The door beneath the staircase had no handle.
He pressed his thumb against a piece of carved wood Elena had assumed was decoration, and somewhere inside the wall a mechanism released with a heavy metallic sound.
Beyond it waited darkness.
“You have a secret door.”
Lucian picked up an oil lamp from a shelf just inside.
“Old hotels generally have wine cellars. Perhaps rats. They don’t generally have biometric-looking secret doors.”
“You pressed your thumb against it.”
“In the shape of your thumb?”
“Would you prefer to discuss the architecture or the men trying to kill you?”
“The architecture is currently more charming.”
Another crack of thunder shook the building.
“I’m beginning to dislike that sentence.”
“You’re going to dislike many things I say tonight.”
Elena followed him into the darkness.
The door closed behind them.
For several seconds, the only sounds were their footsteps and the distant violence of the storm.
Stone walls pressed close on either side, damp with condensation. The air smelled of earth, wax and something faintly medicinal. Electrical cables had been fixed along the ceiling, but none of the bulbs were lit.
“Generator failed twenty minutes before you arrived.”
“You think I arranged the storm?”
“I haven't eliminated it.”
He glanced over his shoulder.
“That doesn't surprise me.”
Then she remembered who he was.
She had his name in seventeen files.
One particularly ugly intelligence report from Marseille that connected him to a warehouse where two men had been found tied to chairs with their fingers broken.
Nothing had ever resulted in charges.
Not because he had been cleared.
Because evidence had disappeared.
Witnesses had changed their statements.
And eventually Lucian himself had vanished.
Now Elena was following him underground.
She wondered whether this was the sort of decision people later described as obviously stupid.
Elena nearly walked into him.
The lamp threw shadows across his face.
“Would that concern you?”
“Your pulse says otherwise.”
Then looked down at the hand he still held.
His fingers rested against the inside of her wrist.
“My pulse says I've been shot at.”
“That's your contribution?”
Something moved at the corner of his mouth.
The tunnel opened into a stone chamber.
Unlike the passage, this room was unmistakably modern.
A steel table stood in the center beneath two battery-powered lamps. Shelves lined one wall, stocked with bottled water, canned food, medical supplies, ammunition and several black cases Elena immediately assumed contained weapons.
There were two narrow beds.
And a security panel showing grainy black-and-white images from cameras around the hotel.
“You call this a secure room?”
She walked toward the monitors.
One showed the main lobby.
Broken glass glittered across the floor.
A third displayed the northern side of the island.
Static flickered across all of them.
“You've been expecting a war?”
“Then why do you have enough ammunition to invade Malta?”
“I dislike being unprepared.”
“That much ammunition is preparation for something.”
“Experience teaches different lessons to different people.”
“What did experience teach you?”
He pointed toward a chair.
“Stop ordering me around.”
“Your hand needs stitches.”
The makeshift bandage was almost entirely red.
Adrenaline had been useful.
Pain arrived to replace it.
“Only because I'm choosing to.”
Lucian pulled another chair in front of her and opened a medical kit.
He moved with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this many times.
He removed the bloody cloth.
The cut ran diagonally across her palm.
“You're very curious for someone who apparently already knows everything about me.”
“I don't know everything.”
“You knew when I opened a file on you.”
“You knew which ferry I took.”
“You knew I was coming here.”
Lucian poured antiseptic onto gauze.
He pressed the gauze against her palm.
Pain exploded through her hand.
“You did that deliberately.”
“I've also been called that.”
“You collect charming descriptions.”
His face gave nothing away.
But his touch contradicted it.
A man who could shoot someone through a window without hesitation was cleaning dried blood from between her fingers as though her hand were made of glass.
That contradiction unsettled her.
“What happened in Naples?” he asked again.
Not because she trusted him.
Because she wanted to see what the truth did to him.
“Journalists don't give up sources.”
“He may have tried to have you killed.”
Lucian threaded a needle.
He looked almost irritated.
“My source sent me a message at nine seventeen. Different meeting place from usual. Underground garage beneath his building.”
Lucian's expression changed.
“That isn't how conversations work.”
Elena considered pushing.
“Fine. I arrived at eleven thirty. He wasn't there.”
“I'm going to stitch this.”
“You may squeeze my arm.”
Something passed between them.
The needle entered her skin.
“I waited ten minutes,” she continued through clenched teeth. “Called twice. No answer. Then I went back to the car.”
“The man came from behind.”
“Forties. Maybe fifty. Gray jacket. Short hair. Scar beside his mouth.”
Lucian stopped stitching.
This time she didn't miss it.
She laughed despite the pain.
