This was not at all the outcome she’d hoped for. Instead, she had hoped that last night would quench both her curiosity about them and her fleshly passions, for a while at least. Instead, lying with Sevin was like partaking of expensive chocolate, or some other delicious confection. She could not forget the experience and feared she would want more after an all-too-brief interval of time had passed.
Though she had mated both men, there was no question that it was the elder Satyr who had taken charge of her. He was the one her body still craved. Her mind scrambled for a way that something more could be worked out between them, some sort of liaison in future.
No!
She shook her head, trying to convince herself. This was the sort of dangerous thinking that had gotten her into trouble in Venice. She would hold the memory of last night dear, but a respectable woman did not carry on with a man she barely knew. Sevin had promised nothing, and she would ask for nothing.
Arriving at a crossroads in the tunnel, she stopped, holding the lantern high and looking both ways. She didn’t remember such a crossing. She’d been so intent on her thoughts just now that she’d completely lost her bearings. Panic threatened, but she forced it down. She retraced her steps several times, trying to find her way. An hour later, she was drooping with tiredness and longing for sleep. How much longer would the lamp last?
Determined not to give up, she took a few more aimless steps down the corridor. And then, suddenly, she spied a long vertical crack of light just ahead. Relieved, she scurried toward it, then pushed at the door. It gave way easily, expelling her from the labyrinth into her mother’s tastefully decorated private library.
But it seemed it was too soon to breathe a sigh of relief, for the room was not empty.
“What of the marble heads over there?” she heard a voice ask.
The room had been done in the Tuscan style, colored in ambers and peaches. It was appointed with at least two dozen busts and paintings culled from the ruins of the Forum—in the days before such treasure hunting had been banned.
The tall shelf she’d just moved had been hinged and built into one wall. At one time not so very long ago, its many shelves had been neatly stacked with smooth jars, vials, and small boxes, all similarly labeled. This library had been the nerve center of her mother’s business empire, Bona Dea Cosmetics.
She stepped farther inside the library to find two men, both appallingly familiar to her. Dread curled in the pit of her stomach.
The younger of them sat on her mother’s couch, perfectly turned out in attire that was the height of fashion. Laslo Tivoli, of Venice.
His father stood nearby, busily undraping a bust of Diana the Huntress in order to analyze its worth. “This one should fetch a hefty price,” he muttered.
They’d apparently made themselves at home here last night. The bottle of her mother’s expensive brandy was out on the side table, and two glasses sat beside it, one still full or else newly poured. The sight of it made her want to retch.
“Get out,” she commanded, the words bursting from her.
At that, both men turned in surprise to look in her direction. It was difficult to discern that they were father and son. Both were handsome in their own way, she supposed objectively. However, whereas the father was swarthy and muscular, with cunning eyes, Laslo was slender and handsome, with pretty manners. Manners that had hoodwinked her into trusting him.
She watched his father lift a cigar to his mouth. “Ah, here she is at last. My lovely runaway daughter-in-law.”
She set the lamp down and drew her wrap more closely around herself. “Ex-daughter-in-law.” Her entire body might be shaking with fear, but her voice did not.
Ignoring that, Signor Tivoli continued on. “Come back from the dungeons, it seems.” His gimlet eyes slipped down her figure, reminding her she was in her nightgown.
Her eyes darted toward the door to the hall and she sidled in that direction, but Signor Tivoli moved to intercept her, and she stopped short. “You’re looking somewhat bedraggled.” He came closer and she shrank away, but he only studied her through the smoky haze from the cigar he’d stuck between his lips. “And smelling of sex.”
“Father, please!” Laslo said in a long-suffering tone. He asked her no questions, however, apparently not caring if his ex-wife had just returned from an assignation, as his father had guessed.
Although she’d bathed her face and hands at the fountain, she hadn’t taken time for a thorough wash, thinking it a waste of time she could ill afford when she so desperately needed to find her way home before the lamp burned out. Signor Tivoli looked toward the portal through which she’d just come, then he went to peer beyond it into the abyss. She moved to the safety of the library door, watching him. After a moment of consideration, he nudged the hinged shelf closed, flush against the wall.
