“Am I loyal to the Ferraro family or to the ones employing me, Elie? I’m not a spy, nor do I want to be. If I work for Val and Dario, then I work for them and my loyalty is to them. If I work for the Ferraro family, I tell Val and Dario up front and walk if there is a conflict.” She worked quickly, making the first omelet and then sliding it onto a plate for him before starting the second one.
“Your first loyalty is always to me. You’re a member of the Ferraro family because you’re married to me. We make that clear when we offer your skills to them. If they don’t want to take you up on them, or they want to lock you out of certain meetings, that’s okay, too, if you really want the job. If they do interview you, Emmanuelle most likely will sit in on it, and don’t expect her to be sweet. Val and Dario are her family and she’s fiercely protective of them.”
She smiled at him over her shoulder. “Elie.” He was busy putting silverware on the table. She waited for him to look at her. “You are, too. It’s very clear that you consider Val and Dario family. I imagine Stefano does as well.”
He nodded. “It’s true, Brielle, but I’m not willing to take chances with your life. Val and Dario are hard, dangerous men. They don’t know you yet. Until they do, we’re going to be very careful.”
She slid her omelet onto the plate and made her way to the dining table. She eyed the numerous windows with fresh eyes. When she’d first seen them, she loved the windows and the view. Now she was worried that a good sniper might shoot Elie while he ate his breakfast at the dining table. She studied the angles carefully. It would be a difficult shot. The table was positioned back from the windows.
“I forgot to tell you, I put your electronics in the office upstairs. I’ll show you that after we’re finished,” Elie said. “And the airlines delivered your missing suitcase this morning. I told them to leave it on the front verandah. I didn’t want anything disturbing your sleep.”
Brielle’s eyes clashed with his over the table in alarm. “Elie, I didn’t know about your house. I had Stefano’s hotel down as my address. I had his phone number as the number to call in case I lost luggage, which I did not. All of my suitcases were accounted for when Stefano’s driver picked me up at the airport.”
CHAPTER SIX
Stefano studied the suitcase from a very safe distance. “Looks exactly like every other piece of her luggage, Elie. It has her name on it, just like the rest of her luggage. The address of my hotel and the number we gave Brielle to use if there were any problems were on the luggage tag. Our people at the hotel believed the airlines were calling to report Brielle’s missing bag was found so naturally your address was given so her luggage could be delivered here.”
Elie was silent as he digested what that meant. No one knew his bride’s name other than her lawyer and the members of the shadow rider international council. And the council only knew when both lawyers turned in a copy of the formally signed papers to the head of the council the night before their formal ceremony.
Vittorio approached the suitcase with the Ferraros’ portable 3-D X-Ray Scan system. Setting the screen on one side of the suitcase, he set the small image cam on the other side and walked away. Taking out his iPad, he activated the system. Vittorio flicked his hand in the air, signaling to Stefano and Elie to join him. That meant he had concluded there wasn’t a remote detonator.
“Definitely a bomb,” Vittorio said. “Rolling it would activate it. You can see the detonator is hooked in a very sloppy manner to the wheels. I’ll take a few pictures and then retrieve my system before blowing the thing up.”
Elie watched him work in silence for a few minutes, letting the breeze from the lake cool the heat of his skin.
“That suitcase is a live bomb, Elie,” Stefano said, his voice quiet. Deadly. “You are not the intended target. Brielle is.”
For one moment, Elie’s temper welled up, shaking him, and then he pushed it down, getting himself under control. Who would want to kill her and why? He glanced across the expanse of rolling lawn down to the terraced landscape that led to the lake. She was there with Emmanuelle, Val, Dario and Elie’s two personal protectors, Ruggero and Lorenzo Forni.
Brielle continued sending him anxious little glances, worried that he continually exposed himself to a sniper rifle. He wasn’t as worried as she was. He’d spent a great deal of time checking to see what it would take to get a decent shot with a rifle. The shooter would have to be on the lake to take the shot, and that meant a boat in the water. He should have told Brielle instead of letting her worry about him. He thought it was sweet that she was concerned, when she’d been so adamant that she didn’t want to marry him.
“You had her investigated,” Elie said, aware Stefano watched him with hooded eyes. “You had the report in your hand last night.”
“I did,” Stefano admitted without a qualm. “Thoroughly. She doesn’t have a single enemy that my investigators could find unless you count her family. That’s always a possibility, although an ugly one to consider. But since someone is sending her bombs, we can’t leave anything to chance. We’ll have to take another, much deeper look at her family. I fear for her if it was her father or sister. She’s taken quite a few blows in her life and still made something of herself. She’ll make a good mother.”
“She’s had it very hard,” Elie said. “I admire her. I want her for a lot of reasons, Stefano. Not just because she’s going to make a great mother.”
Vittorio placed the X-Ray system in the back of his car and then approached them again. This time Giovanni was with him. They kept their backs to Brielle. Elie knew it was to prevent lip reading, something all riders were adept at doing.
“We’re going to have to use the blast containment vessel and detonate it. We’ll slip the case over it and just blow it.”
“You’re certain they don’t have a remote detonator?” Stefano asked. “I don’t want to lose either of you.”
“We both studied the bomb,” Giovanni said. “In any case, if they did, I think they would have used it. Elie has so many security measures on the property, they would have tripped over a wire by now. I think they’re long gone. We know for certain the bomb is motion activated. They expected Brielle to wheel it inside.”
Again, the sweep of anger washed over Elie and he waited for it to recede before he spoke. “Let’s get this done. I appreciate all of you coming to help out.” He made certain his tone was even and not one shred of his inner rage could spill out. It was one thing for him to be targeted, another for Brielle to be.
There were a few tense moments as Vittorio manipulated the blast containment vessel over the suitcase, careful to keep from touching the sides of the case, enclosing it completely.
“Setting it off now,” Vittorio warned.
From the pictures taken with the 3-D X-Ray Scan system, they were certain the explosives they were dealing with were C-4. The bomb itself appeared to be crude, but effective.
The bomb was easily contained by the vessel. In fact, Elie found the explosion rather anticlimactic. If any of his neighbors saw the black smoke rising into the air, it dispersed fairly quickly. He owned the two parcels on either side of him and quite a few acres behind him with the lake in front. Valentino and Emmanuelle were his closest neighbors on one side and Vittorio on the other. Down from Valentino was Dario. He doubted if that black smoke rising upward in a steady stream for a few minutes before beginning to dissipate would be noticed.
Vittorio signaled that it was safe to approach the house once more. “We’ll take care of the mess on your front porch when we leave, Elie,” Vittorio assured him. “No one will be able to tell that this ever happened.”
“I appreciate it,” Elie said.