“Journalists aren't the only irritating people in this room.”
“I've never claimed otherwise.”
“What does Carlo Vieri do?”
Lucian tied off the stitch.
She knew she had hit something.
Matteo Moretti had been declared dead eleven years earlier after his yacht exploded near Corsica.
No body had been recovered.
Lucian taped a dressing over her palm.
“You've done your homework.”
“Was Vieri sent by your family?”
Lucian looked down at her hand around him.
“That was not a question.”
Lucian walked toward the monitors.
“Why was Vieri after the drive?”
Elena felt it immediately.
Lucian's gaze moved to her bag.
“You don't get to interrogate me.”
“You brought something here.”
“The man in Naples asked for it.”
Lucian's face changed again.
She had learned long ago that men noticed retreat.
Lucian stopped inches from her.
“You need to tell me what you have.”
“According to the explosion that tore his boat in half.”
“You disappeared afterward.”
“You ask too many questions.”
“It's literally my profession.”
“And it will literally get you killed.”
For several seconds they stood almost chest to chest.
Elena became painfully aware of everything.
The faint smell of rain still caught in his hair.
Another scar disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.
Almost amber around the pupils.
Lucian's gaze dropped briefly to the bruise on her throat.
The question surprised her.
Every sensible part of Elena told her to say no.
His fingertips touched the skin beneath her jaw.
He turned her face gently toward the light.
The intimacy of the gesture was absurd.
She had been examined by doctors with less care.
His thumb moved beside the bruise.
Something tightened behind his eyes.
His gaze returned to hers.
“Arm around my neck from behind. Then he put me against the car.”
Lucian's hand went still.
“He asked for the drive?”
Lucian looked at her palm.
“That's when you were cut.”
Elena immediately missed the warmth.
That irritated her even more.
“That expression isn't nothing.”
“The one where you mentally dismember someone.”
“To check whether Carlo Vieri is alive.”
He picked up a satellite phone.
“You can contact the mainland?”
“You said communications were down.”
“You have a satellite phone.”
“You conveniently neglected to mention that.”
“You conveniently neglected to mention an encrypted drive.”
“How do you know it's encrypted?”
“Because nobody murders journalists over holiday photographs.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
Elena understood enough to follow fragments.
Elena's stomach tightened.
She didn't know what she felt.
“Skull fracture. Internal bleeding. Surgery.”
“I don't particularly want to kill people.”
“You seem less troubled by it.”
“I've had more practice.”
There was no pride in the statement.
That somehow made it worse.
“Because Vieri fears the people who employ him more than prison.”
Lucian set down the phone.
Elena looked at the monitors.
Rain streaked the cameras.
“What about the men outside?”
“Still somewhere on the grounds.”
“You're remarkably calm about it.”
“Panic is rarely useful.”
“I'll put that on your gravestone.”
He turned toward a weapons case.
Inside lay a rifle, two pistols and several knives.
“I'm beginning to understand why you don't have TripAdvisor reviews.”
“You already have one,” he said.
“Yours has seven rounds.”
“I recognized the model.”
She knew because his gaze shifted to her hand.
Neither moved for a moment.
“Where did you learn all this?”
“Guns. Security. Secret rooms. Killing men through windows.”
“The files are mostly speculation.”
“Some of the speculation is accurate.”
“That wasn't the question.”
“The drive is mine. The men are after me.”
“Which is precisely why you're staying.”
“I don't hide in bunkers while someone else cleans up my problems.”
She stepped between him and the door.
“Saying my name when you're angry.”
“I've known you for an hour. I've been angry for fifty-eight minutes.”
She hated herself for smiling.
Something dangerous entered the space between them.
A man and a woman noticing that beneath the fear, suspicion and blood, something else had quietly entered the room.
Lucian looked at her for a long time.
Then he removed a knife from the case.
“You know how to use one?”
“People who don't know how to use knives are less likely to do something stupid with them.”
“Your confidence in me is touching.”
He gave her a small flashlight.
“This time I'm not asking.”
“You know, the mysterious controlling-man thing probably works extremely well on some women.”
Lucian leaned slightly closer.
Her body reacted before her mind could stop it.
Elena hated him for noticing.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
This time she knew she hadn't imagined it.
They emerged into the kitchen.
Only their flashlights cut through the darkness.
The storm had weakened slightly, but rain still battered the windows.
Lucian moved ahead without sound.
Elena tried to imitate him.
Every step seemed absurdly loud.
He stopped at the kitchen door.
The service corridor beyond was empty.
They moved through the hotel.
Past silent dining rooms.
The Belladonna seemed to have been frozen in another century.
