Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hart
Don’t ever put me in a position where I have to show you how heartless I can be.
We’ve been in Italy, at Amadeo Cortini’s family home, for less than twenty-four hours. In that time, we’ve managed to lose someone, violate international laws, and drag a drunk asshole out of a fountain.
Clearly, we’re getting the important things done.
The Cortinis are part of the de’ Medici family, a well-connected Italian dynasty. Their home looks more like a castle than a house.
While their primary residence is in the English countryside, they also have homes in Cinque Terre, Italy, and Hallstatt, Austria.
Due to the Eights’ rule that we don’t all travel together, only a fraction of us are here. Not a particularly pleasing group in my opinion. Deo, JJ, Rett, Soren, and me.
Oh, and Ms. Elizabeth Ahrens. I’d hoped she didn’t have a passport.
“So, the key to a riddle is another riddle?” Deo asks before leaning over the balcony of his room to vomit.
Critical thinking is hard, buddy.
“When that result of a gas station condom set out to harvest your organs with a rusty spoon, did he give you any answers?”
“You should seek help, mate.” Deo laughs before throwing up more of the liquor he’d imbibed. He turns to lean against the railing, struggling to light a cigarette. “He babbled on about the four rivers, then some French horse. I don’t know.”
Great intel.
Soren strides through the door. “There’s a cipher.”
“Any idea where?” I ask, closing the patio doors while Deo continues to make a public spectacle of himself.
“If the history is right...”
“There’s no actual proof that what we’ve been told happened in history actually happened. We may have been lied to our whole lives.”
He follows me out of the sitting room and into the other wing in search of JJ or Rett. God, let them be decent. Not in the middle of sex acts with their problem.
“We’ll need a key even if we find the cipher,” Soren continues.
“I see we need to have a chat about our choice of words in public spaces…” I glance around for any of the Cortini staff.
JJ answers the door of their room. “Now what?” he asks, exasperated. “If jet lag doesn’t do me in, your insane ideas will.”
Oh, you have no clue how much I don’t want to be here.
While the Eights trample around the globe in pursuit of an agenda handed down by a handful of cloaked, powerful people, they’ve built a community where accountability goes to die.
Bizzy hightails it through the room, looking disheveled.
“Were you trying to find your underwear in the big pile?” I ask.
“First of all, don’t talk to my girlfriend like that, you sanctimonious prick. Second, I’m not in the mood to go around in circles with you anymore today.” He drawls in his Southern accent, which grows thicker as the day turns to night.
“Tullis spent a month in Italy three months ago. We need to find out what he was doing. Who he had contact with,” I tell JJ, trying not to say more in front of Ahrens.
“Fine. Tomorrow. No one is in any shape to go gallivanting all over the countryside right now.”
We arrive in a small town with a convent at its center. Masaki tracked down a car service whose driver recalled bringing Henry Tullis here. He also mentioned that Tullis seemed nervous. The driver assumed he was running from the law.
Soren and I step into a café with two tables outside beneath striped umbrellas. An employee who looks about our age smiles brightly at us.
“Do you speak English?” Soren asks her.
“Yes,” she says in a thick French accent.
I glance around, noticing French and Italian flags on the wall toward the back of the shop. “Can I show you a picture of someone? We were hoping you would recognize him.”
She blushes and says, “Mon Dieu, que tu es beau.” The matronly woman beside her nods. I could tell her I speak French and know she just said My God, you are so handsome, but I don’t feel the need to embarrass anyone today. Well, other than Bizzy, JJ, or Rett.
The picture of Tullis makes the matronly woman point and start gesturing an explanation.
“What’s that?”
“She say he’s a treasure man. He’s a gold man. Yes, a gold man.”
“Ask her what that means,” Soren says excitedly.
But she suddenly starts speaking frantically to the younger woman in a mix of French and Italian. I catch fragments: He was secret. Said people would come looking for answers. Tell them nothing. Nothing. He was the treasure man. Only the girl. Tell only the girl.
I pull Soren away while he peppers them with questions that leave both women staring at him wide-eyed.
We meet the others at the cars we hired. JJ and Rett are protectively shielding Bizzy from me. Cute.
“I think we need to go up into the mountains to the ski village,” Deo says, leaning heavily against the car, hung over from his celebration at being back on Italian soil. Dimwit.
My whole family enjoys cross-country skiing, so I spent my whole childhood sweating and freezing at the same time in some random Czech forest on two tiny pieces of wood. But I don’t want to traipse around in the snow with these people.
“Why?”
“They’ll tell us if they saw Tullis. He traveled through there. Give them some money if you have to. They're honest, hard-working people.”
“Don’t give me that working-class hero crap.”
JJ groans. Rett turns to whisper to Bizzy.
Perfect. I’m getting to them.
“Bit of a sticky wicket,” Deo says after consulting the driver. “Roads are closed higher up in the mountains. Heavy snow.”
On our way back to the Cortini palace—castle, monstrous display of wealth—we stop to eat.
Rett puts down the file folder he’s been reading and rubs his eyes. “You know who wrote this? The federal government. That's why it doesn’t make sense.”
I could ask what he’s reading, but that would require acting like I care. I don’t.
JJ says to him, “I’m not an expert, but I feel like there were other options…”
As Bizzy orders in careful, practiced Italian, I watch her, noticing she keeps as protective an aura around Rett and JJ as they do her. Her manners are impeccable. Her eyes…
...pools of fiery embers. She is passionate… unbending…
and is with sleep, love the breaking of your soul upon my lips…
I avert my eyes, turning away to catch my breath.
This is not happening. I’m not falling for this.
Soren tells JJ what his plans are after graduation.
Not holding back, I say, “It sounds like a toddler’s five-year plan.”
They blab on. I grow bored.
Not bothering to explain myself, I get up to wander toward the rustic restaurant bar.
From across the room, I see Bizzy head for the restroom. I positioned myself outside it, arms crossed, wearing my most disapproving expression.
She flushes red at the sight of me. Still, she pulls herself up straighter and lifts her chin. A small show of bravery on her part.
“You hurt my feelings,” she asserts.
“I’m sorry you have feelings. That must be exhausting.”
I smirk down at her while she lists my transgressions. A detailed list, too. Must make her feel accomplished.
“...I saw you push my luggage back through the carousel, too. Then you told the Cortini staff … Oh, and who tells perfect strangers that… What is wrong with you?”
I barely listen, just watching her get more agitated and aggrieved.
“What are you yapping about?”
If you listen closely, you can hear the moment she regrets her life choices.
Her mouth drops open. “Wh-what?”
She grabs my shirt in anger. I cup her face.
Then I kiss those petal-soft lips.