The look on my face must have told him I abso-fuckin’-lutely hadn’t.
Derek worried his jaw around a little bit. “Look, Zola. I—I don’t know how else to say this but to come out and ask. Could your attachment to Nina Gardner be fucking with your judgment here?”
If I had looked up any quicker, my head might have popped up. “I’m sorry, what? What the fuck are you talking about?”
Yeah, I know. The lady doth protest too much. Or in this case, the irritated fuckin’ prosecutor.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was just a question, man.” Derek held his hands up in surrender. “I’m not saying I know anything. I’m not saying I’ve seen anything. And to be honest, I don’t really want you to tell me if I’m right. Because if I am, that puts me in the weird spot of having to report you to Ramirez and your bureau chief. Since you’re the only paper pusher I’ve ever liked, I don’t want to do that.”
I snorted. The animosity between the NYPD and the prosecutors’ offices in the city was legendary.
“Fuck you,” I said. “I’m not a fuckin’ paper pusher, and you know it.”
Derek shrugged, though he cracked a good-natured grin all the same. “The point remains. Is there any chance you want this guy to be guilty more than he is?”
“King, we already took it to trial. It’s not just me that needs the guy to be guilty of more than a single count of aiding and abetting.”
“Yeah, but what if he’s not? Just because you got a thing for his wife doesn’t mean he’s the worst guy on the planet, Zola. I know you want him to be more than one of Carson’s lackeys, but I gotta be honest, my friend. I’m not sure it’s there.”
We sat together in silence, ruminating over the possibility. I knew Derek was right. So far, the evidence against Calvin Gardner was weak, and nothing more had come up in the last three weeks.
And yeah, there was a girl involved in my investigations, possibly swaying my judgment (though I was never going to admit as much to Derek). But I couldn’t shake the idea that this went beyond my feelings for Nina. My gut hadn’t led me astray once in seven years at this job. I wasn’t ready to concede the first time. Not yet.
“Look, we still have another month until trial, more if I can extend discovery. I have an idea.” I nodded as the rest of it came to me. “I want to come back to the person associated with the Pantheon.”
Derek scowled. “Zola, we covered this already.”
“Yeah, but don’t you see? That’s where whoever owns Pantheon made his big mistake.” I nodded again, sitting up straight. “He named a dead man, but everything associated with the LLC is still running like he never died. Pantheon wasn’t included in his will either. Which means the person or people who actually own Pantheon are still alive.”
Derek blinked. “Okay…”
“Don’t you get it?” I clapped my hands together. “You can’t know someone if you’re dead, King. They have to change it by law, and we can ask them to do it. The owner names a known compatriot, and boom—we have a whole new suspect with a whole new bunch of connections, not to mention weaknesses to exploit.”
Finally, Derek’s eyes brightened. He nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, so you’ll…”
“You just keep watching those houses, keep interviewing people at all the other fronts, and file a request for the known associate, my friend. Within a month, we’ll have a new target. And this case will be back on track.”
I
Prospettiva
Then
Chapter One
May 2008
The subway screamed overhead as Nina Evelyn Astor de Vries stepped onto the corner of Sixty-Seventh and Roosevelt, smack in the middle of Jackson Heights. Queens. Out of habit, she pulled out her sunglasses—a cheap pair purchased at CVS just for today. Flimsy and uncomfortable, unlike her favorite Guccis tucked deep in her purse, but without the name brand recognition. Because nothing about today was normal. She wasn’t normal.
Nina had worn nothing but designer name brands and couture since she was ten. Had made semi-annual trips to Milan and Paris with Grandmother and Mother since she was twelve. And now she was standing in the middle of Queens in a pair of ill-fitting Gap jeans and a “Big Apple” baseball cap atop her golden blonde hair, hoping to God no one would spot her for the fraud she was.
The neighborhood was only twenty minutes from the Upper East Side, where Nina had grown up, but it felt like another country. The fact was, Nina was sheltered. Spoiled. Naive in the worst possible way. And the reality of that hadn’t really struck her until she had left the streets of the Upper East Side for college and spent the last year studying abroad. Wellesley, of course, was still a fount of privilege, but was at least something different. Florence wasn’t exactly the developing world either…but it certainly wasn’t New York. Nina hadn’t expected nine months in a foreign country to completely turn her perspective on its axis. But it had. It had changed everything.
There, she was no longer an Astor, or Nina de Vries, daughter of not just one but two centuries-old New York families. She was simply Nina. A girl in a class. A woman walking along the Arno. No one special at all.
Perhaps she might have stayed.
If only.
Nina closed her eyes and saw the face that haunted her dreams, day and night.
Giuseppe.
Or Peppe, as his students called him. Just barely an inch taller than her. Slight and willowy, his shoulders stooped from years of bending over his books. A few hints of silver threading his otherwise shiny dark hair. Skin the color of soft, pounded leather, a pair of glasses perched over a patrician nose. Not a particularly handsome or young man, but one who became utterly beautiful when he talked about the great artists of Florence. His deep eyes crinkled at the edges and danced. His hands came alive.
Two weeks into Nina’s course on classical Renaissance art, Peppe had lectured on Botticelli and took the class to the Uffizi to see the master’s work.
Long after the class had moved on, Nina stared at the Birth of Venus, absorbed by the curling strawberry blonde hair of the naked goddess and her unabashed curves as she stood on her shell. The fullness of her breasts, her thighs.
She had turned to find her professor equally entranced.
“Hypnotizing, is she not?” He stared at her while he spoke, waving his lithe, graceful hands toward the picture.
It was the first time Nina had imagined those hands on her. The first time she had imagined or wanted anyone’s hands on her at all.
Principessa.
That was what he called her, even before he learned who and what she was. The first time was when Nina had wandered to his office hours wanting more information about Botticelli and other masters. She was his principessa a few weeks later when he took her on a private tour of the lesser-known art hidden in Florence’s cathedrals, then kissed her in the shadow of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore while the Arno river shushed in the distance. And again in the golden light of his family’s deserted olive farm after making love to her in the cool spring night for all of Tuscany to witness. Once more when he had told her goodbye at the train station, cupping her face between those beautiful hands and promising her he would never forget her in a thousand years.