Elena wondered how many secrets had been exchanged beneath its chandeliers.
How many people Lucian had killed here.
That thought should have frightened her.
Instead she found herself watching the way he moved.
A predator was too simple a word.
Predators hunted because they were hungry.
Lucian looked like a man who had once learned that hesitation meant death and had never forgotten the lesson.
The body outside the broken window was gone.
There was blood on the terrace.
Lucian crouched beside the blood.
A sound came from above them.
The staircase disappeared into darkness.
Someone was inside the hotel.
Lucian reached for Elena.
She expected him to pull her behind him.
Instead his hand went around her waist.
He moved her against the wall beside the staircase, his body immediately in front of hers.
Her back touched cold wood.
The other remained at her waist.
Elena could feel every breath he took.
She whispered, “This is your tactical plan?”
Footsteps crossed the floor above them.
Elena felt the strength in it.
She should have been afraid of him.
Instead her heart was pounding for an entirely different reason.
His mouth was near her ear.
“If I tell you to run, go downstairs.”
Then the footsteps stopped.
Lucian looked toward the balcony.
Elena saw the shadow first.
The bullet struck the wall.
The man appeared at the railing.
The sound exploded through the lobby.
“He moved before you fired.”
Something crashed upstairs.
Lucian started toward the stairs.
She had heard something else.
A man stepped from the corridor.
Everything happened at once.
Lucian shoved Elena sideways.
Lucian crossed the lobby.
Blood spread rapidly across his left side.
Looked at the blood on his fingers.
“That's a lot of blood for grazed.”
“Head wounds bleed more.”
Something in her voice made him obey.
She pulled open his shirt.
Buttons scattered across the floor.
For the first time, Elena saw him fully.
Not the man from photographs.
Not the ghost in intelligence reports.
Scars crossed his chest and abdomen.
A circular mark near his shoulder that could only have been a bullet.
Another scar ran along his ribs.
And now a fresh line of blood cut across his side.
Elena pressed her hand against it.
Their roles had reversed.
His body beneath her fingers.
She felt the hard rhythm of his breathing.
“It's shallow,” she said.
She tore fabric from the bottom of her already ruined blouse.
“That's an expensive shirt.”
“You've been watching me long enough to know my wardrobe?”
He shouldn't have said that.
Or perhaps he had meant to.
She tied the fabric around his ribs.
“How much do you know about me?”
“Your father died when you were twenty-two.”
“You changed universities afterward. Journalism instead of law.”
“You drink coffee black when you're working and with milk when you're not.”
Her hand stopped against his skin.
“You haven't celebrated your birthday in six years.”
“You sleep with the window open, even in winter.”
Something cold passed through her.
Her hand slowly left his body.
“You've been inside my apartment.”
“Photographs of me sleeping?”
Elena caught his arm instinctively.
He looked down at her hand.
“I'm getting very tired of that.”
Lucian picked up the dead man's gun.
Then searched his jacket.
Elena recognized herself immediately.
She was sitting outside a café in Vienna.
The photograph had been taken from across the street.
She turned the photograph over.
Something had been written on the back.
“My source told me to come here. Room seventeen.”
Lucian's face had become unreadable again.
But there was something underneath it now.
“Because room seventeen isn't a guest room.”
He looked toward the dark staircase.
“The reason you're here.”
Elena felt the world tilt slightly.
Lucian took the photograph from her.
His fingers brushed hers.
This time there was nothing sensual about it.
“You asked earlier how I knew you were coming.”
“I knew because I was told.”
The lobby seemed suddenly too quiet.
And in that hesitation Elena understood something terrible.
Something much larger than the hotel.
Larger than the men outside.
Larger, perhaps, than the Moretti family.
Her source hadn't sent her to Belladonna because it was empty.
He had sent her here because Lucian Moretti was waiting.
Lucian looked at her for a long moment.
The sound cracked through the lobby.
He simply looked back at her.
She wanted to hit him again.
Instead she stepped close enough that she could see the small flecks of gold around his pupils.
The admission stopped her.
“And if you think I'm going to follow you anywhere after this—”
Lucian looked toward the stairs.
Then at the photograph in his hand.
“Because you came here for the truth.”
He walked toward the staircase.
He stopped at the first step.
“Room seventeen is on the fourth floor.”
His expression was almost sad.
“Of everything they never wanted you to find.”
Elena remained in the lobby.
Anything would be more sensible than following Lucian Moretti deeper into a conspiracy he had just admitted helping construct around her.
She looked at the broken windows.
At her blood on the floor.
At Lucian climbing the stairs without looking back.
And this time, she knew it was a mistake.
