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  Lex glanced over sharply, to see if he was telling the truth. She sighed when she saw that he was.

  “Thanks for the tip about the tigers, by the way,” Luca said, sourly. “You could have been a bit more specific.”

  “You don’t seem like you’re missing any pieces.”

  “Nothing visible, anyway.”

  “I suppose you gave the cross to your boss already?”

  “I did.”

  “How many attaboys did he give you?”

  Luca bristled.

  “I had a bit to make up for, after you got the Roma arrested.”

  “Oh, sorry to inconvenience you all!” Lex said. “I guess I should have let him murder me.”

  “He still might,” Luca said, darkly, “Unless….”

  “Unless what?”

  “Bruni sent me a job. My last job. But it’s kind of a two-man thing. You could help me out with it. Then you’d be square with him, too.”

  “I don’t need to get square with him,” Lex said furiously. “I don’t work for him or anybody else.”

  “Fair enough,” Luca said. “I can’t make you help, obviously. But you know who Bruni is. You know what he can do. It seems like you’ve got enough people chasing after you without adding him to the list.”

  Lex bit her lip to hold back the angry retort she wanted to give him.

  The idea of working for Bruni, for the Fratellanza in general, made her sick. She hated the idea of being forced into anything, especially whatever crap job they were trying to foist on her. And she never worked with a partner, let alone someone like Luca, who she didn’t know and couldn’t trust.

  She had spent her whole life independent. She wasn’t one of these common criminals, stealing for the money. There was a certain level of idealism to what she did. She wouldn’t call it noble, by any means, but it was consistent. She lived by her own rules, she followed her own desires. She didn’t allow other people to bend her or shape her.

  However, that freedom would be severely curtailed if she did make an enemy of the Fratellanza.

  “What’s the job?” she asked.

  “He wants the Seraphina Star.”

  Lex scoffed.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “No job is impossible.”

  “That one is. It’s in the Strauss vault. It’s no snitch from a museum—it’s got actual security.”

  “That’s why I said it’s a two-person job.”

  “‘Two-man’ is what you said, actually.”

  “Well, in this case, I think one-man, one-woman would be just about right.”

  Lex sat quiet for a minute, thinking.

  At last she said, “How do I know Bruni will actually leave me alone after this?”

  “It’s the last job for me, too,” Luca said. “Besides, it completes his set.”

  “People like that are never satisfied,” Lex warned him. “There’s always another prize.”

  “Not for us,” Luca said. “He gave me his word.”

  Lex made a dismissive sound. She didn’t believe anyone’s word was worth much.

  “Besides,” Luca said, glancing over at her, “I know the idea of it excites you.”

  Lex raised her eyebrow.

  “It does,” Luca insisted. “You’re intrigued by the challenge, just like I am.”

  He wasn’t wrong there. Most of what Lex had stolen in the past had been safe. She’d done it for the love of the item, but she’d always had an eye to the risk. She’d never done anything without a high degree of certainty that she wouldn’t be caught or killed.

  This would be a different sort of job. One that would test her cunning and her nerve to the utmost. This one wouldn’t be about the prize. It would be 100% for the heist.

  “Fine,” Lex said at last. “But we use my gear.”

  15

  Luca Diotallevi

  Valence

  The higher you build walls around your heart, the harder you fall when someone tears them down.

  Unknown

  With the volume of specialized equipment they would need for this job, Lex insisted that they go to her place in Valence first.

  “Black won’t give up that easy,” she said. “He’ll be keeping an ear out. If we start trying to buy what we need on the open market, he’s going to figure out what we’re up to before we even start.”

  Luca didn’t mind. They had to go up to Frankfurt anyway, so it was practically on the way.

  He supposed they would drive—it was only eight hours, and though his car might not look like much, it was good enough to cover that distance. Lex, however, said they ought to take the train, so they could spend the time planning.

  “We’ll book four couchettes in first class,” she said. “Then we’ll have the whole compartment to ourselves.”

  The train would take a little longer, because of the number of stops, but it was true that it would be much easier to look at schematics and blueprints and so forth, if they could both access their laptops the whole way.

  They made one quick detour first, so Lex could buy a change of clothes. She was heartily sick of the dress she’d stolen from the hotel luggage. Now she was wearing what Luca suspected to be her more natural style of dress: soft black cigarette pants and a loose gray pullover sweater.

  She was the sort of woman who looks best in the simplest clothing, an Audrey Hepburn instead of a Marilyn Monroe. She had pulled her hair back in a loose ponytail and pushed up the sleeves of the sweatshirt so she could carry her bag more easily. She looked much younger this way. In her flat boots, with the backpack, she could have been one of the many college students on the platform. Only the students probably didn’t have first-class tickets.

  They boarded the train at Venezia Mestro—one of the sleek TGV trains that moved as quiet as a whisper, as rapid as a glance. They seated themselves in the plush seats, facing one another across a small, collapsible table.

  Luca had already gotten them new false passports, so they were traveling as Alexandra Fouquette and Lorenzo Lombardi.

