I know you did it, KK shouted. I tried to tell the truth and you killed me! My own father killed me!

  When Vincent tried to push the door off his neck, she slammed it again. I should have called the police on you years ago. I should have called them when you pushed Mom down the stairs.

  Not hearing what Evie was hearing, Vincent merely shrieked and fought with the imprisoning door. Donna screamed from the other side of the limo. Jax folded his arms and watched in interest.

  Apparently deciding no one was armed, the police officer jogged up to extricate Vincent from the invisible door slammer.

  Still holding down a squirming Matt, Dante glanced in Evie’s direction. “That’s KK getting even?”

  “Yeah, so you don’t have to. Both of you, try not to get arrested and let these nice men handle this.” Evie gestured at the police cars with blaring sirens roaring into the lot. There was no way she could explain to anyone all the crimes KK was accusing her father of. Once KK got rolling, she’d found her tongue, in a manner of speaking.

  Ignoring the commotion, Jax crossed the lot to take the heavy twin from Evie’s arms. “Kids look good on you,” he murmured, bending to kiss her. “Can you send KK on now, please?”

  Oh yeah, peace and quiet again. It wasn’t as if a ghost could sit on the witness stand. Evie opened herself to suck the exhausted spirit from the fight.

  Satisfied now that she’d done what she’d left unfinished, KK departed willingly.

  Thirty-four: Pris

  After dealing with the twins crawling all over everyone and everything at the station, the cops let Pris leave first so she could put them to bed in the early hours before dawn.

  She buckled them into the booster seats she’d brought from Italy, and wrapped them with the blankets she used in transporting food. Alex leaned against her as she fought with the buckle.

  “Bad men,” he said as succinctly as his father.

  “Don’t go,” Nan echoed her twin’s worries.

  “I’ve got you, babes,” Pris told them, her nonexistent heart breaking just a little. “And your daddy will be with you soon. No more bad men.”

  They didn’t argue or say more—so very not Malcolms. But then, their mother was normal, and Dante was an Ives, so they were their own selves and adorable—and apparently unscathed by their adventure. The innocence of their protected childhood had apparently allowed them to sleep through most of their ride.

  She’d had to leave before she punched someone after she heard Matthew claiming he didn’t know why his father wanted a yacht. Unlike Nick, KK’s brother knew Lucia wasn’t waiting on the ship. He couldn’t be stupid enough to believe his father simply wanted to take kids on a midnight joy ride.

  Pris couldn’t suppress that much rage or it would give her headaches for a year—or she’d learn to mentally attack evil minds and become as immoral as Vincent. Walking out was safest.

  She’d left Evie blithely claiming that Matt had confessed to killing Lucia, and Vincent to killing KK. Her cousin had a habit of spinning heads until everyone probably believed the words of a ghost.

  At Evie’s house, Pris took the children into bed with her so they couldn’t escape again without her knowledge. Dante woke her by climbing in on the other side a little later. The twins woke enough to seek body heat and one curled up in each of their arms and fell asleep again.

  Unable to reach over and kiss the unshaven, weary man in her bed, Pris kissed Nan’s curly head instead. “Everything all right?” she whispered.

  “For us, fine.” He sounded exhausted and disgusted and just a little bit triumphant. “I don’t think it will go well for Matt and Vincent, who are confusing their conflicting stories so badly that the truth may never emerge. The Italian police are closing in on Lucia’s farm as we speak. Not sure about Leo yet, but stolen artifacts are involved, and he’s the likely source. Go back to sleep.” He tucked Alex under him.

  With a greater reach than hers, he leaned over to kiss Pris’s forehead much as she’d kissed his daughter’s. She wanted to believe it meant more than gratefulness.

  They both needed the reassurance of normality and safety right now. The morning would be soon enough to work out everything else.

  But watching the crippled professor tear apart kidnappers and murderers had been a mind-bending experience. And a heart-rending one. She’d have to go back to calling him Indiana Jones just to keep her perspective. She badly needed to more than kiss him. Damned good thing the kids were between them.

