They had waited while the vampire had texted someone. As soon as the return text came, she’d agreed to the “additions to dinner”—a phrase that made Larry grin and mock-snap his teeth behind the vampire’s back.
The arrangements for dinner had distracted Adam, so he hadn’t noticed the black, silver, and brown theme until they were following their guide through the halls. Far too late to run back and change into his blue suit.
Adam wasn’t entirely certain that the color coordination wasn’t an accident. But instincts (and a hint of guilt in Honey’s face) told him that this whole performance had been planned behind his back—up to and including the way that Marsilia clung to his arm.
All this drama was in keeping with the vampires and with Marsilia, anyway. Adam was an old soldier who, like good boots, could be polished up and given a shine—but in the end he was happier being a weapon than an art piece.
This was the second time Marsilia had changed their approach without checking with him. If that was how she wanted to play this, he’d feel free to do the same.
In any case, the entrance was wasted because the room was empty. With a murmured encouragement for them to await Bonarata here, their guide executed a quick bow and left.
Adam surveyed his people rather grimly.
Stefan broke first—probably because he was enjoying himself. “I told you the color thing was a bad idea,” he told Marsilia.
“Not here,” Adam said, though their guide was gone. His ire was appeased, not by Stefan’s apology. With Bonarata apparently claiming the right of making a grand entrance, the whole drama had been mostly a wasted effort. Punishment enough to suit the crime, he thought.
Since they were stuck here, Adam did a little recon.
Sometime in the last ten years, the room had been gutted, fitted with modern electricity, and put back together with drywall and engineered hardwoods. There were only two windows—the light would have damaged the books when it had been a library, he supposed.
A good designer had done his best to make the room look as though it had last been decorated a couple of hundred years ago despite the modern lighting, air vents, and energy-efficient windows. The central area was mostly empty, with chairs lining the walls and a small writing desk in the corner.
Art was the true focus of the room. Oil paintings of eclectic sizes from various eras covered the walls three layers high. They were all originals, and mostly, to Adam’s averagely educated eye, very well done. One or two were spectacular. There were no signatures, and he did not recognize any of them, which surprised him a little. He’d have thought a vampire of Bonarata’s reputation would put out famous artists to establish his status.
Then Adam realized that he knew the subject of the painting he’d paused by. Marsilia, her eyes in shadow, crouched gracefully on a rock on the edge of a stream. Her hair, longer than he’d ever seen it, did nothing to cover her naked body. Clasped loosely in one hand was a dagger.
Seeing that famous-in-certain-circles painting, Adam realized that the vampire had been establishing his status all right. All of the paintings had been done by Bonarata himself.
A door opened—not the one they’d entered the room through—and Bonarata strolled in.
Adam had never met Bonarata in the flesh, but he’d seen a few sketches, and there was one painting (perhaps also painted by Bonarata) in Marsilia’s seethe. That was enough to allow him to recognize the Lord of Night on sight even if he probably couldn’t have picked him out of a crowd.
Like the rest of the men, excepting Adam’s pilot and copilot, Bonarata wore a suit. The biggest difference between his suit and Adam’s was that Bonarata’s suit only emphasized the vampire’s brutally stamped features. It wasn’t that the suit looked wrong; it was that it looked like it was designed to showcase a warrior, a dangerous man.
Adam’s suit, which made him look very civilized, was a disguise. Adam preferred it that way.
The Master Vampire gave Adam a half bow. “I am Bonarata. I have met you through the eyes of my servant, but you have not met me.”
Adam introduced his people gravely, including Marsilia and Stefan. Both of whom Bonarata greeted mutely with that quick, polite nod, as if they were strangers. For their own protection, Adam stuck his pilot and copilot in the middle of the introductions, to make it absolutely clear that Adam felt they fell into the category of his people. He did not introduce them by name—as an added protection for them. Including them in the middle also mixed up the whole color theme, which he appreciated.
All the while, he and Bonarata sized each other up.
“Your wife is no longer in my care,” Bonarata said, apparently deciding to be straightforwardly honest.
Adam waited politely. On the outside, he was sure his face was polite anyway.
“She misunderstood my intentions, I think,” said the vampire, with a small smile on his face. “Otherwise, she would not have run from here. I did not get the chance to let her know you were coming.”
Or maybe not so honest.
“Did she?” Adam asked. “So she misunderstood that you hit her car with a semi, almost killed her, then compounded the incident by kidnapping her?”
“Adam,” Marsilia said, her grip on his arm tightening to painful levels.
When she spoke, there was an instant during which something passed across the Lord of Night’s face. Marsilia saw it, Adam felt her fingers clench, but he couldn’t see her face.
“We know that Mercy isn’t here,” he told Bonarata, and by the vampire’s careful lack of expression, Adam knew that Bonarata had thought to surprise them. He didn’t want Bonarata to have an opening to ask how they knew Mercy was gone. Not while Mercy was still out on her own. So he continued briskly, “Recovering my wife is no longer our purpose here. I think we should talk about why you decided to take her in the first place.”
“I had hoped to talk business after last meal,” said Bonarata.
“Had you,” said Adam neutrally. Not a question, just an acknowledgment of Bonarata’s plans.
It was a good thing that Larry had talked sense before they’d come down to eat, because Adam’s temper flared hotly, and he knew that his eyes were wolf-yellow.
He took a deep breath.
“It is something civilized people would do,” Bonarata said mildly.
“Which neither of you is,” Marsilia said archly.
Bonarata looked at her sharply, his eyes lingering on the way her hand stayed on Adam’s shoulder.
This time Adam recognized the flare that broke through Bonarata’s semicivilized expression as jealousy.
“Why did you take my wife?” he asked.
The vampire’s eyes met his, and Adam felt the draw of the vampire’s gaze even as he cursed himself for allowing it to happen. He knew better. He prepared to fight his way out of it, drawing on his bond to Honey—and to Mercy.
And the vampire’s gaze slid right off Adam without effect.
“Why”—Adam let his voice soften with the rage that simmered around the image of his SUV after the semi had hit it—“did you take my mate?”
Silence rang loudly in the room as no one moved or spoke.
“Iacopo,” murmured Marsilia, letting her hands slide off Adam’s arm.
“Jacob,” the vampire said coolly.
“Jacob,” she corrected without apology. “You did not set out to kill Adam’s mate. That would be stupid and wasteful, and the man I knew for centuries is too smart for either.”
“Or to respond to flattery,” he said.
She threw up both hands high, then let them drop to her sides as she spoke. “It is not flattery if it is true. You did not intend her death—so why did you take her?”
“You are in the wrong,” murmured Stefan. “Everyone in this room understands this—including you, Jacob. To pretend otherwise is unproductive.”