Signor Tivoli was one of the most renowned architects in Italy, with offices in several cities. His son, Laslo, was a sought-after guest at dinner parties, a skilled flirt—and he was her husband. Correction—ex-husband.
Upon her arrival in Venice, fresh from learning that her mother was mentally unstable, Alexa had met Laslo at a social gathering. Immediately, he’d singled her out and his determined pursuit had begun. His devotion had been a healing balm to her after the shame and guilt she’d left behind here in Rome. She hadn’t been herself then, hadn’t realized she was still in shock. She’d let herself be blinded by his flattery and flowers, and wooed by his avowals of love. And very quickly, they had wound up married. She’d thought he would protect her from more hurt, but that had proven to be far from the case.
As she stared at him, the mantel clock suddenly seemed abnormally loud in the library.
Tick tock tick tock.
She shivered, remembering another clock, loud in the silence of her darkened bedroom on that horrible night in Venice. Her wedding night. A terrible pain, a dozen stabs, a burst of semen, male groans, withdrawal, a farewell slap on her bottom. The sound of a door closing. That had been the sum of it.
Then her tears had come, and along with them a determination to avoid a repeat performance at all costs. She was gone by morning to England for the two months it had taken to secure a divorce. And less than a week ago, she had come back to Rome.
Now these Tivoli men had caught up to her.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded of Laslo.
He sent her a helpless look. “I came at Father’s suggestion. And he’s right. It doesn’t look seemly that you fled so quickly after the wedding. Everyone’s been asking questions.”
What she had once mistaken for polished manners was in truth only weakness. “Please, Laslo. Just go. Or I’ll summon the
polizia
.”
He made an affronted sound and got to his feet, straightening his jacket with a jerk. “You don’t have to sound so peevish. You are the one who deserted me, not the other way around. Surely you must have come to regret your actions by now.”
“You dare say such a thing, after what transpired between us?”
At this, Laslo’s cheeks went pink. His eyes darted to his father, then fell to study his perfectly polished boots.
“I didn’t
desert
you,” she went on. “I divorced you. There’s a defined difference in the eyes of the law. My attorney in England had the papers sent to you. You must have received them.”
The elder Tivoli rocked on his heels, shifting his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other and looking unconcerned. “We did. They made for good kindling.”
Her fist clenched tighter at the blanket she held around herself. “Burned or not, they are nevertheless still legal documents with copies registered with my attorney. Now you must excuse me. I’m going to my chamber—alone—to bathe. Please lock the front door on your way out and don’t steal anything.”
The amused voice of Signor Tivoli chased after her. “How can we possibly steal anything,
cara,
when everything here—including you—already belongs to my son?”
Alexa took the stairs as if the devil himself were pursuing her. She’d been afraid of something like this. She would have to summon her attorney from England. That meant more expense she could ill afford.
Her every instinct urged her not to retreat—to stay and sort this out now. But she was too exhausted—the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that a woman feels after spending the night in the arms of her lover. And his brother. Last night had been a vastly different experience from that time with her erstwhile husband. Too late, she’d realized that Laslo was a brute whose father ran his life.
And now it appeared that the elder Signor Tivoli also sought to run hers.
She yawned, shaking her head as she entered her room and locked the door behind her. She glanced longingly at her bed. But she couldn’t find sleep yet, as much as she might have liked to. After her bath, she would return to this battle refreshed and more substantially clothed.
For she had little doubt that they would not be gone when she returned downstairs. She only hoped they didn’t rob her blind in the interim.
“W
hat the hells happened to you two last night?” Bastian demanded when Sevin and Luc appeared in the salon as suddenly and in the same strange manner as they’d departed it.
It was just minutes after dawn, and their eldest brother and Dane were already dressed, and looking much relieved to see the two of them appear out of nothingness.
