Her Italian Millionaire (39 page)

Then there was chaos. The huge chandelier swung overhead as if a giant had given it a shove. The lights went out. Women screamed. Men shouted. Heavy footsteps pounded the floor. Doors opened and slammed shut. Someone grabbed the chain she was wearing around her neck, and she choked. Someone else shoved her to the floor and her head banged against the inlaid stone. Strong fingers tried to pry her hand open, but she held onto the diamond so tightly, it cut into her skin and she felt blood between her fingers. Shots were fired, flashes of light in the dark. Someone dragged her body somewhere else.

When the lights came on, minutes or even hours later, she was lying on an Oriental carpet, her dress caught up around her hips, her beautiful leather shoes gone. She moaned and sat up slowly. The room was spinning around her. There were people milling around, talking loudly. Some of them wore blue uniforms. There was no more music, no more party. No more Misty and no more Giovanni. She put her head between her knees for a long moment. When she looked up, Marco was kneeling beside her.

“He's gone,” Marco said.

He reached for her hand and gently opened her fist with his rough fingers. The yellow diamond lay there, huge and dazzling and safe in her palm.

“So it's true. This is what it was all about,” she said, pressing one hand to her head, trying to stop the throbbing. “Is this what they ransacked my room for?”

He nodded.

“But who, who did it?”

“Who do you think?”

“Giovanni? That's not possible. He's not a thief. If he was, why didn't he take the diamond instead of giving it to me? You don't believe what he said about being in love with me, do you?”

He shrugged. “I think he had to choose between the getting away and getting the diamond, so he chose to get away.”

“Get away from what, from who?”

“Me.”

She stared into his eyes, trying to understand, but her head ached and his face was blurred around the edges and nothing made any sense.

“Who are you?” she asked. “I'd like the truth for once.”

“I work for the Italian government. My agency works with other countries to track down international thieves.”

“So that is why you've been following me. You really thought I was a thief, and that's why you...” Tears welled up in her throat. This time she would not cry. She had been a fool to think he cared about her. Now she knew for sure it was all business. And Giovanni? He had used her too.

“You had a very valuable diamond in your possession.”

“But you didn't know that. How could you? I didn't know it.”

“We've been after Giovanni for years. Whenever a famous diamond goes missing, Giovanni's name comes up. We knew he was waiting for it. We knew he was expecting someone to bring it to him. We thought it was you. I might remind you, it was you. You did bring it.”

“But I didn't mean to, I didn't know...

“I know that now,” he said wearily. “Giovanni knows too. He thought it was in the yearbook. When he saw it wasn't, he followed us to Maggiore.”

“But who put it in the candy?”

“Who do you think did it? Who could have done it?”

“Evie gave it to me to give her cousin. But it couldn't be Evie. She's a friend. She's just like me, an ordinary small-town... No, not Evie.” And not Giovanni either. He might be flaky, he might be a womanizer, but he wasn't a thief. He couldn't be. Besides he was in Italy. Whoever put the diamond in the candy did it before it left the US.

A man in a rumpled suit walked up to them and stood looming above them.

“Giovanni is gone,” the man said.

Marco got up. He reached for Anne Marie's hand and helped her to her feet.

“Silvestro, this is Mrs. Jackson,” he said. He turned to Anne Marie. “Silvestro is my boss. He'd like to ask you a few questions. He'd also like the diamond.”

“You must forgive Marco's lack of manners,” he said with a courtly little bow. “Don't make the lady stand,” Silvestro chided Marco.

Marco brought two chairs, one for his boss and one for her and she gratefully sat down. Her knees were weak, and she felt cold all over. Marco put his suit jacket over her shoulders and stood behind her. His jacket was still warm from his wearing it. She caught the scent of tobacco and leather and his soap. She closed her eyes for a moment. She would not get sentimental. She would keep her dignity, what was left of it. And she would get some answers. They might not be the answers she wanted, but at least they might be truthful. She held out her hand and Silvestro took the diamond. He turned it over in his hand and held it up to the light.

“So this is it,” Silvestro said. “Is it worth risking your life for, betraying your best friend, dying for, killing for?”

She didn't answer. Did this man really think she'd done all those things? Why didn't Marco tell him she didn't do it?

For a brief second, Marco's gaze met hers. “It's just a rhetorical question,” he explained. “You don't have to answer.”

She nodded, but she wanted to ask if recovering it was worth making love for, leading a woman on for, or lying for, but she didn't have to. She already knew the answer.

It hit her with the brilliance of a twenty-five carat diamond that this was the end of her vacation, the end of her affair with Marco, and the end of the adventure of a lifetime. For him, it was just the end of a job. Nothing more.

If they let her go. If they didn't believe that she'd brought the diamond to Giovanni.

“Mrs. Jackson,” said the older man slowly in heavily accented English. “Tell me how you got the diamond in the first place.”