  They might have slept through Loretta clattering down the stairs on her way to school, but the twins didn’t. The instant both squiggly little bodies departed the bed, Pris woke to find Dante watching her hungrily through drowsy eyes. Lust heated her insides. Thank the goddesses, they were fully clothed.

  “Go back to sleep,” he murmured. “I will go after them.”

  “You climbed the stairs.” Stupid thing to say, but her brain had gone south.

  “I had to be certain everyone was safe. I will never take that for granted again.” Looking abashed by this admission, he sat up, easing his leg off the bed.

  “We shouldn’t have to live expecting the worst.” She’d never go back to sleep now. “Use my shower. I’ll go down and check on the kids. I’ll bring your duffle up.”

  “I don’t want you to wait on me,” he protested. “You have done so much already.”

  “Next time I break a leg, you can wait on me.” Next time. She’d just said next time, as if there would be such a thing. Shutting down the knifing pain she didn’t understand, Pris escaped.

  Downstairs, she found the usual confusion. For reasons only known to them, R&R were parked at the kitchen island instead of in their own homes, although Rube still half-lived in the cellar with his computer equipment. From what she could tell, they were devouring sausages and eggs and debating how to hack the Italian police. She sent Reuben upstairs with Dante’s gear from the guest room off the kitchen.

  Evie nibbled at a donut while washing up Loretta’s cereal bowl and filling in Mavis, the usual bearer of donuts, on the evening’s events.

  Evie’s eleven-year-old ward swallowed half a fritter and eyed Pris with interest. “Your bubble is growing.”

  Pris hoped that was a good thing because she felt lousier than lousy.

  Across from Loretta, Alex and Nan kneeled on the banquette in the breakfast nook with milk smeared under their noses and toast soldiers in their fists. They waved their buttery treats and showed her a book—plasticized, thankfully. “Read, Pissy, read!”

  Evie almost doubled over suppressing hoots of laughter. Reuben returned in time to hear, and he and Roark pounded the island with their fists, repeating, “Pissy Prissy, pissy Prissy!”

  Ignoring the dolts, Pris kissed the twins, promised them she’d read later, and opened the refrigerator.

  By the time Dante limped in, using the cane instead of a crutch, she had an omelet ready for the pan and biscuits baking. Evie had whispered Pissy at her a few times before taking Loretta off to school. Her cousin probably wouldn’t let her ward out of her sight until high school after last night.

  “Just the man we need to see,” Roark crowed as Dante eased into the booth with his children. “The Italian police aren’t telling us anything, and we don’t speak the lingo.”

  Well, that explained their presence.

  Once he’d settled in with his coffee, Pris slid the omelet in front of Dante and provided cut-up bits for the twins to pick at. “Careful. They’ll have you hacking police files,” she warned.

  “We’re just reading them,” Reuben protested. “They sent a report to the sheriff who’s trying to use Google translate with pretty weird results.”

  Aunt Mavis, the all-knowing crystal ball reader, had taken the remaining donuts and departed with Evie. Pris set the biscuits on the counter and pointed her fork accusingly. “And you hacked that report from Troy. He didn’t just give it to you.”

  “We’re helping. It’s all good, bébé. We need to know if we should be looking for more Bella shipments. They were using deliveries to the stores here to conceal the artifacts. The US market isn’t watched so much, and they could sell them easier, probably for higher prices.” Roark helped himself to one of the biscuits.

  “If we can stop the artifacts from being sold, send me the file.” Ignoring her concerns, Dante didn’t look up from his eggs or the book the twins were perusing. He had them reading the letters aloud.

  Pris sighed at the unmistakable ding of an incoming message.

  Dante slipped his phone from his pocket and apparently clicked the link they’d sent. When he began rubbing his head, as if he had a headache, Pris sent the children to the sink to wash their hands. Staying busy was better than fretting over what he was reading about his friend.

  “There’s a lot of technical detail about the farm and the caves under it,” Dante finally said. “I’ll summarize for brevity.”

  He glanced at Lucia’s children in concern—this was about their mother.