  “It’s easier to remember if you pick something close to our actual names,” Lex had said.

  “What is your actual name?” Luca asked her, handing her the new passport.

  Lex regarded him, eyes narrowed. Why was everyone so desperate to know that one particular factoid?

  Oh, well. She’d already told Byron.

  “It’s Alex,” she said at last. “But I prefer Lex.”

  “Just Alex?” Luca said. “No middle name, no last name?”

  “Lex is good enough,” she said.

  “I could tell you my full name,” Luca said, “but I don’t know what it is, not really. I mean, it’s Luca Diotallevi, but that’s just a name they give to orphans here. It means ‘may god raise you’.”

  “You don’t know who your parents are?” Lex said.

  “No. I was left by a dumpster, in a suitcase. They have places where you can leave babies, at churches and police stations. But my mother didn’t do that. The dumpster was in an alley, close to a restaurant. One of the diners heard me crying.”

  “Oh my god,” Lex said, her eyes full of pity.

  “I assume my mother was very young,” Luca said, “or mentally ill.”

  “That’s very…understanding of you.”

  “Well,” he said, “I can’t know the truth, so there’s no point assuming the worst. Though of course, I’ve thought it from time to time. That she would rather throw me out like trash than walk a few blocks to a place where I’d be safe. That she wanted me to die but lacked the courage to actually kill me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lex said. “I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

  “I know,” Luca said, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “Anyway, it’s why I’ve worked for Bruni for so long. Being part of a crime family is better than no family at all. At least sometimes.”

  “I had good parents,” Lex said, looking out the window instead of at Luca. “They died, though, when I was a teenager. A
car accident. I think when you lose your parents before a certain age, you don’t quite finish forming. Some parts of you simply don’t develop. So, there’s always been something missing in me.”

  Luca looked at her clear blue eyes, her resolute face. He thought that the only thing missing in her was fear. In all other respects, in her cleverness, her determination, her humor, her taste, he found her quite remarkable.

  However, he could tell that her barriers were high. Having allowed their conversation to turn personal even for a moment, and perhaps having revealed something to him that she didn’t intend to tell, she immediately turned businesslike once more and pulled out her notebook so they could sketch out some of their plans.

  They had both already done as much research as they could through remote sources (both legal and somewhat-less-than-legal). Now they were looking for that chink in the armor, that “in” that would allow them to outwit the people who had designed the security measures in the first place.

  “I’m not going to hurt anyone,” Lex had warned him, before they even started. “I’m not carrying a gun.”

  “I won’t either,” Luca said. “I’m a thief, not a killer.”

  “The rest of the Fratellanza don’t seem to share that sentiment.”

  “That’s why I work on my own, generally speaking.”

  “But not this time,” Lex said.

  “That’s right,” Luca said, smiling a little. “It’ll be a new thing for both of us.”

  So now they were looking for the scam, the con, the way to sneak in.

  “Can we get into the Strauss vault?” Lex asked. “You’re a safecracker, aren’t you?”

  “Well, the code changes constantly. And if you want to steal the code, you’ll have to steal it from four different people, because nobody knows the whole thing. You can’t blast the door open, because there’s always a dozen guards in the building. And let’s say you incapacitated the ones closest to the door, and tried to use, say, a water-cooled drill to go through it. You better have three days straight to drill, because it’s a twenty-two-ton , two-foot thick hunk of metal.”

  “What about tunneling?” Lex said.

  “Granite foundation, reinforced with steel bars all the way round.”

  Lex pondered for a moment.

  “The trouble is that we’re trying to break into a vault with a king’s ransom inside of it. We only need the one piece, really. When does it come out?”

  “The whole British collection is coming out in a couple of days, for the Strauss 40th Anniversary Gala.”

  “Well, that’s the time to do it, then—during transport. Or when it’s being held in a remote location.”

  “Of course,” Luca said. “That’s no cake walk either, though. Inside the gala, they’ll have at least three armed guards around the pieces at all times, and the cases will be sealed up tight. It’s not a sale where they’d be taking the gems in and out—they’ll be under lock and key the whole time, with about a million sensors on them.”

  “And their security protocol is that if there’s any red-level threat, they immediately box it all up in a bulletproof suitcase and take it down to an armored truck,” Lex said.

  “Right. Plus, those trucks aren’t just any old Brinks. The back is a miniature vault. Once the case is in the back and it’s closed up, it’s not opening again until it gets back to Strauss. The drivers don’t have the code to open the rear doors, and neither do the guards. So there’s no point trying to plant a smoke bomb under the truck to try to threaten them, or anything like that.”

  “What if we snitched the whole vehicle?”

  “We could, but it’s slow as a tank. The getaway would be difficult. And again, you’ve got to get the drivers out of the way. They’re not stupid, and they’re not twelve-dollar-an-hour employees. These are highly trained security personnel. They’re not just going to hand over the keys.”

  Lex and Luca went back and forth for about an hour, broaching ideas and then shooting them down.

  Lex kept returning to the trucks, while Luca wanted to explore the idea of some kind of lightning grab—in and out through the windows in less than a minute flat.

