She fled the garret room and ran down the steps, almost falling down them in her fright. With all her strength she wrenched the table by degrees away from the door, and after fighting back every stubborn lock on the massive tower door, she burst out into the chaos.
Ignoring her sore ankle, she bolted for the palazzo and made it all the way to the steps, but there she found she was not the only one who sought safety inside. There was a crush at the main entrance as a wave of fear-crazed people fought to swarm in while dozens of guards struggled to hold them back, seal the doors, and secure the palace. She screamed to be let through, but she could not make herself heard above the deafening roar, and none of her father’s men noticed her. She ran to the wide kitchen door where she’d left the palazzo hours ago, but it, too, was bolted, as were the third and fourth doors she tried.
With mounting terror, she bloodied her hands pounding on the last door on that wing, her voice frantic in her own ears as she shouted, “Papa! Papa!”
Her own father had locked her out. She couldn’t believe it.
Answering shots sounded much closer as the soldiers finally began to work the cannons on the city walls, and Allegra realized she should have listened to Lazar. She walked in defeat to the edge of the square and stared at the gruff, weather-browned men who were everywhere, bare-chested, swinging weapons of all kinds at her father’s soldiers, even great, cruel-looking clubs.
They didn’t look like any Ascencion peasants she’d ever seen. They didn’t fight like them, either.
Her fingers tightened on her paltry weapon. She could see no other solution but to return to her fortress in the gate tower. Lazar had said she would be safe there. She scanned the crowd for him and did not see him.
Jesu Christi
, what if he’d already been killed? Who would control these wild men of his then? She could not bear to think about it yet. First she had to get back to the tower. It meant submitting to her fate as his captive, but it was better than dying, and if he chose to be gentle, why, she might even enjoy herself in his bed, she thought rather hysterically, for she had certainly relished his kiss.
She had not gone a dozen steps when her bodyguards came rushing out of the chaos to her defense, along with a few other soldiers. She cried out in thanks, for she had never been so happy to see anyone before in her life. They surrounded her in a protective ring, weapons outward.
“Donn’ Allegra, we’ve been looking everywhere for you! What are you doing out here?” Giraud cried, but he did not expect an answer, for he instantly had greater matters with which to contend.
In their dashing blue-and-gold uniforms, the guards were immediate targets for the enemy. They strove to fend off the sudden swarm of pirates on all sides.
Surrounded by the clash of weaponry, Allegra screamed when the sweat or spit of a pirate flicked upon her skin like the first drizzle of storm rains. The great wretch swore at Giraud and opposed him. The brawny guard put a swift end to him. Her mind went blank as she stared at the ragged crimson gash of the pirate’s torn throat and his bulging eyes.
They had only gone perhaps five steps when handsome young Pietro was run through.
“Jesus!” he yelped, falling to his knees.
Allegra stared at her big, familiar guard in astonishment as he looked down at the sword buried in his chest. She covered her mouth with both hands in horror, not even noticing when her little knife slipped from her grasp and clattered to the ground.
She looked over her dying bodyguard’s head at the one who had done this to him, saw the giant scimitar steeped in scarlet, heard the hearty cry die on the brute’s lips as he stared back at her, his sweaty face filling suddenly with an altogether different passion.
He had a dark mop of mangy, ragged hair, beady eyes beneath a heavy brow, and he loomed half as big as Gibraltar. Appalled beyond thought by his eager leer, she took an unconscious step backward.
In that moment Giraud was wounded.
“Milady!” he gasped.
“No!” She grabbed for him even while his right arm faltered. She covered her face with both hands as he was struck again and died with an anguished curse while a crowd of the brutes fell upon the last, valiant man standing by her.
Rough hands seized her. She would not look. She was going to die, but she did not want to see it coming.
Dear God, please just let it be swift
.
“Well, well. What ’ave we here?” came a deep, garbled voice while the cannons deafened them all.
She uncovered her ashen face and looked up to see the giant who had run poor Pietro through. She was filled with instant, burning hatred that for a moment conquered terror.
“Either kill me as we stand, or take me to Lazar! God curse you forevermore!” she added with uncontrollable savagery.
