Forbidden Kiss (17 page)

He dropped to his knees, right on top of the driver’s throat with enough force to crush the man’s larynx, vocal cords, and anything else vital in the general vicinity.

The man’s eyes bugged out immediately and he clawed at Rom’s knee with his free hand. His other hand was trapped under Rom’s right knee.

Quite the pickle for Pio’s guys. Rom just hoped Asshole stayed down long enough for Orti to get around the van.

“Here’s how this is going to play out,” he said as the other two rounded the corner into sight. “You guys are going to finish untying me, give me the keys to the van, and lock yourselves in the warehouse.”

Nobody said anything for three seconds.

“Or what?” one of the other men sneered.

“My friends will sever your body parts with machine gun bullets and we’ll leave you here to bleed out.”

“What fr—” The man didn’t get to finish his sentence as the barrel of a semi-automatic found a vulnerable spot at the base of his spine.

Rom looked behind him to see Orti with a gun trained on his special friend. “Now. You can untie me immediately or I put my full 200 pounds on this guy’s throat and crush any singing career he might have been planning.” He looked between the two startled heavies. “Do either of you know how to perform a tracheotomy? Because he’ll probably need one once his airway collapses.”

The driver began to struggle in earnest now as Rom leveraged more weight on the man’s neck. He let him get a sense of what 200 pounds felt like bearing down, before he pulled back.

“What do you want to say to your boys?” He asked the driver.

“Do what he says,” came the raspy order as Rom allowed him enough air to talk.

Rom watched the options roll through the two, like cartoon thought bubbles over their heads. But in the end, they were hired goons. Hired by the guy under Rom’s knee, who was hired by another, and so on and so on until it all came back to Pio Mascaro.

The bastard would have more luck if he simply tried to kill Montgomery himself instead of sending imbeciles to do the job.

Nobody moved. Except Asshole on the asphalt behind him. He groaned, but didn’t get up.

He let a little more weight bear down on the driver’s throat.

“Keys…front, right pocket,” he breathed.

“Thanks. But I don’t feel like feeling you up in front of an audience,” Rom said. He couldn’t get the keys if he wanted. His hands were still tied.

“Why don’t you tell one of your boys there to cut me loose. And they better be real careful because if they do anything to upset me, my knee might slip and…well, you know, kill you.” He smiled sheepishly and shrugged.

The driver gurgled a strangled, “Do it.”

Thirty seconds later, Rom’s hands were free and he helped the driver to his feet after he lifted his gun.

“See, this works.”

As soon as he had the keys, he helped Orti force the entire goofball gang into the warehouse, where they locked themselves in.

“I think we’re even now, yes?” Orti asked Rom, smiling.

Rom clasped his outstretched hand. Why had he ever doubted the benefit of the buddy-buddy team? “Yes. But how did you know I was here?”

“I had Mascaro followed. It was not difficult. The man is very arrogant and careless. When it was obvious he planned to set you up, I waited and followed you.”

Rom nodded, glad at last to be so wrong about someone and have it turn out good. “Do you know where they took the woman?”

Orti’s eyes were back to twinkling. “Of course. She is yours?”

“In every sense of the word,” Rom said.

“Well, then my friend. Let’s retrieve her, shall we?”

Chapter Twenty

Pio never said she couldn’t use the phone.

Jule dialed Rom’s cell phone number praying like she’d never done before that he would pick up. Midnight had come and gone. Following dinner and a drink, Pio had retired. To what, she didn’t know. Or care.

“Montgomery,” he answered.

“You answered,” was all she could think to say.

“I hope that’s a good thing,” Rom said.

“You have no idea. Where are you?” she asked.

“The better question would be, where are you?”

“You’re not going to believe this, I’m at the—”

“Palazzo museum,” he finished for her.

“With Pio. How’d you know?”

“A hunch. Are you okay?”

She wanted to shout “no, come and get me.” “Fine. Well fed, pampered with clothes and jewelry and at the beck and call of a goddamn lunatic. Rom, he won’t let me out of here. And he’s freaking me out.”

“Where is he now?” Rom asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe somewhere downstairs. We, ah, parted company after dinner and that was an hour ago.” She didn’t want to tell him Pio had demanded she strip in front of him to model her wedding dress. Which he had zipped up the back, all the while planting kisses from her tailbone to her neck.

After he had dismissed her, Jule ran all the way to her room where she’d showered and found the nearest phone in a back hall to call Rom.

She’d wanted to call the police, but thought better of it after realizing the precarious position a police interrogation would put Rom in.

“Where is your room?”

“Third floor, corner room on the east side.”

“I’m on my way now, but it will take over an hour.”

“Okay,” she said. “So we’ve got some time.”

“For what?”

“I found where the missing paintings are.”

Her pronouncement met silence.

“Come again,” Rom said.

“I know where they are.”

“Where?”

Jule took a deep breath and tried to keep her voice from shaking. “Here.”

She could almost hear Rom thinking across the miles. They’d been through the chapel and seen the altar. Had they missed them?

“So I missed them.”

“No. You didn’t miss them. Pio didn’t move them here until after he started the takeover.”