  “That’s not going to work,” Lex said in frustration. “This has to be flawless, methodical, not a mad dash. There’s no room for errors.”

  “I don’t make errors,” Luca said furiously.

  “Oh really?” Lex said. “That’s funny, because on the one job I observed, it didn’t seem like things went exactly to plan.

  “That’s right,” Luca said, glaring at her, “when you’re there to sabotage me, it’s not quite as smooth as usual.”

  “Everyone will be trying to sabotage us. It’s a twenty-man security team, at minimum.”

  “I know that. You’re not the boss of this operation. Don’t forget that you’re the only one of us who’s seen the inside of a holding cell.”

  “After you abandoned me!”

  “After I saved your life!”

  “After you kidnapped me!”

  They had stood up from their seats and were shouting into each other's faces, inches apart.

  She was so goddamned infuriating. She wouldn’t cede the slightest point. And why did she have to look so unutterably gorgeous with her face flushed and her eyes blazing at him?

  Luca did the only thing he could think of.

  He seized her by the back of the neck and kissed her hard on the mouth.

  Lex pulled away from him and slapped him across the face.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” she cried. “Be professional!”

  “I’m Italian, not German!” Luca laughed. “This is as professional as it gets!”

  He kissed her again, even harder this time. He pushed her up against the train window, lifting her up because she was so much smaller than him, so she was sitting on the sill.

  When he lifted her, his hands went almost all the way around her waist. Her entire body was firm beneath his fingers, tight as a guitar string.

  The taste of her mouth made him ravenous. Her skin was letting off an electric mix of adrenaline and pheromones from their argument—exactly the kind of elixir most intoxicating to Luca, who thrived on tension, agitation, and danger.

  After the week he’d had, a week of disasters in no small part caused by this girl, Luca felt full to the brim with aggressive energy. Now the dam was bursting, it was all exploding out of him, directed at this one person who had dropped into his life, unexpected and unbidden, and turned him upside down.

  Why was she so difficult? Why was she so determined to be perverse? He wanted to tame her, and yet, he didn’t want her to change in the slightest. He wanted to possess her exactly as she was.

  He attacked her with his lips and hands, wrapping her ponytail around his hand so he could yank her head back, kissing his way down her throat to the tops of her breasts. He pulled down the loose neck of her shirt, baring the full, soft breasts, held up by the lacy cups of her bra.

  He kissed and licked as far down as he could, slipping his tongue between the skin and the cup of the bra so he could find her nipple, already hard, and pull it into his mouth.

  He was infuriated by all the clothing in his way. He yanked the sweater up over her head, then ripped the bra down around her waist without bothering to unclasp it, so at last he had access to those luscious tits.

  He cupped them in his hands, surprised by their size on such a slim figure. He kneaded them, running his palms over the nipples, admiring their softness and responsiveness to his touch.

  He took one in his mouth again and gently flicked the nipple with his tongue, feeling Lex gasp and arch her whole body back, begging him to take more of it into his mouth.

  He dropped down to his knees and pulled her pants off as well, while she leaned back against the window. She was wearing a lace thong underneath, black like her bra.

  He pulled it to the side so he could smell and taste her in the place that most attracted him. It was like a bear to honey—h
e knew exactly where he wanted to be, and he could think of nothing else until he got there.

  He buried his face between her thighs, nuzzling his nose and mouth into her cunt. Luca had always enjoyed pleasuring women in this way, but with Lex, he found that this part of her was the greatest aphrodisiac of all. She had the most delicious taste and smell he had ever encountered. Rich, musky, and just slightly sweet.

  She seemed made for him in every possible way, as if their DNA had been formed in a lab, to create an explosion like an atom bomb, once combined.

  He licked and sucked at her pussy, wishing he could eat her up. With her legs draped over his shoulders, she ground her pussy against his face, pushing him harder into her with both hands.

  She had already been soaking wet the moment he knelt in front of her. He knew she had been as aroused by their argument as he was, but she was just too stubborn to admit it. Now he would make her let go, he’d make her admit what she felt by forcing her to cum faster and harder than she ever had in her life.

  Her thighs were already trembling on either side of his head. She was gasping and moaning without any attempt to keep quiet. He increased the speed of his attentions, licking and fingering her all at once. He loved the feeling of his fingers inside of her, probing her most intimate, interior parts.

  She exploded, clenching her legs tight around him, throwing back her head and shouting, “Oh my god, oh my god, please don’t stop!”

  He kept going, dragging out the climax as long as possible for her.

  When at last it subsided, he scooped her up in his arms, because she was too limp and wrung out to keep balancing on the window sill.

  He turned her around instead, bending her over the little table between their seats.

  He swept their laptops and notebooks out of the way with one swing of his arm, not giving a fuck if they smashed on the ground. He pushed her down over the table and pulled her panties down around her knees.

  She was still recovering from her orgasm, panting and breathing hard, but he was too ravenous for her to wait. His cock was straining at the zipper of his pants, hard as iron and feeling like it would burst its own skin.