“He’s wetting himself,” Klaas assured her. “His dampness will probably short-circuit the bomb and he’ll die early.”
Their cruel laugher echoed in Liesbeth’s ears.
“We’ve got sound. Want to hear our little boy cousin sweating his last day on earth?” Grieta turned back to the computer.
Brigetta, Klaas, and Rutger rushed toward the computer desk.
Liesbeth followed, dragging her feet.
She didn’t often give credence to her forebodings, but… she had a very bad feeling that today would not turn out well.
Penelope stood in Noah’s embrace, limp with relief. Of all the reactions she’d imagined, that Noah would be glad had never crossed her mind. “You believe me, then?”
“Of course I believe you.” He laughed. “Why would you lie?”
“To catch a Di Luca.”
“You caught me,” he replied with easy amusement.
“I thought you might accuse me of going home from the bar every night with a different guy.” She tensed, waiting for an answer.
“If I had thought such a thing—and I hadn’t—a quick fact check would have changed my mind. Like, Arianna Marino would have thrown you out. Like, if you had been a regular visitor at the Beaver Inn, Primo wouldn’t have called me about you, would he?”
“Right. But do you realize… I mean, have you thought about the fact that the baby’s grandfather is going to be Joseph Bianchin?”
Picking her up, he sat in one of his office chairs and held her in his lap. “I’ve got some relatives who aren’t so hot, too. You’ll meet them at the…” He looked suddenly grim. “Well. My current plan is that you will meet them at the wedding.”
“Um. Well. I don’t think we need to rush into anything.” She didn’t trust him not to run off as soon as things got tough. She believed in the wedding vows; she wasn’t about to have a five-minute marriage. “As I said, I can raise the baby on my own. I have done all the research already.”
“Hm. We’ll talk about it. If we have a girl… would you want to call her Mia?”
Ready tears sprang to Penelope’s eyes. “No, I couldn’t. That’s the name of my first child. I was thinking maybe… Sarah? For your grandmother, who has always been so good to me.”
“And me.” He put his forehead against hers and smiled into her eyes. “And me.”
“Plus the name is from the Bible, so it will always be in style.” She smiled back at him, and thought how very much she liked him when his eyes gleamed green and gold.
“I think Sarah is a wonderful name.”
Penelope should have been totally relaxed, sheltered and warm in Noah’s arms, but something niggled at her mind, something he’d said. “Noah, what do you mean, I gave you a reason to live?”
He released a breath that sounded like the first gust of an oncoming storm. “I have a story to tell you.”
She tensed. “Is it really long and boring, like Moby-Dick?”
“No, actually it’s incredibly exciting. At least, it was when I lived it. But it is long enough that I only have time to tell it once.” Standing, he deposited her in the chair, then paced across the room to his phone. He made two quick phone calls, one to Eli and one to Rafe, telling them to meet him at Nonna’s, and then he held out his hand to Penelope. “Come on. There’s no time. We’ve got to hurry.”
Chapter 57
Noah looked around the table at his brothers. At his sisters-in-law. At Nonna. At Penelope. It had taken all of them two hours to assemble here in Nonna’s kitchen, always the setting for the most important moments of his life. How appropriate that here they should all be, together again, while he bared his soul and confessed his shame.
He was out of time, less than two hours left before his head left his shoulders, and yet with all the people he cared about here and all their attention on him, his voice failed him.
No, not his voice. His nerve.
Taking Penelope’s hand, he tried to smile.
She squeezed his fingers.
The tension ratcheted up.
Eli said, “C’mon, Noah. Chloë’s got an appointment to get her body cast off, and she’s been looking forward to this for weeks. If you make her late, you’ll be wearing a body cast, instead.”
“No kidding,” Brooke said. “If you’re finally going to tell us who’s after Massimo’s pink diamonds, do it in a hurry, before I have to go to the bathroom again.”
The way they teased him, supported him, made him smile—and hope they would still support him when the story was finished.
Or at least, that they would rescue him from his folly.
Noah’s high school graduation present was a year spent trying to find himself, enough money to travel the world, as long as he stayed within his budget, and the freedom to do it alone (as long as he checked in with his grandmother once a week).
He waved good-bye to his family on a sunny day in June, excited and scared, and not realizing that when he returned, he would be a man who had left all remnants of his innocence behind.
He flew directly to Amsterdam, guilty about keeping a secret from his grandparents and thrilled to embark on the adventure his mother had promised him.
She met him at baggage claim. “Darling boy.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I’m so glad you could come.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I thought perhaps your grandparents would forbid you from making the trip by yourself. You are so very young.”
As he was supposed to, he stiffened resentfully. “I’ve been abroad before.” One other time, when he was nine. He had gone with Nonno and Nonna and met the Di Luca family, a small but gregarious tribe who lived in a Tuscan villa, served so much food, and laughed so often, they reminded Noah of an Olive Garden commercial.
They also pinched his cheek a lot, something he did not recall fondly.
Now Liesbeth patted his cheek. “I know, dear. I was watching you from afar. Remember?”
