Falcon's Angel (16 page)

Chapter Four

“Help me!”

Angelina woke up screaming, clutching the bedspread with her fists. In the next moment, she was coughing, her throat was scorched, her skin hot as if she had been burned alive.

She had ignored the water in the crystal decanter for fear it was drugged, but now reached for it. She’d dreamed of the inferno again, the blaze that had consumed the house she had been trapped in.

Someone was watching her. She lifted up on her elbows.

Reality faded in this cavern. She could imagine herself back in that furnace. The horror of searching for a way out as first the intense heat damaged everything in its path, melting the gold crown moldings on the ceiling and curling the gold-filigree-embossed wallpaper, and then finally the flames rushing in to consume her…

Slowly, Angelina pulled herself up and rubbed away tears. No one would come for her. Her aunt and uncle would wonder where she was, but they wouldn’t know where to look for her. They wouldn’t know whom to ask of her whereabouts.

Thanks to her secret life at the
Casa di Città
, they had no idea about Armand.

Armand is dead. No! He is alive. He must be.

Even if by some chance Armand was alive, he would never think to search underground in this barren cave with its indistinguishable rough-hewn walls that soared around her.

She couldn’t tell if she was still in Naples or in a crater on the other side of the moon.

Dizzy from hunger, Angelina lay back down, but she’d wandered to the edge of the bed and fell over the side in a tangle of red velvet. The jolt knocked the wind out of her.

The floor was so cold that she could feel it through the bedclothes. Her back was the only area of her body that burned with a radiating pain.

Angelina took a ginger breath and tried to get up. She did not hear the wooden doors open and was leaning up on her elbows when strong arms lifted her against a hard chest.

“Angelina, you must eat.” Luciano’s voice was surprisingly soft in anger.

She tried to hold herself away from him, but lost that battle and sagged against him.

“Are you hurt?” His lips were against her cheek. His hand ran slowly over her back, her hip.

She winced when he laid her against the pillows.

“You will not get up. I will carry you when you must relieve yourself.”

Angelina stilled at the threat. But he would never know when she needed to go to the bathroom.

Unless there are cameras in the cavern.
She looked up at the alcoves that lined the upper region but there was nothing but darkness beyond.

Luciano lifted the lid on a covered tray on the nightstand. He held a plate in one hand and a fork in the other.

“I am … not hungry,” Angelina said. She couldn’t turn away from the forkful of roast beef, but she managed to close her mouth.

“Two days without food and you are not hungry?”

How long can I go without food?
She might die of hunger, but if Armand did not come for her, why should she live?

“Ah. You think it is drugged.” Luciano brought the fork under her nose, and she inhaled tantalizing spices. “If you knew Vanuccio, you’d know he would never allow anyone to taint his cuisine. That would be a mortal sin.” He pulled the beef off the fork in front of her face and popped it in his mouth. His eyes caressed her. “Delizioso.”

He speared more beef on the fork. “So, I am still alive. You will eat now?”

Angelina shook her head and the cavern swayed.

“I will not let you starve to death. I could not bear it.” He brought the fork to her lips, but before he could touch her, she took it from him.

Luciano gave an appreciative grunt as he rubbed away the gravy that ran down her chin.

“Good, eh?”

Go away!
But it was obvious he meant to watch her eat the entire meal. She kept her eyes on the plate and when she had eaten nearly half the food, her head felt clearer. As her brain functioned better, so did her anger.

“How long do you think you can keep me here? You know that Tony will find me.”

“The thief is dead.”

She choked on a mouthful.

Luciano sighed, patting her on the back.

“Why do you love him so? He was nothing more than a criminal!” He grabbed the glass of water and held it out to her.

Water spilled over the side of the glass, but she took it anyway. Her vision was blurred with tears as she held the glass of water with both hands, wishing it were drugged. She didn’t want to think anymore, but his words confirmed her fear.

Armand had just lain there on the street without moving while they sped away in the Fiat that night.

He might have gotten run over by a car while lying in the street, or thugs who roamed the district at night may have finished him off.

