“I’ll go,” said a voice behind Jess. Giovanni put an arm around her.
She hadn’t heard him coming up the stairs behind her.
“I’ll go,” he repeated, his voice barely more than a whisper. “You risked your life and saved me, saved us. You can take care of Hector.”
“No, this isn’t the same as risking your life. He’ll kill you.” Jess took one look at the gun in her hand and threw it over the wall.
“Why did you do that?” Giovanni stared at the gun hitting the gravel below.
“It wasn’t loaded. No more bullets.” Jess forced a small smile. She’d bluffed Nico out of the castle.
Giovanni stared at her in amazement.
“This is very touching,” Nico yelled from below. He pointed his gun at the clouds ballooning from Monterufoli. “But we might not have much time. And Giovanni...”
Giovanni turned to face him. “What?”
“If you haven’t guessed yet, your father, Baron Ruspoli. He did not die naturally. Aconite from the Monkshood flowers, all through the vineyards—I used his own earth to poison him.”
It took a few seconds for Giovanni to process. His face went white. “You bastard, he trusted you like his own son.”
“Maybe his own son should have been here, no?” Nico’s lips trembled. “Come down now! Or I will kill Dr. Rollins.” He snarled a wolfish grin. “And just to show you I’m serious, we’ll kill someone else first.” He whistled.
From behind a low stone wall, a hundred feet away, a muscular man dragged a smaller one across the gravel. Jess squinted. She knew that face. “Roger?”
“Jesus Christ, Jess, do whatever they’re asking. They’re going to kill me,” Roger screamed as he was dragged across the dirt.
“Who’s Roger?” Giovanni asked quietly.
Jess gritted her teeth. “My boyfriend.”
Giovanni’s brows came together. “Your...”
“He was my boyfriend.” Jess winced. “Before I…never mind.”
“Don’t do it,” Jess’s father wheezed, his hands behind his head. “Nomad will be here in an hour, get underground—” He gagged as Nico tightened the pressure around his neck.
“NOW!” barked Nico. “I want to see Baron Ruspoli coming out of that gate right now.”
The muscular man dragged Roger next to Nico, forced Roger onto his knees with a gun pointed at the back of his head.
“Jess, please,” Roger cried, cringing.
A hot wind blew in from Jess’s right, a roar rising, blowing the leaves back on the trees. Rain fell.
“There’s no other way,” Giovanni said, turning to Jess. “I’ll go out. We have no weapons, no way to fight back.”
Jess shielded her face from the rain. It pelted down painfully. Looking down, she realized it wasn’t rain. Tiny white pebbles bounced off the stones. The scorching wind intensified, roaring over them, bringing with it a shower of hot rocks from the sky.
“I’m coming!” Giovanni roared, trying to shield Jess from the volcano’s ejecta with one arm, pulling her down the stairs.
Jess cowered with Giovanni under the cover of a stone awning. “We have weapons,” Jess yelled into his ear over the roar of pellets clattering into the gravel courtyard and off the stone walls, the noise almost deafening.
“You just threw our only gun over the wall.” Giovanni shook his head. “I checked the armory. Nico took everything. We have no weapons.”
Jess winced and grinned at the same time. “He didn’t take everything.”
The shower of rocks thinned, the hot blast of air passed.
“I just checked, there’s nothing in—”
“Not in the armory.” Jess turned and pointed at the two-story building just past the old olive tree. “In there.”
“In the museum…?” Giovanni frowned in confusion.
“There’s a thousand years of Ruspoli family weapons in there, isn’t that what they say on the tour?”
37
CHIANTI, ITALY
“I’M COMING OUT!” Giovanni yelled, his voice carrying over the walls.
From her second-story perch inside the portico gate wall, looking out through a narrow slit in the wall, Jess could just see the wooden door crack open, Giovanni’s head coming out, both his hands over his head.
“I’m only coming closer if you let them go.” Giovanni edged out of the door.
Overhead, a northerly wind sprang up, dragging dark storm clouds from the north into the billowing black ash clouds from Monterufoli. They swirled together, churning up the sky under dancing tendrils of green and orange flame snaking from the rising sun. The ground shuddered.
Nico tightened his grip on Ben’s neck, wrenching him back. “No deals.” He glanced at the large man gripping Roger’s hair, the gun pointed at the back of his head. “Five more seconds till Roger dies.”
“Let them go,” Giovanni insisted, edging forward. “This is between us, not them.”