Chapter 33
thirty-three
RODRIGO
I am running. This is not, I should clarify, the kind of running I do when I am late for something or trying to catch a bus in a city.
This is the frantic kind of run a man does when his life depends on it, which mine does.
There are three armed men behind me. One of them lets off a shot, and it slams into the concrete corridor, removing a piece of wall where my head was a half-second earlier.
The ring is in my jacket pocket. I can feel it— small, heavy, warm from Billie’s body— bouncing against my hip with every stride.
The corridor branches. Left or right. I go left because the stairwell should be this direction— upward, toward the roof, where Rakowski and her teams can retrieve Marco out in the open.
Behind me: boots. Heavier than mine. A shout in Spanish— stop, or I will make you stop!
I do not stop. My focus is on luring these men away from Billie.
The corridor narrows. Pipes crowd the ceiling. The light flickers. I round a corner and?—
The door is locked.
Not just locked. Sealed. A heavy steel fire door with a magnetic lock, the kind that requires a badge, and I do not have a badge, because the badge is with Billie, who is somewhere behind me, and between us is a collection of armed men who would very much like me to be dead.
I turn.
The first goon rounds the corner. He is large— wider than the corridor seems designed to accommodate— and he is holding his weapon with a two-handed grip. His eyes find me with calm efficiency.
He raises the gun.
I look at the gun. I look at the man. We regard each other in the flickering light, and I have time— in the strange, elastic way— to think about several things at once.
I think about my grandmother’s house in the countryside and the way the light falls through the kitchen window in the morning.
The painting I never finished, the one of the olive grove at dusk.
But most of all, I think about Billie’s eyes when she said I don’t regret it either, and the weight of that sentence, and how I will likely never see her again after this moment.
I think: if this is where I die, I would like to have kissed her one more time.
The man’s finger moves on the trigger. I see it happen. This is it.
Then: a sound. Electric, sharp, like a wasp the size of a fist. The man's body goes rigid— every muscle contracting at once, his face seizing into an expression of profound and involuntary surprise— and he drops.
Straight down. The gun clatters away from him across the concrete and slides until it hits the wall.
Behind where the man stood— in the space he vacated by falling— is Billie. And those eyes.
She is holding a pink high-heeled shoe. The heel is sparking faintly and the man on the ground is twitching.
Her hair is slightly wild. Her red dress has a tear near the hem.
She is breathing hard, and her enormous brown eyes are wide, and she is the most magnificent thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
Alana stands beside her, one shoe on, one shoe not, looking like she’s lent her favorite accessory to a friend and is monitoring its use with proprietary interest.
“Hola,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than it has any right to. “You tased him,” I add, looking at the man on the ground.
“I did,” Billie confirms, and there is something in her face— something new, something wild— that tells me she is as surprised by this as I am. She looks as if she’s in shock. “I thought— I thought I might be too late,” she says, and her lower lip trembles.
“The shoe,” I say, gesturing at the stiletto in her hand.
“My shoe! It has a taser in it,” Alana adds helpfully, as if this requires explanation. “I bet you feel dumb for all those times you criticized the money I spend on good footwear.”
“I was afraid we were too late—” Billie says, and for the first time, I notice that her eyes are watering.
She’s flushed, and she throws herself at me, hugging me as if she’s never hugged me before.
“It would’ve been my fault—” she says, pressing her body against mine.
“I’m sorry, Rodrigo, you were right, we should have just stayed in the countryside and painted?—”
“No, no,” I murmur, pushing her hair behind her ear. “Where you go I go, amor.”
I push her hair behind her ear. I want to take her face in my hands and kiss her right here in this terrible corridor over the body of an unconscious man, but there is no time, because from behind them— from the direction they came— footsteps are approaching.
Many footsteps. And then a voice, and the voice is worse than the footsteps.
Marco.
He comes around the corner like something inevitable.
He is not running— he is walking, which is much more frightening.
His suit is still immaculate. His eyes find Billie’s back first, because she is closest to him, and his hand reaches for her— reaching for her shoulder, reaching to grab her, to spin her around, to take back what he believes is his.
