THREE
Florence, Italy
June 2017
About One Year Later
Chiara D’Angelo
Ms. D’Angelo, we’re looking for an official comment from D’Angelo Enterprises regarding Jack Knight-Snow. Could you please provide us with something?”
I rolled my eyes at the female voice drifting over speaker phone in the car.
“I’m sorry, Ms. . . . ?” My voice trailed off in a question mark.
I shifted down to first gear, carefully pulling around a group of drunk tourists stumbling across the dark street.
“White. Candace White from Trending Now—Hollywood Edition.”
“Right. You do realize that there is a nine-hour time difference between Los Angeles, California and Florence, Italy?”
Silence.
“Uh . . . yes.” The clacking of computer keys.
I helped her along. “It’s after midnight here, Ms. White—”
“Candace. But you can call me Candy. That’s Candy with a ‘C’ not a ‘K.’”
Of course. No surprise there.
“Candy. So though I understand your interest in this matter, I would greatly appreciate you calling back during our regular business hours.”
I turned left and then right, winding my way deeper into the labyrinth of residential streets that sprawled outward from central Florence.
Candy sighed on the phone. “Look, I know it’s late there. But I’m just an intern here, and I really need this statement before closing time today. Could you do me a favor just this once?”
Please.
“Does that clueless intern line work?”
Another long pause.
“Sometimes.”
Well, she scored points for honesty.
I turned onto a side street, looking for a parking place.
Candy took my silence for permission to keep talking. “Since finding the lost Etruscan horde, Jack Knight-Snow has become the internet’s favorite mystery man.”
Didn’t I know it.
She kept going. “As the art dealers representing Mr. Knight-Snow’s finds, D’Angelo Enterprises surely has contact with him.” Her voice lowered into that of-course-you-can-tell-me tone of all sorority girls. Another manipulative weapon. “Is he as hot as the photo suggests?”
No need to clarify which photo she was referring to.
I spotted a parking place and carefully pulled in, killing the engine.
Candy was just warming up, unfortunately. “Does Jack Knight-Snow really look like a young Harrison Ford? I mean that photo! It’s . . . wow. Any woman with a pulse is in love with him. I’ve got this whole bit about how he’s the real Indiana Jones. I just need some official comment to round it out. Would you be willing to be interviewed? Or, at least, give me a quote?”
I couldn’t believe she expected me to respond to that.
Okay. Sure.
Yes, Jack Knight-Snow did bear an uncanny resemblance to a young Harrison Ford, complete with chiseled jaw, wavy hair, charming smile and never-ending snark.
Yes, he was still a ghost, unbeknownst to Ms. White and the rest of the world.
And, yes, he had recently become one of the most celebrated (or was notorious a better descriptor?) treasure hunters in the world. The Indiana Jones comparison was not completely out of line, as much as it pained me to admit it.
Jack had moved in with Tennyson last July and had spent the past year chasing his sunken Etruscan treasure. Jack knew where the ship went down, off the coast of Sardinia near the town of Sassari. There simply had been no way to raise the ship in 1818.
Enter the twenty-first century. Jack, along with Tennyson, located the sunken ship. Being a ghost did come in handy when needing to explore the ocean floor for days on end.
Not to go into all the legal details, the ship was in international waters and, as the original discovery came from historical D’Angelo lands, Tennyson was perfectly within his rights to raise the ship once he got the proper permits. After forging a partnership with Roberto Moretti—an Etruscan expert and archaeologist who knew all about Jack and my brothers’ special abilities—they excavated the site.
Ten months of underwater archeology and forty million euros worth of treasure later, the world was clamoring to know more about the Sassari Horde and this dashing adventurer with the same name as the long-dead John Knight-Snow, Lord Knight.
Worse, several weeks ago an over-eager grad student had captured a shadowy photo of Jack.
Thankfully, Jack didn’t look like a ghost in the image.
But—and here I will be honest—Jack did look insanely hot. Dark and mysterious, his blue eyes and tousled hair popping off the dark background, teal satin waistcoat over an old-fashioned shirt loose at the throat, eyes dancing with mischief and humor. The whole thing was a cross between Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings. Basically, Jack looked like a gentleman who had just rolled out of a velvet-draped, four-poster canopy bed after a night of debauchery.
To say the internet blew up over the photo would be to put it mildly. And now, the entire world (or at least the female half of it) could not get enough of Jack Knight-Snow.
Sigh.
Candy was still on the phone.
“I have no comment, Candy. Though I work with Mr. Knight-Snow on the sale of antiquities, he is a very private man which means I rarely speak with him. I’ve only seen him a handful of times over the past year.” That was the absolute truth. “I will, however, pass along to him that you called—”
“Wait! Could you at least tell me if he is as sexy in person as he is in the photo? Ya know, just woman-to-woman?”
Grrrr.
I couldn’t feed the paparazzi mill on this one. One, my brothers would never let me live it down and two . . . my brothers would never let me live it down.
“I suppose I would say, based on the last time I saw him, Jack appears in person just as he looks in the photo.” I carefully hedged.