“We were just about to go out combing the morgues,” Dane told them.
Only ElseWorld males were up and about this early after a Calling night. Many were breaking their fast at the feast already laid out in the main bar. Their women would sleep far into the afternoon.
Would Alexa?
Sevin wondered. He desperately hoped so. If she stayed put, they’d have a better chance of finding her again before she got lost. Those subterranean tunnels were said to extend for miles under Rome—a maze of corridors, niches, and bone-filled rooms. Even with her lantern she could easily become lost down there.
“Luc transported us to the catacombs for the night,” he informed his brothers curtly. “Using some sort of newly discovered talent.” His statement was greeted with a dumbfounded silence that gave him time to devour a croissant and wash it down with chilled water.
Watching him, Luc turned slightly green and looked away as if the thought of food was unpalatable after having undergone whatever physical trauma his talent had caused him in order to transport the two of them back here. “I don’t know how it happens,” he said, heading off questions. “I get headaches, especially in the days and hours leading up to the Calling. They began after I was released from the catacombs.”
“And, of course you said nothing to us about it,” Dane chided, shaking his head in bafflement.
“With proper training, your talent is something you could learn to control,” Bastian told him. “The headaches as well. But you’ll need help to recover.”
“No doctors,” Luc said emphatically.
Luc’s refusal to seek treatment was a favorite subject of debate among them. It had been since he’d intentionally defeated all of the physicians assigned to his case when they’d sent him to ElseWorld for treatment immediately following his rescue. Now, as his brothers argued the matter in ways they’d all argued it many times before, Sevin summoned a servant. With terse instructions, he sent the man scurrying to the apartment he kept just off his office on the third floor of the salon, in search of a change of clothing for both him and Luc. Then he waved a guard over and sent him for ropes and lamps—supplies they would need to find Alexa.
When the guard left them, Sevin returned to the conversation in time to catch the tail end of Bastian’s comment. “... I don’t suppose that talent of yours could take you all the way to Tuscany and back,” he was saying to Luc.
“Why do you ask that?” Sevin wanted to know.
In reply, Dane withdrew an official-looking document from his pocket and slapped it on the table between them. “He asks because of this. It arrived by courier after you left last night.”
Sevin picked up the proclamation, skimming it.
“What does it say?” Luc demanded, looking over his shoulder. He nudged him, wordlessly requesting that he read it aloud. Having spent so many years imprisoned in the catacombs, his reading skills were sorely lacking.
“It’s from the Roman seat of government, but applies to all township and city borders in Italy. The substance of it is as we suspected,” Bastian informed them both. “Anyone with ElseWorld blood in their veins is no longer allowed to travel outside the confines of their city of residence.”
“Apparently, we are a danger to the human population and must be quarantined for the duration,” Dane paraphrased, sarcasm tingeing every syllable.
“Damn. What’s this here?” Sevin said, frowning as he noted a particular passage. “We are no longer permitted to purchase property in this world either!” He tossed the document back to the table in disgust. This put a decided wrinkle in his plans.
“We’ll deal with all this later,” he told his brothers. “We need to get back to the catacombs. While Luc and I were trapped there last night, we were unable to summon Shimmerskins. Something about the geology of the tunnels.” He waved an impatient hand, brushing the likely reasons aside. “So we passed our Calling with Alexa Patrizzi, who ventured into the tunnels on her own and became lost. And she was left behind this morning when Luc transported us.”
Bastian and Dane looked completely stunned now. “Gods, Luc,” said Dane, sounding more concerned than ever. Luc had made no secret of his hatred for the Patrizzis.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Luc told him tonelessly. “Now or ever.”
“You damned well will—” Dane began.
Seeing the guard and servant returning with the requested supplies, Sevin cut his brother off. “Later. I need you two with me now,” he told Dane and Bastian. “I’ll answer any questions on the way to the Patrizzi house.”
He glanced at Luc. “You stay and watch over things at the salon. Explain matters to Silvia and Eva when they wake, and keep them here until their husbands return.”