Wicked Intentions

29

Her fingers move quickly over a keyboard as she glances at the computer screen tucked below the counter. “Yes. Mr. Moreno requests you join him on the seventh floor when you arrive.”

Our gazes meet. Genevieve’s pleasant smile doesn’t waver. If she feels any pity at all for me at being summoned to the seventh floor by the head of the European crime syndicate, she doesn’t reveal it.

“Thank you, Genevieve.”

“You’re welcome. Please let me know if I may be of any service during your stay.”

Translation: If you require unregistered weapons, forged identity papers, armed escorts, or emergency disposal of dead bodies, I’m your girl.

We nod at each other in farewell. I quickly cross the lobby, noting several familiar faces. People are checking in and out, relaxing on sofas and reading newspapers, strolling around with drinks in their hands. Exactly like people do in a normal hotel lobby.

But this is no normal hotel, which I’m irrefutably reminded of as I enter the main elevators and look at the row of buttons on the panel on the wall. The floors aren’t numbered. Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, each of the nine floors in the Palace is named after one of the circles of hell.

I hit the button marked “Violence” and shiver as the elevator doors slide silently shut.

11

Mariana

T

he elevator dings.

The doors slide open. I’m greeted by the sight of two men, naked from the waist up, beating each other bloody with bare fists in the middle of an open ring, with boundaries marked by a square of silver coins on the burgundy carpet.

Burgundy. Good for concealing bloodstains.

I steel myself against the revulsion that twists my stomach.

A barrel-chested man with no neck, a crooked nose, and a mouthful of disheveled teeth stands to the right of the doors. The only thing remotely attractive about him is his suit, a bespoke pinstripe Brioni with a midnight-blue tie and matching silk pocket square.

“Dragonfly.” His voice is a rocky rumble, heavy with the mark of southern Italy.

“Enzo. You’re looking well.”

He chuckles. Somehow it sounds just as Sicilian as his accent. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, bambolina. It’s no good for your health.”

His gaze drifts over my figure, lingering on the hint of cleavage the collar of my coat doesn’t manage to conceal. I curse myself for leaving my scarf at Reynard’s.

Enzo murmurs something lewd in Italian, licking his lips.

Aggravated, I respond in Italian that his mother would smack him to hear him talking like that.

“Ya,” he says, nodding. “But she’s dead, so she don’t hear nothing no more except the munching of worms. Capo’s waiting on you.”

So much for the pleasant chitchat.

Enzo turns, expecting me to follow because he knows I always do. I walk behind him as he leads me around the fighting men to a sitting area on the other side of the room.

The walls are painted black. The room is dim, smoky, and smells like sweat. Incongruent to everything, the gorgeous resonance of a pure, perfect soprano singing an aria from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly plays on invisible speakers.

Trying to ignore the grunts of pain that punctuate the opera as blows are landed, I keep my gaze averted from the pair of bloody fighters and focus on the irregular mole on the back of Enzo’s bald head.

But I’ve already seen enough.

Judging by the bruising on their bodies and how both men are panting and swaying on their feet, the fight has been going on for some time. Won’t be long before one of them will collect his coins and the other is dragged out by his heels and disposed of.

Losers in one of Capo’s fights don’t leave the building breathing.

The sitting area is raised on a dais, flanked by a pair of floor lamps, wide enough to hold a long leather sofa and a few club chairs on either end. Six men in suits stand discreetly in the shadows at the rear, three on either side, hands clasped at their waists, faces impassive.

Capo’s soldiers. Made men.

Assassins.

A glass coffee table in front of the sofa holds a magnum of champagne on ice and two empty crystal champagne flutes. The sofa itself holds two very young, nude girls—leashed with leather collars—and one large, dead-eyed man.

In one fist he holds the stub of a cigar. In the other he holds the girls’ leashes.

He’s thirty-five, maybe forty, wearing a tailored dark suit even more beautiful than Enzo’s. His hair is thick and midnight black. His jaw is as hard as his eyes. He’s handsome in an ugly sort of way, all the violence inside him barely contained, oozing out around the edges.

Vincent Moreno.

The most evil creature in the world, next to the Devil himself.

“Mari,” he says softly. “You’re here.”

With a savage jerk of his arm, he drags both girls off the sofa. They land at his feet in a tangle of pale limbs and pained yelps, quickly silenced by another cruel jerk on their collars. They cower on the carpet, heads down, clinging to his legs.

My back teeth are gritted so hard, I think they might shatter.

“Capo di tutti capi,” I say. Boss of all bosses. “I am.”

Those dead eyes slice straight through me. For a long moment, he simply stares at me. Then, horribly, he starts to laugh.

“Enzo! Have you ever seen such a look!” He motions to me with his cigar. A fat clump of glowing ash falls onto one of the girls, burning her leg. She pulls her lips between her teeth and whimpers.

“Ya,” drawls Enzo, popping a piece of gum into his mouth. He winks at me. “When some guy wants to kill me, he looks just like that.”