  Pris shook her head. “They don’t care enough to understand. Give me a second to set them up with a game. Don’t say anything until I’m back.”

  Now that the dining table had been cleared off, she sat them where she could keep watch. Then she dug a couple of old handheld games out of storage boxes stacked on the wall. They could figure the games out on their own.

  Back in the kitchen, she boldly slid into the booth beside Dante. He didn’t push her away. If these were her last days with him, she’d take all the proximity she could steal. She didn’t generally like intimacy, but Indiana Jones had plucked a previously untouched chord. She told herself she simply wanted to learn about this opposites-attract thing, since Evie and Jax seemed to make it work.

  “Understand that Leo is a farmer, nothing more. He knows his crops, knows their worth, knows how to sell them. He’s been keeping that farm alive where Lucia barely scraped by. The polizia did not find his fingerprints or any evidence that he knew of anything beyond his storage tanks, which he feared my digging might disrupt. He’s afraid of change.” Dante looked up, apparently wanting their agreement.

  R&R slid in across from them and waited expectantly.

  Dante returned to translating the material on his screen. “I am gathering from this that when the polizia came to interview him and told him Vincent and Matthew were under arrest for murder, Leo told them all he knew—all the things he concealed from me.”

  Dante looked up to be certain they paid attention. “For background: when we were all young, and I wanted to explore the caves, Lucia told us her father had blocked the tunnels in the storage area.” He tapped the file on the phone. “Leo did not tell me that when Lucia took over after her father’s death, she wanted to expand and opened them again.”

  Dante scrolled through the Italian text, looking for exact words. “Leo says that after she opened the tunnels, workers discovered ancient tombs with bones. For fear I would bring in experts who would prevent using the storage caves—which I would have done, so he was not incorrect—he wanted her to close them back up.”

  Pris picked up enough of his troubled vibrations to squeeze his arm. “Lucia refused to close them because she wanted you to see them. She didn’t care about profit but you.”

  He nodded. “So Leo says anyway. But I didn’t come home, and Lucia’s mother in London became ill, and she went away. Rather than spend money or argue with Lucia, Leo set storage shelves with those massive barrels in front of the opening. He really didn’t want me disrupting his operations.”

  Evie returned to the kitchen without Loretta. At seeing their solemn faces, she filled the tea kettle and settled on a counter stool to listen. Jax came downstairs, freshly shaved and ready for the office despite little sleep. Raising his eyebrows, he poured coffee and settled on another stool.

  Dante continued translating. “Leo says when Lucia returned with her Gladwell relations, she showed them the storage area and had workmen moving the shelves away from the tunnel. They argued, he gave up, and went back to work in the orchard. When he returned that evening, only Vincent and Matt were there. They’d only partially pushed the shelves back. He was told that Lucia and Katherine had taken the babies and the nanny and left.”

  He skimmed to find the details. “Leo claims Lucia left a contract behind for the oil that was better than anything he’d been able to obtain on his own. He thought she’d found some way of cheating her rich London relations, so he signed it. Vincent and Matthew left after that, and he never saw Lucia again.”

  “Have the police gone into the tunnel yet?” Jax asked, smearing a cold biscuit with jam.

  Dante nodded. Pris wanted to hug him but didn’t dare. He took the matter in his own hands, circled her shoulders, and squeezed. More than lust heated her, but she wasn’t about to examine that. She thought he might need the connection as much as she did. This was his girlfriend and the mother of his children they were talking about.

  She liked it a little too well that, in this moment, he took his strength from her. Having a partner to shore her up when she was down. . . She’d never thought possible. Dante made it seem so.

  After taking a breath to regain his formidable control, he continued. “I’ve texted one of my colleagues to hie himself over there or the police will be trampling centuries of history. They are waiting on a forensics team, but they’re fairly certain the bones wearing silk at the bottom of an old well are not Etruscan. They’ve seen evidence of recent digging.”

  A pall of sorrow hung over the room. Hard evidence at last—Lucia was undoubtedly dead, as KK had said.