The pirate threw back his thick head and laughed. “ ’Tis a hellcat we’ve got ’ere, Andrew McCullough, and a lady, to boot!”
“Take me to Lazar,” she said through clenched teeth, hoping indeed that was the name by which his men knew him.
“Feisty lass! Now, why should I do that? Maybe old Goliath ain’t as bonny a man as the Cap, but I got me own virtues!” he cried, grabbing himself between his legs. “It’s finders keepers with the Brethren!”
She shrank from him as the big pirate bent his shaggy head, looming closer.
“Aye, pretty, methinks we can find a few uses for you aboardship.” He reached for her.
To his mates’ delight, she succeeded in stumbling a few steps from him before another easily caught her and held her. Slowly, defiantly, she raised her gaze. The stench of his rotten-toothed breath filled her nostrils. She refused to breathe his foul air until black explosions burst silently across her field of vision. For a moment, she feared she was going to faint.
Her head began to swim as his big dirty hands clamped around her waist. There were smatterings of blood on his ragged shirt.
Her bodyguards’ blood.
The two smiling, manly fellows who had followed her around on her errands like big, lovable dogs.
“Come to Golly, pretty,” he rumbled, a bestial light in his eyes.
She fought furiously, to no avail, as the pirate hoisted her over his sweaty shoulder and carried her out of the square.
At six in the morning, Lazar leaned against the white frame of the open window. He was in the drawing room of the governor’s palazzo, gazing out to sea. Taking the island had been as simple as he’d known it would be, for his plans had been flawless. All had come off easy as a harlot’s frock. He had even sent three of his meanest men out to capture Domenic Clemente so he could die with the others, but for some reason he felt bloody odd.
The moment had come. The lads were delivering his archenemy into his hands. He had dreamed of this since he was thirteen years old, but it did not feel the way he had always imagined. There was none of the rising scarlet glory he knew in the thick of the fight or in the leap from ship to ship, sword in hand, or in battles against black gales at sea a hundred miles from any port.
His men knocked at the door and, at his word, brought in the governor. Lazar took one look at his prisoner, and his uncertainty bled to misery.
Damn it to hell
. In the lapse of fifteen years, the archfiend of his nightmares had become a tired old man.
The sailors threw the don to the marble floor of his own drawing room. He cursed as he went sprawling in a clanking knot of chains and manacles. “You will never get away with this! The navy will be here at any moment! I’ll see you hanged from the highest tree!”
Monteverdi glared at the men as he climbed stiffly to his feet. He untangled his chains with the dignity of a man used to public address, but when his gaze swung across the room to Lazar, he went motionless.
Staring, Monteverdi turned the sickly white of overcast skies.
“That’s right, old man, your sins have come home to roost,” Lazar told him with a soft, bitter laugh.
He wished right then that Father could have been there to see his old adviser. What a joke, that this little ferret should have found the means to bring low a man half as big as a mountain, with a mind as keen as the gleaming, ancient broadsword of the Fiore kings, Excelsior, which just an hour earlier Lazar had recovered from the city’s treasury, along with the crown jewels and the other royal heirlooms.
He dismissed his men with a firm nod.
As he considered the many ways he’d thought of over the years to begin this conversation, he took a casual stroll around the large, bright drawing room. With each moment he kept his silence, he could sense the old don’s fear mounting. It was most gratifying.
In a fortress on the Barbary Coast, he’d learned all the tricks of intimidation from His Excellency of Al Khuum, who had a flair for such things. Aye, his two-year sojourn in the bad place was not the least of the favors for which the Governor would pay today.
While Monteverdi watched his every move in dread, Lazar took down a dusty leather-bound book from one of the shelves and fanned idly through the pages, then found a fine box of cheroots on the writing table and helped himself to one. After lighting it with the expensive automatic tinder lying nearby on the desk, he turned his attention to his enemy.
“Before you start lying, or attempt to pretend you don’t know who I am,” he said, “let me just advise you that I have your daughter. It would be prudent to cooperate.”
This took the governor off his guard. “Where is she? Where is Allegra?” he demanded shakily.
Lazar gave him a slight, evil smile and turned away to watch the curtains wave over the window in the sea breeze. “In my keeping, never fear.”
