The Siren's Sting (42 page)

From the second box, Aristo took two perfect crystal flutes, delicately etched with flowers. ‘If you don't object,' he murmured, removing the wire basket from the cork. ‘An uncle of mine used to say, “When you drink champagne, you drink the tears of the world.” I think it is appropriate, don't you?'

Stevie nodded. ‘I do,' she replied quietly.

Aristo's eyes locked onto hers as he handed her a full glass. ‘You lost your lover too,' he said simply, placing the beading bottle on the floor.

Stevie felt her whole body tremble, then settle. It was true. She nodded and accepted a cigarette, inclining her head slightly towards the flame burning on Aristo's silver lighter.

‘Then we understand each other.'

He slipped the lighter back into his pocket and looked at her again, as if trying to make up his mind about something. Stevie was taken aback by the power of his stare. She had to remind herself that Aristo was only twenty-one . . . But then, Marlena had not been an ordinary woman either and she had chosen this boy. His strength should not have surprised her. Stevie surrendered and let him look, not repelling the attention but rather letting it move over her, see through her. As she sat, she found anger growing to replace the tree of sorrow and confusion. Anger first—irrationally?—at Henning, then fury at Skorpios, who had made everything die.

‘Are you sure it was your father?' she asked carefully.

‘I know it was my father.' Aristo drew sharply on his cigarette. ‘There is no doubt in anyone's mind. And now all that is left for me is to do what is just.'

His words chilled her, but she could not fault him. For a father to do that to his son was to flout the laws of nature, of basic humanity. And both of them knew it was a wrong that would never be addressed in any court of law. In Aristo's eyes, the murder of his bride was a crime beyond law.

‘He pushed me,' Stevie said, staring at the unused fireplace with its ornate marble frame. ‘That afternoon at the
corrida
—you were there.'

‘I thought the gate broke, you lost your balance.'

Stevie shook her head. ‘Your father reached out his hand. I thought he wanted to help me, but he shoved the gate open and pressed me backwards. He wanted to kill me too.'

Aristo stubbed out his cigarette on the corner of a cardboard box and looked at Stevie. For a long time he said nothing. When he spoke, his eyes were on the window. The raindrops lashing against the pane sounded like a snare drum.

‘I don't think it was you he was trying to kill,' he said finally. ‘He had no reason to.'

‘What do you mean?' Stevie's mind raced, and then in a flash of clarity she saw it. ‘He wanted to kill Henning, didn't he?' she asked.

Aristo reached for another cigarette.

‘He knew,' Stevie cried. ‘He knew Henning would jump into the ring to save me, knew the bull would go for him. And I gave him the perfect opportunity, leaning against that little gate like a fool.' She stared wildly at Aristo. ‘But why? Why would he want to do that?'

Aristo studied her for a moment. ‘You don't know, Stevie?'

‘Know what?' she replied quickly, her heart in her mouth.

‘Henning was a spy.'

Outside, an angry driver leant on his horn; the rain kept coming. Stevie suddenly felt sick. She had always known there was something mysterious about Henning, that there was more to the man than his job as a cataloguer of rare books—but Aristo's revelation cast a shadow far blacker than she had ever expected. Her broken arm was aching and she rubbed her shoulder. It made perfect sense, of course. Men like Henning—with access, contacts and legitimate reasons for asking all sorts of questions—were often recruited to the secret service . . . Stevie assumed British, but it could have been any of them, and it didn't really matter which . . . It explained his sudden appearances and disappearances, his encyclopaedic knowledge of guns, his seemingly endless and unorthodox list of ‘friends', his evasiveness. But how had she, Stevie Duveen—experienced troubleshooter, assessor of risks, possessor of an unerring instinct— not seen it? She could never bind her life to that of a spy. The world of espionage was too full of darkness and deception. She had met too many spies to trust their kind. They were shifting waters and unknowable quantities and flashes of sunlight on glass. Not the sort of men you let into your heart.

Stevie turned away. Skorpios had obviously found out Henning's secret; most likely he himself had been one of Henning's targets. Men of his kind attracted that sort of attention, and governments always needed information on individuals of influence.

Leaning forward, Aristo said softly, ‘I want revenge and I want you to help me.'

Stevie examined the young man. ‘Why would you ask me?'

‘You have motive. And—' he sought her eyes now ‘—Angelina told me about you, and what you did on the cruise ship. She said it was a secret, but that you do things . . . discreetly. She would never have told me, she said, if not for Marlena's murder; it shifted the paradigm of promises. That's how she put it to me.'

Stevie did not reply. Could she trust Aristo? Was
he
what he appeared to be? She had just learnt that she could no longer trust herself to know . . . Doubts swirled in her mind and the floor felt like it was falling away.

She took a deep, slow breath to steady herself then looked up: ‘
Sangue lava sangue
,' she said softly. She had meant it as a question but her voice failed to find the motivation to rise at the end and it came out as a statement:
Blood washes blood
.

There was a long pause as the words hung in the air, irrevocable now that they had been spoken—set free—forcing the two of them to acknowledge what they were really saying.

It was Aristo who broke the silence. ‘I don't want to kill my father, Stevie.' He said it simply, lightly, as if it were the polite refusal of a small dessert. ‘When I was a boy, he used to call me into his study and read me passages from Machiavelli—and he always came back to the passage that asked: is it better to be loved or feared?' Aristo shrugged and almost smiled. ‘Perhaps he was trying to explain why he couldn't love me more.'

Stevie shut her eyes briefly in acknowledgment; she knew the passage.

Aristo went on. ‘You know, of course, Machiavelli's answer: one would like to be both the one and the other, etcetera etcetera, but it is far safer to be feared than loved. To this end, my father is ruthless in his business deals, and prizes the reputation he has cultivated because of this. People fear him and this is the most important thing in the world to him. Isn't that why he killed Marlena?' Aristo's foot, rubbing against the side of the cardboard box, was the only thing that gave away the tension burning inside the young man. ‘Stevie, the thing my father fears beyond anything in the world— and I include death here—is to be made ridiculous. This he could not bear. I want you to help me make his worst nightmare come true.'

Stevie noticed that, even when he stopped frowning, the furrow in Aristo's brow left a permanent shadow across his forehead. Her heart suddenly leapt for him, the wounded boy, the mirror of her own sorrow. She could believe in that.

Stevie did not know who she was crying for anymore when she downed the last of the champagne: for Aristo and Marlena and their obliterated future; for Henning and his bravery and his terrible injuries; for Henning and his betrayal and the end of their love; for herself and the death of the hope which had grown in her foolish heart. She decided then that Skorpios would pay for what he had done. Whatever she might feel about Henning now, she owed him that much.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Sophie
Edelstein, Rosie Garthwaite and Sam Swire for sharing their expertise with me. My brothers, Jason and Daniel, are always an inspiration, as are my parents, Michael and Manuela, who provide support, encouragement, and ideas—
grazie
! Fran Moore at Curtis Brown deserves another great big thankyou, as do Jane Palfreyman, Ann Lennox, Ali Lavau and the rest of the team at Allen & Unwin. Finally, a massive thankyou to my husband Nick, who always believes.