80

She leaned away and frowned, eyes darting between the book and me. Her posture stiffened and eyes narrowed.
“Bragging about your importance now, are you?” She shook her shoulders and stiffened further. When she continued, she deepened her voice, a poor mimic of my own. “I’m a glorified courier, passing off old books with a couple hundred grand in bitcoin hidden inside them. You should be so impressed and fall in love with me.”
Instead of answering, I stood, and stepped to the pier. I held my hand out for Gianna. She wasn’t the only one who could play at losing to keep their opponent off balance. I’d read The Art of War just as she had. She frowned at my offered support but with a smirk, accepted it. When I had her on the pier, she didn’t let it go.
“We should be fine, Oleg,” I said to the big man. “If we want to leave early, I’ll give you a call.”
He nodded silently and stood sentinel next to the boat. All for show. Even if I hadn’t asked him to, he’d follow us discreetly, just in case. That was why you hired the best. As I hoped, Gianna stiffened before she let me tug her down the pier and toward the city proper.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t want him watching our, I mean your back?” Gianna asked, craning her neck to look at the ever stoic Oleg.
“I would think you’d rather have me all to your lonesome,” I replied. “If you want to escape, it’s easier to run away from one guy than two.”
She examined me, her cute scrunched thinking face taking a more serious edge. As ever, mining her expression for what she was thinking produced no workable ore. I wished I could see inside that head of hers, know exactly what she was thinking.
“Only a fool gives up an advantage with no benefit,” she said, frowning deeply. “You could use a refined thug like him to keep me from doing a runner, sure. Sun Tzu would say you are trying to appear strong to hide your weakness.”
“Yes, as he said, all warfare is based on deception.” I quoted The Art of War back. “Maybe I don’t need Oleg, because I know you won’t try and escape, not here.”
“You know, don’t you.” She tugged our clasped hands and stopped in her tracks.
Her mask cracked when she realized what she’d given away. It reformed almost immediately but I relished that second of insight. It was my turn to smirk.
“You’ll have to be more specific, my dear.” I shrugged and tried to minimize the superior expression. A little anger kept her flummoxed, too much would turn her against me. “I know a lot of things.”
She wanted to say more. Her lips pressed tightly as she watched me through narrowed eyes. When her shoulders finally relaxed, she stepped along the pier, now tugging me toward the shore.
Her eyes kept darting around us. Unconsciously, she squeezed my hand when they met someone else’s. A man in a light-colored summer suit sat at a narrow table on the edge of the sea wall above the piers. He held a newspaper in front of him but wore sunglasses and tilted his head a few degrees too high, perfect for watching all the people disembarking from their boats without seeming to.
The cigarette hanging from his thin lips drooped and his bushy eyebrows rose above the dark glasses when his eyes fell on Gianna. She looked away immediately, her steps faltering, but continued on with me. I watched the man through my peripheral vision. By the time we reached the stairs up the sea wall, he’d stood up and walked away with quick steps.
Gianna glanced down at him when we reached the top, then at me with a scowl. I tilted my head.
“Friend of yours?” I asked with practiced innocence, not that she bought it for a moment. But I wasn’t about to share that I had anonymously tipped Franco off.
“I see what you’re doing. You took me somewhere dangerous to keep me from running away,” she hissed, stepping closer and poking me in the chest with her free hand. “Are you trying to show your worth now too? Prove that you can protect me from my father’s enemies? That makes it an even bigger risk to leave Oleg behind, doesn’t it?”
“The greater the risk, the better victory tastes,” I replied, hiding how close her analysis had been before shaking my head, “but I really do have a delivery to make and I’m a day late as it is now, thanks to my little detour.”
“Oh, I’m so very sorry kidnapping me delayed your drop-off,” she mocked and waved her hand down the narrow street in front of us. “Lead on, my illustrious delivery boy.”
Her hand still in mine, she followed as I led us through the tourist crowded ways of the old city. The ancient buildings loomed over the cobblestone streets. The local vendors’ displays narrowed the street even further. The cruise ship might have been garish in the harbor but the extra traffic offered a boon to the local economy.
Once past the clogged streets and alleys close to the inner harbor, I tugged Gianna down a deserted alley, free of touristy shops and their traffic. Gianna had watched everyone she could the entire way, her neck craning around a few times to see if we were being followed. It was a good thing Oleg knew where we were going and the other routes there, just in case I had underestimated Franco and his men.
