he still deserves all the pain I can imagine.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “There’s something else. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but…”
She looked questioningly at him as he searched for words.
“Michele was there, but he didn’t rape you. Or so my informant says. There were four of them, and Michele certainly told all the others what to do. But Tano was the only one who touched you.”
“It makes no difference who just watched and who was—” She stopped when she realized what he was telling her. “Tano is Nathaniel’s father,” she whispered tonelessly.
Alessandro said nothing. He just looked at her. She was grateful for that. Pity was the last thing she wanted.
Dazed, she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Michele will pay for it—for everything.” She was as keenly aware of his eyes as she was of his hands when he took her fingers in them.
“I don’t want to lose you as well,” she said. “Revenge isn’t worth that. Definitely not.”
“Are we supposed to act like nothing happened?”
“No.” She leaned against the rail and drew him closer to her. “That girl, her name was Jessie…he was carrying her in his mouth like a trophy. That’s what he cares about. To prove who he is and what he’s capable of. That’s why he has those hunting parties. And that’s why he deserves to die.”
“He’s a bloodthirsty bastard. Tano idolized him.”
She felt the rail cold against her back, but everything inside her was numb. “What else did you find out?”
“That business about Michele’s brother and the others—that’s the truth. Someone is killing the Carnevares closest to Michele, and I’d feel better if I knew who and why.”
“He suspects you.”
Alessandro smiled grimly. “Me!”
“You know what he did. And he knows about the two of us. If he’s even slightly acquainted with you, he must realize that you won’t give him any peace.”
He bent his head, and she noticed the surprise in his bright, cat-like eyes. “Do you believe that? That I’ve already started taking revenge on him? That I’m in the process of wiping out his family?”
“Not if you tell me it isn’t true.”
He was silent for a long time. “I have nothing at all to do with it,” he said at last.
Then she was the one to smile, and she had never felt so much like an Alcantara.
“That’s too bad,” she said, and when she kissed him, she sensed his shiver.
FUNDLING’S SLEEP
AN ARSENAL OF LIFE-SUPPORT devices stood beside the sleeping man’s bed, but most of them were not in use. Fundling was breathing by himself, but had to be artificially fed through a tube into his stomach. His face was pale and drawn. His thick black hair had grown back since the operation on his skull, but it was not as long yet as it had been when he worked as a chauffeur for the Carnevares. And as an informer for the capo dei capi—as well as for Judge Quattrini.
Rosa wondered what else, unknown to her, Fundling had been.
“He looks peaceful,” said the nurse who had just put fresh flowers beside his bed.
“He looks dead,” said Rosa.
The nurse wrinkled her nose and seemed about to say something, but she must have been deterred by the black look Rosa gave her, because she just turned and left the room.
“Who sent the flowers?” asked Rosa.
“It’s all part of the service here,” said Alessandro. “A fresh arrangement every day.” He was standing by the window of the single room. Outside, a well-tended garden reached to the top of the steep cliff on which the hospital stood. The crests of the waves sparkled like rubies in the evening sunlight.
“What a waste of money,” she said, looking at the vase.
“They choose blossoms with a particularly strong scent.”
“To drown out the corpse smell?”
“He isn’t a corpse.”
She sat down on the edge of Fundling’s bed and touched his hand. “He got a bullet in his brain, and who knows what harm it did there? He’s been in a coma for four months. How is that so different from being dead? Apart from the fact that he’s breathing.”
“They say that if it becomes necessary, I will have to make the decision. Whether to let him keep going like this, or…”
“But you’re not even related.”
“No one here’s interested in that. Officially, he isn’t in this hospital at all.”
She glanced up at him. “But you had him moved here from a public hospital. So how—”
“His files say something different now.”
“You had him declared dead?” It shouldn’t have surprised