“Mascaro has the paintings?”

“Yes. And I’ve seen them.” Although inadvertently as she wandered the house on the pretense of taking household inventory. They were in his office on easels, displayed for anyone who happened by.

It had been too easy, like Pio wanted her to find them.

“Well, that’s good news then.”

Jule didn’t know how to say it, so she just blurted it. “The seventh painting is of Pio.”

Rom breathed hard on the other end.

“What is he doing in the scene?”

“Besides looking mean and lethal?”

“Yeah,” Rom said.

“Fighting. Killing. Chasing me.”

“When you say killing, who is he killing exactly?”

“Well, not me. At least not in that painting.”

“Jule. You’re scaring me. Tell me about the other two.”

“The eighth panel is a fight to the death outside the lover’s tomb. And the final one is like the third. Inside the tomb. Juliet—me—is lying on an altar of light and Romeo is standing next to her, lowering his head for a kiss. He has the chalice in his hand.”

“What are you leaving out?” He asked after a minute of heavy silence.

“Pio stabs me in the eighth panel. And you kill him.”

Silence.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” she asked, on the verge of a panic attack. “He’s seen the paintings, Rom. Studied them. He knows you’re coming to kill him.”

“Go back to your room, Jule. Lock the door.”

“You’re not hearing me. He knows. And he has a key to my room, anyway. He can kill me anytime. It’s you he wants.”

“Drive faster,” he said to someone else in the car.

Jule heard a creak somewhere down the hall. She pulled the phone away and listened to the house as it settled in the night. Rom asked a question she didn’t quite hear and Jule pressed the receiver back to her ear, looking into the dark, but not seeing anything.

“It’s a trap, Rom,” she said.

Then everything went black.

…

The line went dead. Rom mashed the END button on his cell phone and examined his call history. An unavailable number.

“Shit!”

“Shall I drive even faster?” Orti asked.

“Hell, yes,” Rom told him.

“Jule is in danger?”

“Yeah,” Rom said, staring at the blacktop disap
pearing under the Mercedes front end as they sped back to Verona.

“This man, Pio Mascaro, what do you know about him?” Orti asked.

“That he’s a dead son of a bitch when I see him.”

“He is Jule’s betrothed?”

Rom looked across at Orti. “So?”

“It makes it more difficult to go storming into the man’s private residence and kidnap his intended.”

“What are you telling me? That you’re going drop me off outside his front door and disappear into the night? Because that’s fine.” Rom turned his head back to the road ahead.

Orti smiled. “No, my friend. I meant you might need my assistance.”

Rom smiled for the first time all night.

“Mascaro has hired a local security force to guard his house and, I am assuming, your woman. Do you have a plan for getting inside?”

“Absolutely.”

“Fill me in,” Orti said.

…

Pio’s ever-present smile vanished. In fact, he scowled, hard. At Jule.

“You betrayed me,” he said, pacing the small room where she sat on a bare floor. “I give you everything a woman could want and what do you do when my back is turned? Call that bastard. I thought it would be different this time. I wouldn’t have to punish you, but I see now it’s no different than all the other times. You go too far.”

Pio stopped pacing and Jule saw one of the two men at the door step away and answer his cell phone.

God,
had
she gone too far? Was he going to kill her? How much time did she have? She tried to distance herself emotionally from the scene and study the room, the men at the door, Pio’s fragile mental state.

What were her chances?

Slim to none came the answer in her head. She couldn’t overpower Pio and two guards. She’d do the only thing she could do. Talk.

“I’m sorry, Pio. I don’t understand the rules. Maybe if you explained them, I wouldn’t step out of line.”

He watched her through squinted eyes, displeasure emanating from his body in waves. The paternal nut-job fled in the wake of this newer, angry man on a mission.

“Please. I don’t know the history you’re talking about. Tell me.”

Suspicion ruled every gesture. And for good reason. If she had a weapon, she’d strike him over the head and run for the hills.

“I am growing tired of replaying the same scene over and over with you, Juliet.”

Whoa. He just called her Juliet.

The hairs on Jule’s arms rose.

“If you would be reasonable and consider what is best for everyone, we wouldn’t have to go through this pain each and every time.”

“Please, Pio. Really, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The guard at the door who’d been talking on the phone stepped in and caught Pio’s attention. Pio listened for a minute and then nodded. The guard left, disappearing outside the door.

Jule didn’t like all the whispering.

“I think you understand perfectly well, Juliet. You always have. You simply play the game differently. But this time, I’m changing the rules.”

Jule heard a scuffle outside the door and then the guard reappeared carrying a man over his shoulder. He threw him on the floor near Pio’s loafered feet.

For a fleeting second, Jule’s heart descended to her feet. Rom had been captured.

But the man rolled over and Jule recognized Rossi’s face. One of his eyes puffed out like a swollen egg and crusted blood from a cut above his brow streaked his face.

“God, Pio! What have you done to him?” she asked, crawling to Rossi’s inert form.

“Made him earn his keep,” Pio said, nudging Rossi’s leg away from his shiny shoes.

“Sit up, man, and tell me what I want to know.”