I see it before she does. The geometry of it— his hand, her shoulder, the distance closing.
I lunge forward and shove her sideways, hard enough that she stumbles into the wall but out of his reach. I square my body toward Marco. My fists come up. Construction work is good for the arms as well as the legs, and I am ready— I am more than ready— to put my hands on this man.
But Alana is faster. She is so fast it surprises me, and I wonder for a moment if she cares about Billie— actually cares about her— the way I do.
She moves with a fluid, devastating precision that says she has been planning this moment.
Her hips rotate. Her right leg— the one still wearing a heel— swings in a wide, beautiful, absolutely vicious arc, and the pointed toe of her remaining stiletto connects with Marco’s face with a sound like someone dropping a dictionary on a marble floor.
Marco’s head snaps back. His body follows, staggering, his arms wheeling. Stars— he is seeing them. I can tell because his eyes go glassy and unfocused and his mouth opens but nothing comes out, which is the first time Marco Ledger has been at a loss for words, possibly in his entire life.
Alana does not waste the moment. She drops to him like a hawk on a field mouse, one hand seizing his right hand, her fingers finding the ring on his finger.
This wasn’t about Billie, I think, pushing Billie behind me so we’re out of Alana’s way. She wanted the ring.
She twists it off like a graverobber. Then, she turns to me.
She slides her hand into my jacket pocket— I shudder to be so close to her again— searching, finding, producing— the second ring.
The one Billie used to save her life. She holds both rings up, one in each hand, and her smile is incandescent.
“Mine!” she says simply.
On the ground at our feet, Marco’s eyes clear. He sees Alana with the rings. His face twists into something beyond anger. He opens his mouth to scream an order, and from behind him, more boots, more men, more guns converging.
“Run,” I say to Billie. It is not a suggestion.
We run. The three of us— Billie in her torn red dress, Alana in one shoe clutching two rings worth more than most nations, and me, bringing up the rear.
The stairwell appears— finally, mercifully— and we take it upward, the concrete steps spiraling beneath our feet, the sound of pursuit a thunderclap below us.
We climb. We climb toward the sky, and I can feel it— the air changing, the temperature shifting— and somewhere above us is the roof, and somewhere on that roof is the rest of our lives, assuming we reach it.
* * *
The roof opens above us like a held breath finally released.
We burst through the fire door— Billie first, then Alana, then me— and the night air hits my face with a coolness that feels, after the corridors below, like mercy.
Rome stretches out in every direction, lit and ancient and full of possibility, indifferent to the fact that three people need its mercy.
The sky above is dark and clear, and I can see stars. The rooftop is flat, bordered by a low concrete border. Ventilation units hum along one edge.
Benny is there.
He is standing by the fire door, holding it open with one hand, and he is visibly, unmistakably…
stuffed with food. His jacket pockets bulge.
One pocket contains what appears to be an entire lobster tail.
The other contains something wrapped in a napkin that could be cheese or could be cake; with Benny, the probability is equal.
There is a shrimp tail behind his ear, which I choose to believe is accidental.
“Primo!” he says, his face splitting into a grin. “You made it! I held the door. Like in the movie— you know the one— the one where the guy holds the door and?—“
“Benny,” I say. “Not now.”
“Right,” he says, and snaps to attention, or his version of it, which involves standing slightly straighter while still clutching a lobster tail.
Alana moves immediately. She turns to Billie, and something in her posture shifts. She reaches into the waistband of her skirt— where she has been carrying the two rings since she pulled them from Marco’s unconscious fingers— and she holds them out.
Both rings. Gold. Heavy. The two halves of a key to everything the Twin Ledger has built.
“Take them,” Alana says.
Billie stares at her. “Alana?—”
“For safekeeping.” Alana presses the rings into Billie’s hands, folding Billie’s fingers over them with a gentleness that seems almost foreign on her.
“I trust you. I know you’ll always do the right thing.
That’s why I’m giving them to you and not keeping them.
Because if I keep them, I’ll do the wrong thing.
I know myself.” She smiles— small, real, slightly crooked.
“You’re a better person than me, Billie. You’ve always been.”