“This place looks like a dump,” she complained when I stopped in front of a green door set in a narrow building with no signage at all. The paint on the door peeled in the corner.
I held a finger to my lips and lifted my eyes to the camera half hidden in the second story overhang above the door. She followed and her eyes widened. The door’s lock clicked and I pushed it open.
Gianna held her tongue as we walked through the narrow shop. Her eyes took in everything from the antique furniture to the art displayed on the walls. She tried to stop at a small display of ancient stone and pottery fertility figurines but I kept us on track.
“You’re a day late, Alexei,” came the gruff voice of the proprietor.
He sat behind the counter at the back. His untamed hair was kept in place by a headband connected to a pair of magnifying goggles. A few extra lenses extended from the corners, out toward his ears like bulbous flat horns. He wore a leather apron over his clothes and had been hunched over fragments of pottery. A few brushes and a set of paints sat to the side of them.
“As I explained, Hadrian, I needed to make a quick stop in Rome,” I replied and Gianna frowned my way. “Besides, the price of bitcoin went up yesterday, so you’re getting overpaid for the inconvenience.”
The old man looked up from his work. He flipped the goggles up on his headset before one finger slid the other lens down over his right eye. He closed the left and peered at me and Gianna, frowning at our clasped hands.
“I don’t remember you ever putting pleasure before business, Alexei,” he grumbled but gave Gianna a bow-like nod.
A lecherous smile threatened to appear on his lips but then he caught my eye. A dry chuckle sent his shoulders shaking. His head turned back to Gianna. He examined her like he would an Ides of March Denarius coin. Those eyes narrowed at me.
“I can always count on you bringing interesting things into my shop, Alexei,” he continued, pointing one of his boney fingers at Gianna with a more-or-less innocent smile. “It shouldn’t surprise me the first person you came with would more than match the antiquities. Don’t worry, I know better than to ask. So how much more is that funny internet money worth today compared to yesterday?”
“It rose two percent so that’s an extra hundred thousand euros for you,” I replied.
Gianna’s head darted my way the moment she’d done the math. Hadrian, with his attention to detail didn’t miss it, but the smirk left his face almost as soon as it arrived. As he said, he wouldn’t ask but her reaction helped him figure out my game. I’d let her think I’d been acting like a courier for a small sum earlier. Five million euros was well above what she’d considered small.
“I suppose that will work as a penalty for late delivery, but don’t let it happen again.” The old man slipped the book under the counter and his eyes turned to Gianna. “If you are ever in the market for something interesting, you’re welcome anytime. You don’t have to bring your man either. I don’t bite.”
His goggles dropped back into place. He leaned over his work, dismissing me with a wave, not even looking up at the glare I sent him. Gianna shook her head to recover from the unexpected sum we’d tossed around. As I led her out of the tiny cluttered shop, her eyes examined the displays and condition of the place with renewed interest.
“If you’re paying that guy five million euros, you’d think he’d have a nicer shop,” she whispered after we stepped away from the green door with it curling paint. “What are you paying him for?”
“What do you think?” I asked back as we continued down the alley.
Since I couldn’t see through those wavy raven locks and into her head, I used the question to test her again. Her surprises had delighted me so far, but there would be no better feeling than anticipating her next move, to know I’d started sliding the pieces into their proper places. That, and I’d get another look at that cute thinking face of hers.
Sure enough, she scrunched her eyes closed. Her head tilted to the side, sending her hair dancing in the sea breeze. She pursed her lips but then nodded.
“He sold antiques, but with the dust on some of those pieces, how out of the way his shop was, no sign at all? That was more a workshop than a store, and he had ancient pottery in front of him, not antiques,” she reasoned.
“It’d be a hell of an antique for the price I just paid him,” I added, earning a glare from Gianna.
“I was just about to point that out,” she said with heat, “if it was any old antique, or something even older like ancient Roman pottery, you wouldn’t make the transfer in such secrecy. It isn’t illegal to own antiques.”
She fell silent for a moment, but shot me another glare when my mouth opened to respond. I held my tongue as we stepped out of the alley onto a side street. Away from the tourists closer to the pier, only a few locals occupied this street. A couple sat on the stoop of a building, talking quietly, an old hunched man shuffled past us, his cane hand shaking every time he tapped it to the stone.