Rossi tried to rise up on his elbows, but pain lanced across his face and his head dropped back to the marble floor. Jule leveraged an arm under his shoulder, helping him gain an upright position with most of his weight on her.

His good eye opened and looked at her. Jule winced at the bloodshot white tissue and semi-dilated pupil.

“Jule? Is that truly you?”

“Yes, Rossi. It’s me.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Jule. I swear.” He pleaded for her to understand.

“Shhh. I know you didn’t. It’s okay.”

“Touching. But not the reason I brought you here, Rossi. I want to know about the chalice.”

The chalice. The cup from the painting.

“I’ve told you, Mr. Mascaro, I don’t know—”

Pio kicked him hard in the hip, making Rossi jerk back, straight into her nose. Seconds later, both she and Rossi were groaning in unison.

“You know more about the paintings than you’ve let on, Rossi. Stop lying and tell me what I want to know.”

Jule tested her sore nose with her fingertips. Yep. It was bleeding. She almost missed the exchange between Pio and Rossi as she tore a strip from her white gown to staunch the flow of blood.

“Whoa. Wait a minute. Rossi has been working on the paintings, too?”

Pio met her eyes over the top of Rossi’s head. “Jule, sometimes you can be so painfully naïve, love. Of course he has. The museum group went into bankruptcy trying to reacquire the missing three panels from a private group and Rossi here was the lead art historian on the case. He’s been studying the series for the last six months.”

He’d been lying to them?
Crap.
Rom had been right. And she’d called Rossi behind his back. Set up the meeting that led to their capture outside his office.

Jule pushed free of Rossi and let his dead weight carry him back to the floor where he landed painfully.

“You asshole!” She shouted. “You lied to me. Set me up.”

Rossi’s lips quivered.

“Yes,” Pio said, drawing her attention back to him. “Funny what money will make people do.”

Jule wouldn’t take Pio’s side if her dress went up in flames and he had a bucket of water, but she wanted to hear what Rossi had to tell him about the series and the chalice.

“What did you find out?” she prodded Rossi.

He pleaded with his single good eye for her to understand. “I did do it for the money, Jule. But not for the reason you think. Nonprofits and public groups don’t do half the preservation measures private money can. They’re too under-funded. I wanted the altar reconstituted, the paintings returned to their rightful place. That’s all.”

The explanation cost him a lot. She could tell by his shallow breathing and erratic pulse beating in his neck.

She could forgive his intentions, but never his means.

“What you did was wrong, Rossi. You turned to the dark side and once there, you can’t return. Your reputation is ruined.”

He nodded helplessly. “Rom knew.”

What?

“Rom knew you were double crossing me behind my back?”

Rossi could only blink his eye, but Jule took it as a yes.

“Sweet discussion of principles and morality, but not what I’m interested in. Tell me what I want to know. Now,” he motioned the guards forward, who in unison raised the butts of their guns at Rossi’s prone body on the floor.

“The roses,” he coughed and a terrible wheeze came bubbling up from deep inside. A punctured lung?

“What about them?” Pio demanded. But Rossi couldn’t respond until the coughing stopped and he breathed shallowly through his mouth.

“I think the chalice is buried at the monastery.”

“Where?” Jule and Pio exclaimed at the same time.

“The garden. Under Lawrence’s rose bush.”

Rossi fell silent and didn’t say anymore.

Jule crawled back to him and felt for a pulse. He lived, but would probably be unconscious for a while. Probably better considering what she’d heard rattling around in his chest. He may have betrayed her with Rom, but the man didn’t deserve to lose his life over it. Better he be branded the opportunist he was and blackballed from the art world forever.

“He needs to get to a hospital, Pio,” she said, looking up at him.

“No. He needs to tell me which goddamn bush to dig under,” Pio said, anger thinning his lips.

Oh.
OH!
Pio didn’t know where to start digging. Which meant she still had a chance if she found Rom and beat Pio to the monastery.

She had to get to a phone, call Rom back and tell him to head for the monastery instead of here. He could beat Pio if he hurried.

Pio motioned one of the guards in to pick up Rossi. Jule watched as they carried him away. “I’m serious Pio. He needs to get to a hospital right now. He may not live to tell you where to dig.”

Pio turned to look at her, his face full of a dark menace she hadn’t seen before. He could care less about Rossi or her at this point. He wanted to beat Rom.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll simply dig up the entire place.”

He walked out the door leaving Jule and one guard.

One guard.

That
she could handle. Right?

She waited several minutes to make sure Pio or the other guard wouldn’t return. Then, testing the guard, she threw the scrap of bloody dress she’d been using for her nose on the floor. The guard followed it with his eyes.

Raising her arms above her head, Jule stretched and sure enough, the guard’s attention followed the action, mostly lingering on her breasts. As she folded her arms behind her head, she unfastened the closure holding the halter up.

It sprang free and folded down around her breasts.

“Shoot!” she said and the guard’s attention fixed firmly on the tops of her exposed breasts.

She made a show of wiggling around, flashing more skin as she tried to pull the halter back together and close it around her neck.

After several failed attempts, she motioned to the guard as she stood, clutching the dress to her breasts.