“Thank you, Ms. D’Angelo.”
Click.
Well.
She hung up on me.
I sat back, gritting my teeth and giving myself a stern talking to. My frustration with Candy had nothing to do with that teeny tiny part of me that missed Jack and wished that I had seen him more over the past year. Though the phone conversation left that teeny tiny part feeling scrubbed raw.
I had made the right decision last year in kicking Jack out. I had. Look at all that he had accomplished. How was it possible that Jack could turn himself into a self-made millionaire and internet sensation in just under a year? He was a ghost, for heaven’s sake.
And if that teeny tiny part of me regretted not having Jack in my life, so be it. It wasn’t like Jack and I were good together. Fire and gasoline and all that. But sometimes . . . I missed that spark. The excitement of matching wits with him.
Unlike Jack, my year hadn’t been stellar. I still couldn’t convince a solid, stable guy that I was long-term girlfriend material. Case in point, potential boyfriend number four dumped me last week. His parting shot? You need some serious therapy. When you get your issues sorted out and are capable of an adult relationship, call me.
Tennyson kept insisting that I should seek professional help. I didn’t need a therapist. I didn’t want some shrink in my head, forcing me to change into someone I didn’t necessarily want to be.
I was fine. People liked me. Maybe not potential boyfriends, but . . . whatever. I simply needed to improve my mental filters, to think my words through more before I said them.
Jack, on the other hand, needed to hire a publicist. Or, at the very least, an administrative assistant.
I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with his fan-girl phone calls. I had too much going on.
Two weeks ago, Nonna had decided to take a month-long cruise along the European coast. Wanting my Nonna to have fun, I helped her pack and even took her shopping for some new clothes. Earlier in the day, I drove her to Pisa and settled her in her state cabin, chatting with the on-board doctor about her high blood pressure and fickle knee. Between me and the cruise staff, Nonna would have an amazing trip.
But I was now behind on work. I shook my head, focusing on the task at hand.
I scanned the block the dark night punctuated by the occasional yellow glow of a street lamp. Buildings lined the road, each blending into the next, all shades of sunset . . . cream, orange, yellow, red. Shops clustered at street level and floor after floor of apartments stretched above, cheery with their green shutters. Lightning flashed in the distance, causing me to flinch.
A few people meandered down the sidewalk. It was late, but not that late. Not so late that my presence would be conspicuous.
An owl hooted a warning as I turned off the car and threw on the parking brake. The hoo-hoo was an omen of secrets reborn and old pain unearthed.
Excellent.
Enzio had passed tonight’s surveillance job on to me, and the owl’s omen meant that I would find something.
The facts of this case were fairly straightforward. Enzio’s client suspected his wife was having an extramarital affair. Her behavior had been erratic over the past several months—late nights, whispered phone calls, withdrawals of money for no apparent reason . . . the whole typical story. The husband had signed waiver forms, granting access to the wife’s car and purse. Enzio had thoroughly bugged both with listening devices and GPS trackers. Tonight, the wife was supposed to be visiting her sister. But the GPS told a different story.
I had followed the wife here, just north of the Florence centro, the historic, medieval downtown. The blinking red dot positioned her half a city block from where I was parked. My goal tonight was to get close enough to record any conversation, hopefully obtaining definitive proof of the wife’s nocturnal activities.
Pulling my laptop from the back seat, I booted up my sound monitoring programs. I tapped my ear piece and double-checked that the wireless connection was secure. A glance at my phone showed that the GPS still had my target pinned. I set the laptop on the floor, carefully concealed but still running.
Making sure my long hair hid my ear piece, I stepped from the car, locking it behind me. The wireless connection would continue to record to the laptop, but I needed to bridge the gap. The wife was too far away for me to monitor her from the car, so I had to move myself closer.
I knew I was taking a risk being downtown alone, at night, on a dark street. But Florence wasn’t Naples. It was generally safe for all but the most foolish. I looked up and down the empty street, sternly telling myself to ignore a ping of unease. Usually Marco or another of Enzio’s people accompanied me.
Well . . . sometimes they did.
Like . . . once or twice.
Okay, so I probably needed to be better about having backup. Someone to call the polizia if things went south. Enzio would give me an earful if he found out, going on and on about my ‘unhealthy obsession with taking risks to prove myself.’
Enzio said I had little dog syndrome. I had to bark and yap ferociously to convince others to take me seriously.
That Enzio. Always poking fun of my height.
The real answer was simple. I hated sharing. Consider it the by-product of being the youngest of four children. I disliked having to share things like chocolate and toys and . . . limelight.
So I was a little competitive. What was wrong with that?
I pulled my purse onto my shoulder and walked down the sidewalk, my stride confident and unhurried. Static crackled in my ear piece, snippets of sound coming in as I drew closer to an intersection. I rounded the corner and all the noise solidified.
“—late.” A woman’s voice in my ear—cultured, high-born Italian. “If you insist on us meeting in the open like this, at least be on time.”
