The Black Wolf (In the Company of Killers, #5)(33)
I also have to admit that Izabel seems more comfortable in her Naomi skin than I would’ve expected of her. She sits very close to me, her right thigh pressed against my left, and when she looks at me, with those glistening green eyes of hers, I don’t see a trace of Izabel in them. She is Naomi, my sweet and willing companion who would not hesitate to let me have my way with her even if I chose to do it in front of a dozen people—of course, I’d never do something like that to her, and she knows it. I could; oh, the things I could do to get back at my brother. I could take advantage of this situation in so many ways…
“Do I get to name her?” Izabel asks as Naomi in a sweet voice that takes me aback for a moment; she lays her head on my shoulder.
“I’ll think about it,” I say with no emotion, no expression on my face; I’m in my Niklas Augustin skin now.
I lay my hand on her thigh, pulling up her dress just a little, to see how she reacts. I expect to feel her tense beneath my palm. She surprises me when instead she smiles with a blush in her cheeks, and then touches the corner of my mouth with her lips once.
It takes me a moment longer than it should to shake off the stun—Izzy’s more into character than I am, I realize, and remedy it quickly first by erasing the emotionally confused look I know is on my face, and replacing it with the indifferent one.
I swallow, gathering my composure, and say, “What would you name her if I let you?”
She pretends to think about it for a moment, looking up in thought—I notice the driver’s eyes skirting us from the rearview mirror every few seconds.
“I like Lia, or perhaps Sia or Nai.”
She turns to Nora.
“Aya, what do you think?” she asks.
Nora doesn’t raise her head, doesn’t acknowledge Izabel’s question.
“Answer her,” I demand in a calm voice, giving her permission to speak.
Nora raises her eyes and looks at Izabel but never holds eye contact with her.
“Lia is very pretty,” Nora says, and looks back down into her lap.
Izabel turns back to me, bright-eyed and devastatingly believable.
“I said I’ll think about it,” I tell her, and then look down into my phone, pretending to be distracted by its contents.
Niklas
We pull up to the guarded front gates of Moretti’s mansion and another man steps out of a glass-and-stone booth to sign us in. There’s a gun at his hip; four other armed men stand in front of it. The man from the booth and the driver exchange words in Italian, and then signatures on a digital device. The man outside the car peers in at us in the backseat. I nod. He nods in return. And then he and the other men step out of the way of the car and the gates break apart soundlessly.
The Moretti estate is pretty much like I expected it to be, with rolling green grass and immaculate landscaping, stone and marble fountains on either side of the smooth driveway that extends in a perfectly straight line right up to the front of the five-story mansion many yards out ahead. Water, lit by golden lights, sprays from the top of the fountains. More golden lights are positioned along the driveway on either side, matching electric lanterns jutting from the grass every ten feet. The mansion itself is enormous, with six towering white pillars greeting us at the entrance, so tall and wide that I actually feel quite small walking beneath them. Izabel’s arm is looped through mine on my right; Nora on my left, eyes down as always.
I hear the car pull away behind us, and then the calming sound of a piano playing when the tall double doors are opened by two more armed men in front of us. We’re frisked for weapons and I’m forced to check mine in before going inside—they check the contents of my briefcase too, but all they find in it is cash.
After we’re frisked, stripped of my gun, and swept for wires, Miz Ghita meets us at the door, dressed in a long black dress that hangs to her ankles, and enough jewelry on her hands and wrists and ears and around her turkey neck to feed two third-world countries. Around her head she wears a black knit hat of sorts with two black feathers affixed to one side.
“Right this way, Mr. Augustin,” Miz Ghita gets right to it, which I appreciate.
We follow her through the grand vestibule, past a towering statue of Venus of Arles and then another of Neptune with his trident and dolphin, and are led into the great hall where dozens of people are mingling, sipping glasses of wine and nibbling hors d'oeuvres—it’s exactly the kind of atmosphere I’d never go out of my way to suffer; all of the noses in the air, the smell of money and plastic tits and narcissism—I’m gonna need a carton of cigarettes, a fifth of whiskey and a Jackie when this mission is over.
“Mr. Augustin,” Miz Ghita says in her rigid old woman voice, “this is Trevor Chamberlain; Trevor—Niklas Agustin.” I shake the short man’s hand. “He is CEO of The Chamberlain Corporation,” she goes on. “You may be familiar with it.”
She’s testing me.
I nod and say in German, “I’m quite familiar with The Chamberlain Corporation,” and look only at the company’s CEO when speaking. “It was the highest grossing in Munich last year—regardless of the scandal with the secretaries.” I offer Trevor Chamberlain a faint smile. “You’ll have to share with me your secrets sometime.”
Trevor smiles at me likewise and says, also in German, “The secret, as you probably already know, is simply to have enough money to get one’s self out of anything.”