“What have you done with her?”
“Not half yet what I intend. My compliments, Governor, on your sweet little girl. Delicious breasts, a mouth like silk, and the tightest little ass.” He closed his eyes for a moment, feigning an expression of remembered bliss. It had the calculated effect. “Exquisite.”
“What do you want of me?” Monteverdi whispered in a choked voice.
“First I want to hear you say you know who I am.”
Monteverdi was quite gray in the face. “But it’s not possible,” he croaked. “The boy is dead. Killed—by highwaymen—dreadful—”
“Highwaymen, eh? That
is
the official story, isn’t it?” This work was getting easier as the memories returned. He puffed upon the cigar and looked down at the bald spot on the top of Monteverdi’s head as he circled him. “We both know better than that, old man. I’ve come to collect my pound of flesh.”
“Not possible. You’re a fraud.” He clutched at his chest. “Your creatures told me you are a pirate—called the Devil of Antigua.”
“But it was not always so. Say it, Monteverdi. Admit you know me. Remember, I have Allegra.”
The don stared up at him.
“My God,” he whispered, “you are Alphonse’s elder son, Lazar. You have your mother’s coloring, but you are his very image.” Monteverdi suddenly gulped. “Your Majesty, I am innocent—”
Lazar laughed. “ ‘Your Majesty?’ The king is dead, Monteverdi. You and the Council saw to that.”
“I am innocent.”
“You don’t seem to understand how painful I can make death for you. You are not a man accustomed to pain, are you? You’ve had a soft life. How well you’ve done for yourself,” he remarked, gazing about at the sumptuous drawing room, “feeding off the carrion of the great Fiori. Fifteen years as governor, eh? Very laudable.” He exhaled a puff of smoke and looked away, unable to stomach the sight of the man.
“I am innocent!”
Lazar smiled blandly. “I tire of hearing you say that. All I really want to know is why you did it. I have asked myself that question a thousand times. You were a member of his cabinet, one of the six men he trusted most. He was good to you. He trusted you. As did my—mother.” He checked himself before he wavered.
Monteverdi searched the floor, then his shoulders sagged. He shook his head. “They were going to do it anyway. I could not have stopped it.”
“So you agreed to help.”
“Once the dons of the Council brought the matter before me, if I had not cooperated, I, too, would have been killed.”
“Why did they choose you?”
He shrugged. “Most of my family is Genovese. Genoa was all but bankrupt,” he said heavily. “Not even the revenues from Corsica restored the industries.”
“Those old men are lucky they’re dead. You—you’re not so lucky.” He slid Monteverdi a look. “Your crime is the worst one, anyway. You sat at our dinner table. You rode to the hounds with him. You taught me how to play chess. You were our friend, and you sold us for the slaughter. Didn’t even try to warn us—”
“Enough,” he choked out. “I’ll tell you why. I did it for my wife. My beautiful wife, who was in love with him,” he whispered.
Lazar stared at him warily.
He remembered her clearly, the beautiful, sad-eyed Lady Cristiana, his mother’s closest girlhood friend and her lady-in-waiting.
“I loved her, oh, more than a man should ever love a woman,” he said with quiet, futile passion. “But I could not make her stop loving him.”
Instantly Lazar suspected a trick, for Monteverdi was a proven liar. “So when I bed Allegra, I’ll be tupping my half sister, eh?” he taunted, approaching him. “Do you seriously think that will deter me?”
“Allegra is my daughter,” he said frostily. “Only in her heart was Cristiana an adulteress. She was a pious woman, and she loved Eugenia too much to act on her feelings for Alphonse—and of course, your father was never known to stray.” He lowered his head. “Cristiana fell into a deep melancholia after they died—”
“
Died?
” He suddenly grabbed Monteverdi by his cravat, lifting him off the ground above him. “
Died?
After they were butchered by your hirelings, you mean!” he roared.
Lazar threw him to the floor and stalked to the door, intent on leaving before he killed the don with his bare hands. Monteverdi had not suffered enough yet to receive such a swift and merciful death.
“Nothing you can do to me matters,” the man on the floor sobbed out behind him. “None of it matters.”