the capo of the Carnevares, then he’ll have to take you away from me. He’ll try to kill you, Rosa.”
“Nonsense,” she contradicted him, but even as she spoke, she realized that he was right. There was a long tradition in the Mafia of attacking an enemy by murdering all his loved ones. Obviously she would be on the Hungry Man’s hit list herself.
“So now?” she whispered.
“I don’t want you going anywhere without bodyguards,” he said. “And I don’t mean those rustics from Piazza Armerina. You need a security service. Specialists who know what they—”
“Hey, hey, hey,” she gently interrupted him, putting a finger to his lips. A smile stole over her face. “I don’t want gorillas around me day and night, never mind where they come from.”
“But—”
“Where are your bodyguards?” she asked. “I don’t see any of them around here. You don’t like going around with a bunch of apes in black suits any more than I do.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed the end of his nose. “We’re Arcadians. We’ll manage by ourselves.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“Totally senseless.”
“All this is totally senseless. That was obvious from the very first day. Did it stop us?”
His hand was on the back of her neck. He drew her to him again. Her breasts gently brushed his chest, and she felt the nipples harden—as they always did before disappearing and turning to scaly snakeskin. Infuriating.
“I know what we’ll do now,” she said.
At last his radiant smile came back. “You do?”
“To take our minds off it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“The basement,” she said. “Those furs.”
THE SERUM
WITHOUT SAYING A WORD, Alessandro followed her down the central aisle between the linen-wrapped bundles that dangled from the rails. Now and then he touched one of the bags, then ran his fingers down it as he walked along, but he didn’t open any of them. Before they reached the rampart of plastic containers, Rosa took his hand.
At the sight of the containers he stopped walking. “So many,” he whispered. In the cold air, the words came out of his mouth as white vapor. “Are there any Panthera among them?”
“Let’s just say they’re not only mink and sable.”
She led him around the stacked containers to the metal safe on the back wall of the freezer. Everything was exactly as she and Iole had left it. The metal doors were open; the two fur coats lay on the floor in front of them.
Rosa went up to the safe. “Did you bring what I asked you—” She stopped herself when she turned to Alessandro.
He was crouching down beside the coat that Iole had been wearing. Only now did Rosa noticed a faint pattern of leopard spots shimmering through the dark brown of the fur. Alessandro had picked up one sleeve from the floor and was stroking it, lost in thought.
She swore quietly. “Panthers are—”
“Black leopards.” He didn’t look up at her.
She knelt down beside him. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, taking his face in both hands and making him look her in the eye. “If there were any way I could undo it…”
“I know.”
“Our families have been at odds forever. More people have died than…” She paused for a moment. “Than these,” she finished.
“That’s all right.”
“No, nothing’s all right.” She jerked her head at the metal safe. “There they are. God knows how many vials.”
He stood up and went over to the shelves with the little glass flasks lined up on them. The liquid inside shone golden. In the lowest compartment lay plastic syringes in sterile wrappings and bundles of sealed cannulas, along with two syringes like the kind used by diabetics for their insulin.
“Do you have it with you?” she asked.
With a nod, he put his hand in his jeans pocket, brought out a little leather case, and opened it. Inside, there were several vials that looked exactly like those in the cupboard. “This is one of the vials from the Castello. Cesare had his men inject us with the same thing back there. And I had a few with me at boarding school in the States, for emergencies.” He had already told her that, months ago, and she had remembered it after Iole led her to the cupboard.
“You said at the time that the prescription was handed down by the first Arcadians. At the time of their downfall.”
“That’s what Tano always said, anyway.”
“And he was given the serum by Cesare?”
“No, the other way around. Tano got hold of it somewhere. I always assumed it came from a dealer. Cesare kept it in a