I instantly stopped, feigning interest in a pair of cute heels in a low-lit shop window. According to the GPS signal, the wife was up the street a bit and just around the corner. The wireless symbol glowed on my phone, indicating I was still connected to my laptop and recording the conversation. Perfect.
“Sorry but time was of the essence.” A man’s voice. Somewhat muffled but still discernible. “I wasn’t able to make other”—a pause—“arrangements.”
Unlike the woman, his Italian ran thick with Tuscany—dropped k sounds and slurred words, like he was speaking with his mouth full.
“Give me more notice next time.” The wife sounded annoyed. Put out. Which I found . . . interesting. Annoyance and irritation were not emotions usually associated with a clandestine, romantic hook-up.
“You want this or not?” the man replied.
A long silence.
I double-checked to make sure I hadn’t lost the connection. Nope. Still there. I moved away from the shop window, going closer to the corner. Should I take the risk of a visual? I hated not knowing what was going on.
Somewhere a nightingale sang—a lovers’ song of thwarted devotion and longing. Perfect timing. I was intercepting an illicit affair, after all.
Finally, the woman let out a slow breath.
I stopped again, leaning a shoulder against a wall, pretending to check my phone.
“I do want this. But meeting you is risky.” Her tone made it clear she was seriously displeased.
“Yeah, well, it’s gonna cost you more. The boss said it was too dangerous. Too many people are watching the senator and his family, and it has to look like an accident. You still want the whole family gone?”
My entire body froze.
Whoa. What?!
“Yes. The entire family.”
“Even the little ones? Cause that makes some of our people squeamish. That means more resources. Which means you owe us more money.”
My heart leaped into my throat.
Holy crap! Clearly not an affair going on tonight.
I instinctively leaned away from the corner. I had a terrible feeling about conversations like this. They usually involved people who would happily ensure silence with a well-placed bullet.
This was why Enzio steered clear of the mafia.
“Nonsense. You people don’t get uneasy over a little blood. You promised it would be done,” she said. “A lightning strike, you said. It’s the only way.”
My breathing stuttered to a stop.
Her Italian words tumbled through my brain, triggering a landslide of emotions.
Lampo. Flash.
Lightning.
Memories slammed into me with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Trauma does this to you. Finds you at the most inopportune times.
Another night. Another place. A situation completely unrelated to this one. A stumbling figure muttering similar words.
Lightning. Lightning. It’s the only way. Now I see.
Chills chased my spine, goosebumps lurching to attention.
The owl hooted again, fluttering overhead. I flinched. The dead were listening. They were close, so close—
I fought to keep myself in the present.
Focus, Chiara.
Brutally, I took my panicked memories and stuffed them deep into an emotional black hole I labeled, Things I Don’t Think About.
“You pay up, and you’ll get your lightning strike,” the man was saying. “Right from the storms.”
Proprio dalle tempeste . . . his Italian words reverberated through me, jolting all lingering memories from my mind.
No. That wasn’t quite right. I instantly reformed his phrase in my mind— right from the Storms. Capital-S.
The Tempeste family. One of the largest mafia syndicates in central Italy.
Crap.
We didn’t mess with the Cosa Nostra. I needed to leave.
But . . .
They were going to hurt children? No matter their parents, kids were always innocent.
Dammit. Now I was curious and motivated. Not a good combo for staying out of trouble.
“Fine. Return my money, and I’ll look elsewhere,” the woman said. “Someone who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty for the right price.”
The man laughed. He wasn’t amused. “You honestly think the boss is going to let you walk? You’re in too deep. You have until Thursday to get us the money, or the boss might find it necessary to ensure your silence. A lightning strike.”
A lightning strike. The kiss of death. That was the Tempeste’s calling card.
Crap, crap.
A pause. The sound of breathing.
“How dare you threaten me,” she hissed.
“You wanna play with the big boys, you gotta be willing to take the risks.”
“What if I don’t have the money?” Her tone altered slightly.
“Not my problem.”
“Wait—”
“Thursday. Ciao.”
Footsteps headed my direction. The sounds from my microphone merging with my normal hearing.
Not good.
So not good.
I pushed off the wall and walked toward my car, head bent over my phone.
Don’t mind me. I’m just a typical woman blowing up her boyfriend’s phone.
The clack of loafers on paving stones sounded behind me. I flicked my phone to record video. Ya know, so at least I had a record of any bad stuff going down.
The footsteps kept coming. Faster. Closer.
Crap.
Don’t run. Don’t react. Acting suspicious will just raise red flags.
Ten yards to my car. Five. Three.
I chirped the alarm, unlocking the doors.
A bird fluttered down from overhead, landing on the roof of my car in a swoop of wings.
I recoiled, jumping back.
A voice laughed behind me—the one I had just recorded. I whirled, staring into the face of an unknown man.
“Jumpy tonight, aren’t you? Sure sign of a guilty conscience.” He touched the side of his nose with a finger—Italian hand-talk for accusing someone of having a secret. “It’s just an owl.”
What?
I spun around and met the golden eyes of the owl perched on my car roof, peering at me with sentient intelligence.
It hooted. An omen promising visions of the dead.
Crap, crap, crap!