He was dead, and she had killed him. She hadn’t trusted him, had been hurt that he had lied about who he was, and yet she was guilty of the same thing, withholding her own identity.

How characteristically impulsive of her to assume Luciano Biagi was right about Armand that day at the ristorante.
Why couldn’t I have just believed in love?

Luciano cupped her chin so that she had to look into his eyes. “The polizia caught him at the airport,” he said quietly. “There was a gunfight. He lost.”

“Please, stop!” Angelina jerked away and buried her face in the pillows to block out his brusque dialect, which was sure to creep into her nightmares for years to come.

“Bellezza, he was leaving you,” Luciano’s hand was on her back. “But you are not alone.” His hand traveled lower, skimming her bottom.

She reared up and slapped him across the face. “Get out!”

Luciano grabbed her hand, which was stinging, and forced her backward. He raised her hand above her head on the pillow.

“Give yourself to me, and live!” With agile swiftness, she would not have thought someone his size capable of, he settled over her.

His mouth was inches from hers. She smelled the roast beef on his tongue. It was intimate and offensive.

“I will take responsibility for your actions. You will be forgiven, and admitted into the family.”

He was as heavy as a cement slab resting on her chest. She bucked against him, trying to push him off. He just spread her legs wide with his lower body and ground himself against her.

Luciano spewed passionate curses against her neck and she went still. She did not want to incite him with her movements, but he continued to move rhythmically, pushing her down into the bed.

“P-please, don’t.”

He showed no signs that he’d heard her as he untied the hemp around his waist and wrenched it free.

A scream welled up in her throat only to be cut off by his tongue, which he shoved into her mouth. His hands were everywhere, kneading her breasts, roaming over her belly, lifting her up against his obscene erection.

The robe opened to reveal the beast’s hairy chest, and his heavy breathing rumbled against her. He was squeezing out what little strength the food had given her, but she pushed against him in one final attempt to be free.

Luciano grunted in satisfaction, and took a nip of her lips. He wanted her to fight him like this.

Angelina turned her face away, willing herself to black out. She did not want to be conscious when he did this.
I will not live through it
.

“Sì, Bellezza, it is better this way. I do not want to hurt you.” Luciano’s thick tongue snaked down her neck into the top of her nightgown, leaving a gross trail of wetness.

There was something gleaming on the satin sheet. The dinner knife had fallen off the china plate. The knife was only an arm’s length away.

Angelina shut her eyes but her arm moved slowly out from underneath him, over the sheet, searching for the knife.

Luciano pulled the silk gown up over her hips. She moaned when his rough woolen robe scratched her legs.

“Ti prego, perdonami,” he murmured a sincere apology as his hand stroked up the inside of her thigh.

She reached for the knife, but it was farther away than she had thought.

Luciano palmed her mound with a hairy hand.

“No!” With fingers extended, she reached again and as if pulled by an invisible cord, the knife slid across the red satin, into her hand.

* * * *

Falcon and Granger approached what looked like a large pile of rubble. The hem of Falcon’s pants was soaked in muddy waist-high grass. The only comfort in this sludge was the coolness of it in his squelching boots. At least his feet were cold.

The change in season had no effect on the weather here in northern Italy. Summer clung stubbornly to the first week of October.

With his bulletproof vest and ammunition belt on, the rest of him was baking in the oppressive heat of the field.

“What are we doing here?” Granger squinted at Falcon. “Falcon?”

“What?” Falcon pulled his gaze away from the burned out shell of the caretaker’s hut. Granger was his twin in attire, save for the cap pulled down over his blonde spikes.

“This isn’t the place for the rendezvous.” Granger followed his gaze to the cottage they had broken into.

Someone had gotten there years ahead of them. Ruggiero’s people had long since ransacked Natale’s home looking for either the Strad or the two million euro. Even the floorboards had been pulled up in their search.

The current owners of the property had boarded up the windows and doors but left the interior a charred, splintered, hacked-up mess of wood furniture and debris. The farmer they’d spoken to had mentioned some kind of superstition as the reason for leaving the place untouched.

