“I offer you my help and you ambush me?” Jean glared at them. “Do you think if I am harmed you will leave this harbor alive?”
“I reckon we’ve got a fair shot,” Terry said, crossing his arms as his men shut the door.
“As do I,” Carwyn added. “Besides, what do you care? You’ll be dead if you betrayed us.”
Beatrice braced herself against Giovanni, clutching his hand and scanning the layout of the room. It was open, but there was no way Jean could escape. He was completely outnumbered.
“I did not betray you.” Jean’s chin jutted out arrogantly. “I do not dishonor myself by turning on an ally. Unlike some here, I-”
“You were allied with Lorenzo for two hundred years,” Terry growled.
“Do you know why I broke ties with him?” Jean spit out. “Do you know why I am supporting you? As charming as the De Novo girl is, she’s certainly not my only motivation.”
Beatrice leaned forward. Jean was tense, Terry and Carwyn stood across from him with their arms crossed on their chests, and Gemma stood at the door, guarding it like some lethal angel with eyes trained on the rakish Frenchman. But when Beatrice glanced up, she noticed that Giovanni was completely relaxed. His arm slid around her waist, and he wore an almost bemused expression.
“Tell us why we should believe you,” he said. “For some reason, I think I do.”
Carwyn glared. “Gio-”
“He’s not the only one who could have told Lorenzo,” Giovanni said with a shrug. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
Jean stepped toward him. “No, I did not give Lorenzo any information. Nor would I have. My daughter will forgive me for speaking of this.” He glanced at Beatrice before looking away. “Louise had one child while she was still human. The boy was raised in my home, and his family was under my aegis. Louise remained very close to her son’s children and grandchildren. One of her granddaughters was on holiday in Greece ten years ago.”
A sick feeling began to churn in Beatrice’s stomach. She saw Jean’s eyes swing to hers and they locked. The truth was written on his face.
“Oh no,” she whispered as the tears came to her eyes.
“Julie had met Lorenzo before, so she accepted his invitation. She thought she was safe. She was not.”
Beatrice’s face fell as she flashed back to the young bodies Lorenzo’s men had tossed over the cliffs in Greece to be swallowed by the Aegean Sea.
“There were so many,” she whispered, blinking back tears. “I believe you.”
Giovanni squeezed her waist. “As do I.”
At Giovanni’s quiet declaration, Beatrice felt the tension drain out of the room, though all parties kept their guarded positions as the questions flew.
“Lorenzo killed a girl? One under your protection?” Gemma asked from the doorway. “Why would he be so stupid?”
“Or so arrogant?” Terry added.
Jean was staring at Giovanni. “You have been fooling yourself, di Spada, hiding away in your books. Your son has many powerful friends. In the last ten years, his influence has grown. I do not know why. It is a testament to your connections that you were given the girl five years ago.” He nodded toward Beatrice. “You think you damaged him? He is still more powerful and connected than you know.”
“What do you mean? What do you know?” Giovanni asked.
Jean only shook his head. “You think you have allies? Everyone has an agenda. Everyone.”
“What’s yours?” Beatrice asked.
The Frenchman turned. “My family. Nothing remains except family. Power. Wealth. All these change, but my family remains. My daughter was distraught. Her family lost faith in us. My own reputation was damaged to have lost one under my protection. Trust me.” He looked around the room. “None in my company bear Lorenzo any goodwill.”
“And I vouch for my people,” Terry said.
“So where does that leave us?” Carwyn asked, looking around the room in frustration. “Someone told him. One of our humans? Someone manipulated? Bribed?”
Jean shrugged. “I will have the port checked immediately. If there is any indication where the containers went or who arranged the shipment, I will find it. I have many people in La Havre.”
“Don’t most shipping containers have GPS now?” Beatrice asked.
“These wouldn’t,” Giovanni muttered. “I think you taught him a lesson about technology, tesoro. It would be easy enough to make them untraceable, and since there were three containers-”
“He could be on any one of three trucks going to any one of three locations,” Gemma sighed.
Beatrice looked around the room. “But there has to be a way of finding out more.”
Everyone was silent, standing around the room with the strange blank expressions she hated, each vampire lost in their own thoughts.
“Gio?”
“Beatrice-”
“Who told you?”
He frowned. “What?”
“Who? Who told you that Lorenzo had taken me? You knew what ship I was on; Jean’s team found the boat too fast for you to be looking very long. Someone told you which one I was on. I was barely there for a day. Whoever told you knew where I was and had to know you were coming for me, so who told you?”
“That little bastard,” Gemma murmured.
She felt Giovanni’s skin heat.
“Tywyll.”
Gravesend, England
Beatrice looked around with a poorly veiled look of disdain.
“This is the dirtiest pub I’ve ever seen.”
“It definitely ranks quite high, tesoro.”
“Is it…floating?”
Beatrice looked at the floor, which seemed to rock and sway under their feet. She saw a beer bottle roll in the corner as the pub near the mouth of the River Thames rose with the swell of the water. Then she looked into Giovanni’s taciturn face.
“Are you going to kill him? Can you?”
He thought for a long moment before he shrugged. “Doubtful, and definitely not until you get your information. I have a feeling that Tywyll has a bit to tell us.”
“He’s really old, isn’t he?”
“I believe so. No one knows. I’ve never met anyone that claimed to know him before he became what he is now.”
She frowned and pulled his arm to sit next to her in the dark booth with its cracked leather seats. Giovanni sat with his back to the wall and his eyes on the door as the dark pub rose and fell.
When they had returned to London just before dawn the night before, they were met at the door of the Mayfair house with a handwritten note.
Mariposa-
Come to The Cockleshell in Gravesend with the Italian tonight at nine o’clock. I have information for you.
– Tywyll
“What is he?”
“A trader. A conduit. And apparently, someone who knew your father.”
She whispered, “My dad and my grandma are the only ones that have ever called me ‘Mariposa.’ And it’s not something he would have shared with just anyone.”
“Which is why we are meeting him alone at the dirtiest pub in Gravesend, instead of being accompanied by twenty of Terry’s most vicious minions.”
She smiled and tried to lighten his mood as she slipped an arm around his waist. “You should totally get some minions.”
He smirked despite himself. “Isn’t that what Benjamin is for? He’s a minion-in-training.”
She snickered and pulled him down for a kiss. Between rushing back to London, seeing a doctor for her injuries, and questioning Terry’s human staff, Beatrice had little to no time alone with Giovanni, and she could tell the stress of the previous three nights was wearing on them both.
“I’m exhausted,” she whispered as she laid her head on his shoulder. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“I know.”
His restless eyes continued to scan the dark, almost empty, pub. She sat next to him and left a hand on his knee, needing the connection. Giovanni had been eager to escape the city, wanting to whisk her away somewhere safe and away from prying eyes and ears as soon as they had returned. But after they received the note, Beatrice and Carwyn had insisted it was important to meet the mysterious water vampire-even if he was the source of the betrayal-and Giovanni had reluctantly agreed.