  Breaking the silence, his voice only a little rough, Dante spoke to R&R. “You might want to sift through your files and look for dates of those deposits in the shell company accounts, compare them to Vincent’s visits to the farm and shipments to the US. Leo may not know, but my suspicion is that those annual visits to the tunnel produced artifacts that Matt and Vincent hid in Leo’s oil shipments to their UK warehouse. Once the European market got too hot, they may have opened the US boutiques so they could ship the stolen goods here. My contacts have reported recent unauthorized sales of artifacts on the American market. They’ve set Interpol to investigate.”

  Pris could read his fear. “You think with all the attention you recently applied to the black market, Vincent realized his lucrative business might crash on his head. That’s why he came after the children. He wanted you to call off the police?”

  Dante shook his head. “Can’t say. But I think we can assume that Lucia would have been the driving force behind Bella. Once she was gone, KK didn’t have the smarts. Vincent and Matt seized the opportunity Lucia had inadvertently shown them, stole artifacts, and used the company to launder the money.”

  Evie looked sad. “KK thought she was selling elegant beauty products that would make her famous. Since she complained of fraud, she must have eventually discovered the substitutes of cheap ingredients.”

  “And told them she’d reveal what she knew about Lucia unless they straightened up?” Jax suggested.

  “And got killed for her efforts to do what was right for a change.” Pris shuddered.

  “Did you ask about the reward for catching KK’s killer?” Reuben asked, scooting out of the booth.

  Evie flung toast at him before Pris could kick the insensitive lout.

  When Nick showed up in Jax’s office before noon, looking even more disheveled and haggard than the last time, Jax handed him a strong cup of coffee and offered a flask.

  Nick shook his head. “Do you know how to reach Dante Rossi? I need to talk to him before they let Matthew and Rhonda out on bail.”

  Jax kept his lawyer face on, hiding his shock. “After last night, I don’t know if Dante can be separated from his children. What if I set up a call on speaker?”

  “I want this off my chest before Matt decides I’m a hazard to his father’s health.” Nick looked bleak. “This country has lawyer confidentiality, does it not? Will you do this as my lawyer?”

  “Currently, Bella is my client. If Bella is defunct, shove a dollar my way, and you can take their place.” He hit Dante’s number as Nick dug for his wallet and produced a five.

  Jax spoke into the phone. “If you can find a quiet place in that madhouse—I recommend the library where no one ever goes—I have a client who would like to speak with you. You’re on speaker now.”

  Dante snorted. In the background, childish voices sing-songed the alphabet, along with an amazingly discordant piano. As far as Jax was aware, Evie didn’t own a piano or a TV. It must be a recording.

  “Give me a moment to disentangle myself. Do you know what this is about?” the Italian asked.

  “Not a clue.” Jax looked at Nick, who said nothing. “I’m going to guess Lucia.”

  “Without the police?” The background noise faded.

  “Not yet.” Jax gestured at Nick, then to the phone. “You know Dante doesn’t have to keep your confidence?”

  Nick nodded. “If he wants to call the police, that’s his call. I don’t want you to feel obligated to do so.”

  “All right, I am in this bookless library, and the door is closed.” A chair squeaked as Dante found a seat.

  “Nicholas Gladwell is with me. He’s a distant relation of Vincent’s and marketing manager of La Bella Gente.” With the phone on speaker, Jax sipped his coffee and left Nick and Dante to talk.

  Stoic Dante, as usual, said nothing.

  Nick squirmed, then leaned toward the phone. “I only met Lucia that one summer in London, when she was doing the commercials. She was excited about having her lotions produced. After she left for Italy, I dealt only with Katherine.”

  “Lucia must have been pregnant that summer,” Dante said. “Did she mention her plans at all?”

  “No, but we didn’t have personal conversations. She and Kit-Kat were close, sharing the townhouse with their mother. That’s what I wanted to tell you. A few years after Kit-Kat took over the operations, we became casual lovers.” Nick rubbed his unshaven jaw and sipped his coffee.