Page 92 of Ruthless Daddy
I turned in the chair. He was in a soft grey crewneck and the dark jeans he wore when he was at home and not expecting to leave. There was a faint shadow at his jaw from not shaving. His hair was pushed back from his face. He had not slept much.Neither had I. We had spent most of the night on opposite sides of the workstation, him quiet in the armchair under the lamp with a book he was not reading, watching me work.
“Two more banks,” I said. “Maybe three. I think there’s a tax ID at the end of it.”
“I believe in you.” He bent and kissed the top of my head, the same place Sal had kissed, but the kiss was not the same kiss at all. “But still, eat.”
I ate. He stayed at my shoulder, one hand at the back of my neck under my hair, his thumb moving in a slow absent circle on the knob of bone at the top of my spine. The piece of pear was perfectly ripe. I had not had a piece of fruit that ripe in two years. I tried not to think about that and ate another one.
Across the room, Tonio was singing under his breath in Italian—something off-key and pop and embarrassing. Olimpo sighed against my ankle. Outside, the courtyard was bright with the hard winter sun that came after a snow, and someone—Tonio, presumably—had cleared the path to the gate at six this morning, because I had heard the scrape of the shovel through my dreams.
I had a family. I had a man. I had work that was mine. I was sitting in a house with three armed men on the perimeter and a fourth somewhere downtown coordinating a fifth, and the only thing required of me was the thing I was good at.
I was safe.
I had not had the word in my mouth in twenty-four months. It tasted strange. It tasted like the pear.
Pietro’s thumb stilled on my neck. “What.”
“Nothing.” I tipped my head back against his hand. “I was just—nothing.”
He smiled. “I’ll leave you to it. But please, eat.”
Three more pages of the Channel Islands trust. The third beneficiary’s name. The line through to the next correspondentbank, which was—I tapped through, held my breath—in Malta. Of course it was in Malta. Krol was in Malta. The signature woman lived three blocks from a bank that fed the trust that fed the Zurich account that fed Northbridge that paid the men in the motel on Mannheim Road.
I reached for the keyboard to pull the Maltese bank’s correspondent file.
My phone buzzed against the desk.
I looked at it. The screen was lit with a number I did not know. A 312 area code. Chicago. No name attached.
“Hello?”
The line was open but for a moment nobody spoke. I heard the inside of a room. A small room. Hard surfaces. Breath that was not mine.
Then a voice.
“Miss Anna.”
I closed my eyes.
There was only one person alive who had ever called me Miss Anna. He had said it like a courtesy, like he was tipping a hat he did not own.
“Wendell. Are you ok?”
“Miss Anna, I’m sorry.” His voice was high and tight and old. He sounded like a man holding something heavy that he was not strong enough to hold. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—they came up on me at the bench. I didn’t have time to—they took my coat and they got the paper out of the pocket. I’m so sorry, Miss Anna, I’m so sorry.”
“Wendell. Where are you?”
“I don’t — I don’t know, I’m in a — “
The phone moved. I heard it move—the small particular sound of a handset being lifted out of an old man’s hand by someone who was not going to ask permission.
A new voice came on the line.
“Madame Ancelotti.” My blood ran cold. She was using my WITSEC name.
French accent. Soft. The kind of softness that was a choice, not a quality.
I did not answer.