The thought made him squirm—it seemed so underhanded—so he added resentfully, “And my grandparents don’t tell me what to do. They let me make my own decisions.”
“As it should be. Why, when Klaas and Hendrik were your age, they had already performed many important missions.…” She furtively glanced around. “But this is no place to talk.” She led him to a fabulous BMW M3 and drove off even before he had buckled his seat belt. “Let us go home, where you can meet your other family. The Smit family.”
“Smit? I thought the family was Russian.”
“Yes,” she said approvingly. “Our real name is Propov. Smit is the Dutch name your ancestors had picked so they could blend in. It has worked very well. Our neighbors barely notice us.”
The house—old, tall, gloomy, and located on a canal—was also chosen to fit into the Amsterdam landscape. Furniture was minimal and plain, very Scandinavian, and the big rooms were always cold.
Noah told himself he loved it, although he spent most of the first week shivering in corridors and wishing he were home in sunny Bella Terra.
Liesbeth introduced him to his male cousins: an older man named Falco, Klaas, and, of course, Hendrik. “They’ve just come back from a mission,” she told Noah. Then she sat them down and interrogated them.
Noah was impressed, both at their knowledge of how to enter a diplomatic function when they hadn’t been invited, and by Liesbeth’s absolute mastery over them. They answered her respectfully. When she chided them they groveled. When she praised them, they beamed.
Noah’s perception of his mother became filled with awe, and when his male cousins shook his hand and fervently welcomed him home, he felt warm inside, flattered that they would believe he belonged among them.
He met the girls the next day. They were dazzling, too, but clearly their jobs were less dangerous than the guys’. And Noah desperately wanted to be one of the guys.
He told Liesbeth he would like to be trained in the trade.
He wasn’t exactly sure what the trade was, but
he thought it involved Interpol or spying or something cool.
Later he wondered why he thought that.
Mostly because he couldn’t imagine that his mother would work for the bad guys. But also because he was being played by a team of experts.
She laughed and shook her head. “My dear son, these men have been in training their whole lives. They’ve been on the job since they were seven, risking their lives for all that’s right. To train you before our next job… in so short a time… I just don’t believe it’s possible.”
“I’m in good shape. I’m smart. I’m a fast learner.”
Liesbeth chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Let me talk to the others. See what they say. Perhaps they would be willing.” She started to walk away, then turned back abruptly. “Even if they are, understand this—if I think you couldn’t make it, if I thought you put our mission in danger, I would cut you out.”
“Of course.” He lifted his chin. “I wouldn’t want to drag the family down.” And he swore to himself he would succeed.
In fifteen minutes, the family came back to him and with serious faces surrounded him and interrogated him about his life, his loves, his intentions, and why he wanted to do this.
Then they got into a huddle, where they buzzed with conversation, occasionally glancing at him with visible doubt.
Noah wanted to chew his nails, but he stood and waited, only occasionally shifting from foot to foot.
When the family was finished talking, a very serious Hendrik came back to him. “We’ll train you for the next three months. But God help you, because you’re going to wish you were dead.”
Hendrik was right.
They put Noah through the most grueling kind of boot camp, with training in physical defense of every kind. Every day, they battered him until he was exhausted and covered with bruises, and then they put him in the classroom and made him learn. Electronics. Ballistics, disguises, languages. His brain sagged under the weight of the information he took in. And God forbid that he fail to answer a question right—his punishment was more physical exercise.
He slept five hours a night; then he got up and did it all again.
At the end of three months, he was lean and tough, faster than he could have ever imagined, knowledgeable about everything from disabling a security camera to opening a safe to taking on a surprise attack by all three of his male relatives at once. When Liesbeth told him he was ready for his first mission, he was so proud.
He was such a fool.
Chapter 58
N oah and Hendrik traveled by train to the small eastern European country where they would do the job.
Hendrik was in disguise.
Noah was not.
The rest of the team traveled separately, arriving one at a time in an upstairs room at the local inn in the small mountain village. There Liesbeth gave them their mission. “The former dictator of the country lives in the castle on that hill.” She pointed out the window.
Noah walked over and looked.
The gray stone castle looked like something out of a Dracula movie. Its roots dug into a high, rocky knoll, its towers reaching six stories into the cloudless sky. The road that wound around and up the rock looked precarious at best.
Noah suffered a disagreeable insight. He did not want to do this.
“Oblak is an evil man,” Liesbeth said, “reviled for his cruelties to his country and his countrymen. He tortured. He raped. He killed without compunction and buried his victims in mass graves. He extorted wealth from every family. He is alive only because of his special private militia, whom he pays very well.”
Great. An impregnable castle, a tough, well-paid force of bodyguards, and Oblak the monster dictator. Even Noah had heard of him.
“So whatever we do, we are serving justice on a monster,” Hendrik said.
Everyone nodded vigorously.
Noah nodded, too, but more cautiously. The knowledge of Oblak’s crimes against humanity left him feeling a little dizzy.
Not so the others. When Liesbeth said, “So it is with great pleasure that I say… we are to steal a valuable painting from him,” they cheered, even the women.
