could’ve angered whoever wanted him taken.”
Hurt splayed through her pretty eyes.
“But I’d also imagine your father’s fortune is tied up in companies and stocks. The money we’d need—”
“There are tens of thousands in his vault, and I can access it. Too, I have several thousand in my safe.” Defiance and tenacity looked nice on her. Real nice. “It should be enough for a good start, sì?”
“Yes,” he said, surprising himself. But he had to reclaim some control here. “Two conditions.”
She waited, eyes afire.
“One, this is my mission, so you follow my instructions—not to be patriarchal, but because I have training you do not.”
She gave a reluctant nod.
“Two, no technology. At any time.”
Her lips parted as if to object, but then she closed her mouth and gave another nod.
“D’accordion?” he said, deliberately butchering the word to hide his uncertainty over how to pronounce it. When she smiled, man, the air suddenly felt hot.
“D’accordo.”