“I just got it tonight from Giovanni.”

“I mean in America. Let us assume the diamond was inside a chocolate, though it seems a risky place to hide a valuable diamond. Diamonds are the hardest substance on earth. Someone might have eaten it. Swallowed it or cracked their tooth on it.”

“Someone like me,” Anne Marie said, her voice faint as she remembered the several truffles she'd eaten. Marco put his hand on her shoulder and pressed lightly. He'd seen her munching on those truffles. He must know by now she hadn't known what was inside one of them.

Silvestro handed the diamond to Anne Marie. “Smell it,” he said.

“Chocolate,” she said, holding the diamond to her nose and inhaling. “I can't believe it. My friend Evie Barton gave me the chocolates to give to her cousin. It's made in San Francisco, it's very expensive, very famous chocolates. She said Misty was homesick...”

“Homesick,” Marco said, “for money. It takes quite a bit to keep up this lifestyle.” He waved one hand toward the wall hung with paintings.

“I don't know anything about Misty, but Evie? I can't believe... Why would she...?”

“Why would anybody trade in diamonds? For money. Does she need money?”

“I don't know. She's never said...If it wasn't Evie, I don't know who it could have been. She was the one who said I should come to Italy. She'd come to Italy when she got a divorce, but she didn't see Giovanni.”

“How do you know?” Marco asked.

“Because she would have told me.”

He looked at her as if she was the most naive person he'd ever known. Maybe she was. She'd believed Evie, and worse than that, she'd actually believed that Marco cared about her, that he'd made love to her because he'd wanted to. Knowing what she knew made looking at him downright painful. His high cheekbones, his mouth that had kissed her, and his strong hands. She flushed and looked around the room, at the statue of Venus in the corner and a copy of Bernini's David in an alcove.

“I guess Evie wouldn't have told me she'd seen Giovanni in Italy if she didn't want me to know,” she said at last.

“Particularly if she was delivering stolen goods to him,” Silvestro said.

“And having an affair with him,” Marco said.

“No,” Anne Marie said. Her world had turned on end. Her friends were crooks, her lover was a liar? “That's not possible.” Evie was the one who'd told her Giovanni had always been in love with her. Why lie about that? The answer was so clear. Because she wanted Anne Marie to go to Italy. To take the diamond, not to Giovanni, but to her so-called cousin.

“Yes,” they both said at the same time. “It is possible.”

“From the information we've received from the FBI and the messages we intercepted, we think Giovanni broke off with your friend Evie, which made her angry. She sought another fence for her jewels and found Misty, who is not her cousin. She found you to deliver the diamond. But Giovanni was not about to be left out of the loop. He knew you had the diamond with you. When it wasn't in the yearbook, he came after you, looking for it,” Marco said.

“So Evie really did give me the chocolates to give to Misty,” she said, as the truth sank in.

Marco and his boss both nodded as they stood together facing her. Everything she said, they already knew. It made her feel dense.

“Giovanni really searched my room?” she asked. What a horrible thought. Someone she knew, someone she liked, had done that to her while she was out dancing in an Italian bar with Marco. Where he'd taken her just because it was his job. Where he'd held her close and whispered in her ear, because it was his job.

“Or someone who works for him,” Marco said.

Looking at him now, all business, shirt-sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, she wondered how she could have been taken in so easily.

Because she'd been vulnerable. Because she'd been dumped. Because she wanted to believe she was desirable and beautiful. Hah. She was just another American tourist dressed in fancy clothes, but underneath she was the same boring, predictable librarian who'd left California only days ago.

“At one time we weren't sure who all was in on this operation,” Silvestro said.

“By that you mean you thought I was a jewel thief, didn't you?” She looked straight at Marco, daring him to deny it.

“Yes,” he said. “What else could we think? You came to meet Giovanni. You brought him something. You had an attachment to him going back many years. We didn't know if you were working with Evie or without her.”

“Do you know now?” she asked.

“We have word that Evie has confessed to her part in the heist. But she claims Giovanni was the mastermind behind it.”

“If she'd blamed me, what would have happened?” She imagined herself in that prison they'd visited that afternoon, shackled to the floor, scratching the days off on the wall.

Marco's eyes held a hint of wry amusement. “It wouldn't be the Mammertine Prison,” he said.

Easy for him to say, she thought. But it could have been Lompoc or San Quentin if she had to prove her innocence and couldn't.

“She didn't blame you, and we know that you had nothing to do with the theft of the diamond. Even if you brought it to Italy, your innocence is not in question,” Silvestro said. “Marco, take the lady back to where she is staying, please. Then meet me at the office on the Via Firenze.”

There were guards at the doors to Misty's villa again, but this time they were policemen. They nodded to Marco and he got into a car that was parked in the villa's oval driveway.