The mission surprised Noah; he had thought they would be doing something more… spylike. Retrieving a computer chip or something.
He faced the others and asked the first question he’d asked in weeks. “Are we returning the painting to its rightful owners?”
Everyone froze in place.
Not even Liesbeth spoke.
Only Hendrik answered. “Sure we are.”
“Good.” Noah hoped it was a small painting. Getting anything big out of that aerie seemed unlikely at best.
As Liesbeth popped up the floor plans of the castle and the photographs taken by some surreptitious means, Noah realized the painting hung high over the fireplace in Oblak’s great room, a centerpiece, a thing of pride, so big Noah would barely be able to reach from one side of the frame to the other. Furthermore, he recognized it; the painting was famous for both its seventeenth-century artist and its disappearance thirty years ago from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Noah tried to tell himself he was proud to rescue the celebrated artwork and see it returned to the Hermitage.
In fact, he broke a sweat wondering what he would be expected to do.
Liesbeth’s scheme was intricate, delicate, involving a slow break-in that would go undetected and a fast escape involving a helicopter, and, she announced proudly, the whole mission depended on her son, Noah.
His heart pounded. He couldn’t swallow the lump of fear in his throat.
The team seemed to notice nothing wrong. Instead, they patted him on the back and congratulated him, and went to work immediately, not giving him any chance to think things through, to wonder why he was the only one not in disguise, to ask about the plans to return the painting to the Hermitage.
Instead, he concentrated on completing his mission and coming out alive.
And he did.
Only to discover the whole thing, every moment of the last three months, had been nothing but a setup to trap him into doing whatever Liesbeth and her gang ordered him to do.
Chapter 59
Noah had broken the first commandment of Liesbeth’s gang: He had betrayed them.
Now Klaas and Grieta, Brigetta and Rutger stared at Liesbeth, waiting for her to take command. And for the first time in her life… she didn’t want to do what had to be done.
Yes, Noah had ignored their threats and told his other family, the Di Lucas, who they were and what they did. He had put himself firmly on the side of the enemy. But he was her son, her only child. From the time she had first observed him, seen the intelligence in him, the ability to act swiftly, his physical strength and his potential to serve as the gang’s leader, she had put her hopes in him.
She had always told herself her interest in naming him her successor was nothing more than a cold assessment of Hendrik’s abilities weighed against Noah’s abilities. Yet now, facing the decision she knew she had to make, she felt the unlikely and incredible biological tug of motherhood.
She could not speak the command to kill him.
And as she hesitated, the others’ gazes grew distant and chilly.
Then the study door slammed open, and Hendrik walked in, smelling of sweat and perfume, with a long scratch on his cheek and lipstick on his collar. “Hey, guess what I’ve done,” he said. Without waiting for an answer, he said, “The girl Noah rammed last week, she’s bought a pregnancy kit! And when I told our little Noah, I thought he was going to faint.”
No one responded.
Hendrik looked around. “Have you lost your senses of humor? He’s going to be a father, and he found out a few hours before that bomb at his throat goes off.”
Brigetta faced him. “Grieta got the microphone on Noah’s collar to work. We heard him. He told them about us.”
“Noah?” Hendrik looked from one to another. “He told who about us?”
“His
family. His real family,” Klaas mocked with his singsong tone, but Liesbeth could tell he was ugly-angry.
“But he knows better. He knows we’ll kill anyone who knows.…” Hendrik seemed to exhale pleasure. “So let’s go teach that little bastard a lesson.”
Everyone turned to Liesbeth and waited. She said, “Yes. We have to kill them all.”
But she was too late in responding, too… emotional.
This was not what she had planned.
But it was what Hendrik had planned. All his life, he had been waiting for the moment when Liesbeth faltered. Now he slid smoothly into command. “We’ll go in teams. Klaas and Grieta, you’ll go onto the property through the culvert. They lost me there last time. It’s the best way around their feeble security. We’ll ride together—I’ll drop you off.”
Klaas and Grieta stood and started gathering their gear.
“Rutger and Brigetta, you take the Cadillac.”
They groaned.
“I know,” Hendrik said sympathetically, “but that thing is built like a tank. You can off-road and come in through the back of the property. As for me—I’ll stick close to Liesbeth to make sure she hasn’t lost the stomach for revenge on the Propov enemies.”
Liesbeth dived for her weapon.
But she was too late.
Hendrik’s Glock was already in his hand and pointed at her. “You drive, Liesbeth. I’ll give you the directions. I wouldn’t want you to get lost.” With his free hand, he gestured widely. “Come on. Let’s go!”
Chapter 60
In less than twenty minutes, Noah finished his story—really, even if he wasn’t scheduled to die, why would he dwell on every little humiliating detail?—and when he was done, he discovered he didn’t dare look around. He couldn’t stand to see Eli and Rafe glaring at him, to have Brooke and Chloë examine him as if they had never met him before, to witness Nonna’s disappointment… to observe as Penelope realized that the man who was the father of her baby was every bit as corrupt as she had believed.