LITMIR.BIZ

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pain, and Gia reaches out to me, but I pull away sharply. When I’m feeling this way, I’m dangerous, and people invariably get hurt.

      Once — two lifetimes ago — I made myself a promise that my time would soon come. That one day, not too far away, it would no longer be about just surfing the next wave, just holding on, just surviving; it would be about me. And that time is now. Because staying safe, doing nothing, keeping out of sight, has never been my way. I know it now for a truth. The Eight have forced me to be so many things that I’m not, for far too long.

      ‘I can’t do this any more,’ I tell Gia and Felipe fiercely through my pain. ‘If I don’t get out soon, I’m going to go mad. You both work for me, right? I hold the purse strings, I call the shots?’

      Gia nods, frightened by something in Irina’s expression. Felipe is very still, watching guardedly with his dark, arrogant eyes.

      ‘So you’re going to start doing things my way,’ I rasp. ‘I’m done with waiting. I don’t care how you do it, or what it costs to make it happen, but I want you to find someone for me and bring him here. Now. His name is Ryan Daley.’

      Gia’s unusual eyes widen at the unexpected request, and her dark brows snap together as I rattle off Ryan’s mobile number — committed to memory two lives ago — and the URL for the social networking site Lela Neill befriended him on.

      ‘Bring him here? Now?’ Gia mutters. ‘With the schedule you have?’ She pulls a slim, black device out of a pocket of her leather jacket and inputs all of the information I’ve thrown at her, jabbing furiously at the device’s seamless face. ‘What if he won’t come?’

      ‘Make him,’ I snap. ‘Tell him: Mercy is alive and badly needs your help — use those exact words and I guarantee you’ll have his immediate and undivided attention. Book him on the next plane out of wherever he is. I mean it. The next plane. Got that?’

      Gia stops tapping for a moment, her eyes mystified. ‘He really is that “important” to you?’ She makes talking marks in the air with her free hand. ‘I didn’t think you were serious. Everything’s always a matter of life and death with you, even when it isn’t. You go through guys like they’re bottled water, like they’re completely disposable. It honestly can’t wait until after we leave Italy? It’d be a lot less complicated to set up.’

      I shake my head. ‘Find him for me. It’s the most important thing I’m ever going to ask you to do. Ever. So don’t mess it up.’

      Gia’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘But we’ve got three more full days of commitments here in Milan. Final fittings; dress rehearsal; runway show; dinner and afterparty. Even if we get the guy here, like, today, you can’t just walk away from this thing. You’ll never work again. You know that, don’t you?’

      I give a short laugh, half-way between amusement and despair. ‘Just get him here, and Irina Zhivanevskaya shall meet her commitments.’

      Gia gives me an odd look before nodding and jamming the hand-held device back into her jacket pocket. She turns to Felipe.

      ‘Irina’s right,’ she says briskly. ‘We need to move. I can go looking for this Ryan guy as soon as we’re on the road. The sooner we leave, the better. We’ll take the route I marked out originally, no arguments. You weren’t Irina’s driver the last time we were here. I know what I’m talking about, so you may as well put the map away.’

      Felipe’s eyes clash with Gia’s as he angrily gathers up the road map and shoves it back inside his overcoat along with the status pen. He rises to his feet with barely concealed irritation.

      Gia turns to me and says reassuringly, ‘Okay, the deal is: we get through today, then the next day, and one more day after that, and then we’ll go home. It’s nothing, right? We’ll pare back your schedule after this job, I promise. I’ll talk to your management — they’ll have to listen if they know what’s good for them. No sense killing the golden goose, right? And if they don’t? We’ll find someone else who will. You’re Irina. Everyone wants you, everyone loves you. This feeling you’re having … it will pass.’

      She’s only being kind, but I can’t stop myself from snarling, ‘Do your job. Find him. What are you waiting for?’

      ‘Straight onto it,’ Gia says soothingly, ‘I promise. As soon as we get to the cars.’

      I don’t need to touch her to know I’ve hurt her feelings, but I’m no good at modifying my behaviour when something I want is almost within reach.

      ‘Felipe,’ Gia snaps. ‘Your car has to be waiting by the emergency exit. I need Irina to be inside and on the move before anyone gets a good look at her. Giovanni’s security team can handle things from his end, but we can’t be seen to be arriving a second late or she loses the booking. It’s in the contract. Fast, fast, fast today. No dawdling, no unscheduled stops.’

      ‘It is understood.’ Felipe’s tone is now openly hostile. His dark eyes flick to her face for a second before he resumes studying the gilded frescos on the ceiling, his mouth a sulky line.

      Gia continues to badger him. ‘And you’ve spoken to Bertrand? He’s clear that Natasha’s to leave Irina’s usual hotel an hour after we leave here, wearing the wig and dark glasses? And he’s to drive her all over Milan so she gets to Atelier Re well after we’ve gone inside?’

      ‘Sí,’ Felipe says, not bothering to hide his boredom. ‘The decoy, she is ready. We have been through it many times. You must think us stupid, Senorita Basso.’

      Gia doesn’t bother to refute him. ‘And Irina’s security detail? Have you confirmed the personnel, the numbers?’

      Felipe’s reply is sullen. ‘It, too, is in hand. Gianfranco recommends three cars today. One to go ahead, one to follow. You will travel in the last car, Senorita Basso, with Carlo and Jürgen. Myself and Senorita Zhivanevskaya in the second car, and Angelo and Vladimir in the first car. To give her enough time to get inside without unnecessary … complication.’

      Gia’s expression is suddenly furious. ‘Complication? Is that what you think of me? And what? Separate us? Whose idea was that? Look at the condition she’s in today — I can’t leave her alone! Especially with the mob scene she’ll have to endure outside Atelier Re. She’s too fragile. We can’t risk a relapse.’

      Felipe shrugs, his expression unreadable. ‘Do not ask me. It is Gianfranco’s orders. I am just the driver. Ring him if you like.’

      ‘Just the driver!’ Gia expostulates. ‘What are you plotting, Felipe?’

      Felipe studies the fingernails of one tanned hand. ‘If that is all, Miss?’

      The doorbell peals again, and Gia looks up sharply. ‘That’ll be breakfast. Finally. When I call down, Felipe, have the engine idling. Hotel security has organised for us to exit through the basement levels. There’s to be no waiting time. None at all.’

      Felipe gives a mocking half-bow in Gia’s direction. ‘You worry too much, Senorita Basso,’ he replies insolently. ‘She is in good hands. The best, no?’

      He gives me a lazy, lascivious wink and walks quickly to the door of the suite with long strides.

      ‘You’ll find Ryan?’ I remind Gia again, feeling strangely uncertain. ‘Bring him to me?’

      She nods and I can feel my heart rate begin to slow, my breathing even out, my left hand stop aching. I flex my fingers gingerly and take my hand out of my pocket, sit straighter in my armchair.

      At the door, Felipe lets in a dark-eyed young woman with dark, curly, chin-length hair wearing a crisp white shirt and sober, maroon skirt suit with the hotel crest picked out in gold thread on the jacket’s front pocket. She’s pushing a linen-covered trolley bearing a raft of breakfast things, including two dome-covered plates. She’s so flustered at the sight of me that she runs over her own foot in her hurry to get the trolley to the graceful dining table near the street-facing windows of the sitting room.

      The

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