Page 20 of Fastest Kill

Tore gave him a wink behind his daughter's back, and Dario didn't know what to do with the heat that flushed up his neck. If Frederica's father noticed him blushing, he was nice enough not to mention it.

Dario tried to push the heat away, picked up his phone, and started ordering more clothes, toiletries, and supplies for delivery.

8

Stacking Tore's files back into order was the kind of simple work Frederica enjoyed. Documents didn't lie. Documents didn't grin at you sideways while you tried to pretend you weren't thinking about them.

You should have sent Dario to a damn hotel and not let him have an excuse to stay longer.

The lamb kofta he had made everyone for dinner had been eaten, the plates cleared, and more of her father's good wine opened because Tore believed difficult problems deserved to be met with good wine.

Dario's cooking had been amazing again, and he seemed so genuinely happy to be doing it.

She had seen him carry dead bodies over his shoulder without batting an eyelid and create absolute carnage during the siege. Seeing him smiling just to be cooking for people was harder for her to reconcile. It was like a puzzle piece that didn't fit the picture she had created of him in her mind.

The table in the sitting room was covered in both columns of relics again, Foscari's defensive acquisitions on the left and Morosini's arsenal on the right, and she still couldn't find how they were connected.

She didn't even know why she was so certain they were. All she knew was that the magical world was relatively small and the chances of other players not knowing each other were slim.

"We need to call Rodrigo," Dario said, staring at the piles. He was fresh from a shower and wearing another black tourist shirt, this one with a Knight of St John on it.

Frederica stared at him for a long moment, the knight, the chest, everything down to the damp scent of his curls, made something in her start purring. It was…obscene. She wanted to go down to the harbor and jump in.

"We've had this conversation," Frederica said, looking away to keep her sanity.

"We had the beginning of it." He was leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed. "We found out there are two players. Someone who isn't Serapis is building a weapon, and Kon confirmed the magical shit is real and the objects are dangerous. My brother needs to know."

"Your brother needs the full picture, not half of one."

"Then we give him what we have. Do you think these two know each other? Sure, they probably do. I'm thinking a bit further ahead than that, like what if they are allies? Serapis attacked my family at my home, Frederica. If Morosini is his friend and specializes in magical weapons, what if my family is facing them both next? We need time to figure out how we can defend against two of them," he argued, genuine worry in his eyes.

Dario might have had many faults, but he loved his brothers more than anything. Frederica had seen it firsthand.

"We don't know who Morosini really is," she said as calmly as she could, not wanting to fight with him for once. "We have a name Baba used, a voice description, and a buying pattern. That's not enough to upset Rodrigo over. He'll start moving on Morosini before we know what we're moving on."

"He won't go after some guy unprovoked. He's not stupid."

"I never said he was stupid. I said he's reactive when your family is in the picture, and everything about Serapis touches your family." She set her pen down. "You know I'm right about this."

She saw something cross his face, not the grin or the lightness he usually defaulted to. Something older and more painful.

"What I know," Dario said, "is that every time someone in my family decided to keep something secret to protect everyone else, it cost us everything."

"We're not keeping it secret," she said, more carefully. "We're waiting until we know enough to make it mean something."

"And if Serapis makes a move in the time we're waiting to know enough?" he demanded. "We will be fucked."

"We don't even know if Morosini is working with him! Baba heard German underneath the Italian. That's it. That's all we have." Frederica put her hands on her hips. "It's fuck all, and you know it."

Tore retreated to his armchair by the window and was reading a newspaper because he had decided this particular argument was not one he planned to weigh in on. Despina had retreated to the kitchen to see what she had for dessert.

"I know how we can solve this," Dario said at last. "We arm wrestle for it."

Frederica stared at him. "What?"

"I'm serious," he said, smiling again. "You think we wait, I think we call. Arm wrestle. Winner decides."

"That is the most idiotic…"