“That was just the drop-off. This is where they’ve got her.” Granger looked around. “You think they have her in an olive orchard? When the sidewalk in Naples connected with your head, it loosened a few screws.”

Granger looked past Falcon’s shoulder to the other side of the field where three team members lay in the grass.

“They shouldn’t be here,” Falcon squelched along without sparing Granger a glance. Darien had insisted on the team being present to assist in case there was trouble. So they waited, and would come closer on command.

Falcon wouldn’t let the team members come any further onto the field. Two of them were ex-Navy Seals and the other he’d trained himself, but he was worried about them getting hurt. As far as he could tell, they didn’t have any experience with dragons and murderous black fog.

“Falcon, tell me this is not going to be another one for the books.” Granger squelched alongside him, and then slowed. “A tunnel?”

They were within five feet of the debris. There was a depression in the soil and beyond that, an opening in the ground.

“It leads to the catacombs under
La Verità
,” Falcon said.

“Under what?”

“It’s where
il Dragone
worship here in Forlì.”

Granger searched his face. “How do you know this?” When Falcon didn’t answer but jumped down into the earth instead, Granger smirked. “Don’t tell me, the book?”

“The book” was the only answer Falcon had for Granger. No need to drag his partner into this nightmare when there was still a chance Granger and the team might make it out of this alive.

They had come a day early to catch Ruggiero by surprise. The drop-off location was actually outside of the city limits, but Falcon wasn’t going to waste time searching the surrounding area.

Angelina was here. He could feel it.

He and Granger worked to pry off the new beams across the stone archway entrance. The beams weren’t exactly new, but they weren’t the same rotted planks of wood from that time before when Marchese Falco and Signor Tarcisio escaped the catacombs.

These weathered beams had a wood manufacturer’s name branded into them. This estate had belonged to the Invernizzi family for the last hundred years. Signor Invernizzi was the farmer Granger had grilled for information a week ago. The man was not
il Dragone
, but like the other inhabitants of Forlì, he harbored their centuries-old secrets in return for his family’s safety.

Giovanni Natale and his wife had lived on this land most of their lives. The maestro traveled extensively but always came back to the fold. He and his wife had been devout members of
il Dragone
. Like other
il Dragone
, they had remembered.

The last wood beam broke in two as he ripped it off.

Granger put a calming hand on his shoulder.

The town of Forlì had not overcome the cult. In spite of the Marchese Falco’s and Signor Tarcisio’s almost fatal investigation into
il Dragone
, the cult had managed to survive.

The memories were shrouded. If he thought about it, he could not pinpoint detail. But the veil lifted as a curtain in the breeze of his mind during idle times; when he walked, or ate a solitary meal at the little table in the apartment’s kitchenette.

He knew without a doubt that he, Tarcisio and his father, with the help of Signorina Livia and the Swiss Guard had searched the catacombs beneath the city. The dank walls around him now brought back that frenzied search when they had captured four—no—ten more
il Dragone
, who had thought to wait out the hunt in the warren of dark passages.

They had found several more by going door-to-door to identify the missing
il Dragone
of that fiery night. Images played in his mind as waking dreams, as if dubbed and saved, hotwired to his soul, of pounding on wood-planked doors. Finding homes abandoned, hearths still warm.

Here in this hole in the earth Falcon could still smell the scent of overripe food and vegetables left in cabinets as they searched homes of former inhabitants who’d fled the city, fearing the wrath of the duke and his powerful brother King Vittorio of Sardinia.

That night, men and women of
il Dragone
who were not killed or captured and carted off to Rome fled under cover of darkness, leaving their families behind.

Falcon knew also that he had married the young, generous-hipped Signorina Livia. Her father had been the first to die that night in the ceremonial hall. Three guards had pulled the man off his oldest daughter and still he’d fought until he had been run through with a sword. When Marchese Falco had accompanied Livia home with her father’s body, the signora stood crying by the door, and Livia’s four younger siblings stared solemnly at the shrouded figure in the cart.