Fire Bound (Sea Haven Sisters)(111)

She didn’t want to sit there and watch this. She didn’t want to hear any more. She wanted to cry her eyes out, somewhere safe.



“He wanted three pictures. One showing she was dead. One in the grave. One with the grave covered and the plants back in place,” Alberto confessed.

Look away, Giacinta, Casimir said. I mean it, malyshka, look away now.



She obeyed him immediately. She knew the moment she did, Alberto was dead. Casimir broke his neck. He lowered the gardener to the ground, dug his cell phone out of the man’s back pocket and gestured for her to lie down next to the hole in the ground. He arranged the garrote around her neck, took a picture and then lowered her into the grave. It was muddy. Disgusting. Still, she lay down as if flung there. Casimir took another photograph and then helped her out of the grave.

Lissa staggered back to where she’d been sitting and watched as her husband rolled Alberto’s body into the deep hole. He found the shovel and pushed mounds of dirt over the body. It took a while to completely cover the evidence and replant, so it looked as if the gardener had recently transplanted more flowers to the area. It was dark by the time Casimir took the last photograph and sent them off to Luigi.



“You can’t stay here, golubushka,” he said. “It isn’t safe. He has to believe you’re dead. I doubt if he’ll come back tonight, but we can’t take that chance.”



“I can’t check into a hotel looking like this,” she pointed out. She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t know what she was feeling, but she was close to tears and she didn’t dare start crying. If she did, she would never be able to stop.



“Is there a shower in the gardener’s shed?”



It wasn’t exactly a shed, but a place for the crew working to use the bathroom and take breaks. Lissa had played in it as a child, but it had been years since she’d been there. She’d forgotten all about it. She nodded. “Yes, but I don’t have any clean clothes.”



“I’ll get the things you’ll need, Giacinta.”



His voice was so gentle her heart turned over and a lump formed in her throat, threatening to choke her. She didn’t answer him because she couldn’t. She just nodded and turned away from him, stumbling toward the building back in the trees. No one would be there this time of day and she could cry all she wanted in the shower where no one could see or hear her.



The door was secured, but she had no trouble picking the ridiculously easy lock. The building was old and needed care, but the water was hot. She stripped out of her muddy clothes, turned the water on as hot as she could stand it and stepped into the stall. It wasn’t in the least bit fancy, not like the showers in the main house, but the water felt good until it hit the lacerations on her hand and neck. That stung. And that started the tears. She put one hand on the tiled wall, stood under the cascading water and wept.

She had no idea how long she stood there, but then Casimir was there, naked, in the shower with her, turning her unresisting body into his arms and holding her tight against him. One hand went to the back of her head, palm against her wet hair, holding her face to his chest, while his other arm locked around her back. She stood stiffly for a moment, and then there was no resisting his comfort. His strength.



“I’m here, lyubov moya. I’m not going anywhere.”



He knew. He knew exactly how she felt. The terrible feeling of betrayal, as if everything and everyone she knew, almost from the time of her birth, had conspired against her. This man holding her knew betrayal. He knew treachery at its worst. He knew what it felt like to live a role, to get so mixed up you forgot yourself, who and what you were. He knew all of that intimately.



She let her arms drift up his chest, that solid, hard chest, warm now, comforting, heart beating beneath her ear, strong and steady. She couldn’t imagine him any other way but strong and steady. Of course he would be there. At her back. At her front, wherever she needed him.

Lissa let herself melt into his heat, holding him, weeping a storm of tears for both of them, for lost childhoods, for murdered parents and for his long-lost brothers, especially the oldest, who might be – and probably was – a total psycho thanks to a man in St. Petersburg who had murdered the parents of children, dragged them to schools and shaped them into killing machines, only to decide, after years of service, to have them all killed.



Casimir rocked her back and forth, his hands smoothing caresses down her back, fingers massaging her nape and scalp, whispering kisses and love at her temples and down the side of her face to the corner of her mouth. All the while, the water rained down on them, cocooning them in steam and love.