Angelo Navarro nursed a drink as he clocked the rounds of the security detail, picking his moment for the second half of his mission.
He could have sent an agent to bid on the portrait, but along with not trusting anyone else with the task—loose lips and all that—the opportunity to slip onto the estate undetected had been far too tempting.
He hadn’t expected such a bombardment of emotions as a result of visiting his birthplace, though. Anger and contempt gripped him; fury and injustice and a thirst for vengeance that burned arid and unquenchable in the pit of his belly.
These people prancing like circus clowns, making grand gestures with extravagant bids to benefit victims of violence, were the same ones who had ignored a young woman’s agonizing situation. They hadn’t interfered when her child had been taken from her and had continued to revere her persecutors.
Angelo felt no compunction whatsoever at infiltrating this private fund-raiser with the intention of retrieving what his mother had stolen. Or been given. He’d never been clear on how she had obtained the jewelry or exactly whic
h pieces had gone missing. That part didn’t matter. He would happily have gone to his grave with the knowledge that she’d fought back in her own way.
However, when this chance to add a fresh blow had arisen, he hadn’t been able to resist it.
Did it make him as soulless as his father that he was willing to commit a criminal act to continue her retaliation? So he could show his half brothers how it felt to be toyed with and abandoned to poverty?
Perhaps.
The thought didn’t stop him. He casually made his way to the corner of the house, waited for the guard’s attention to turn and slipped into the dark beyond.
He came up against a Family Only sign on the first step of the spiral staircase and smirked with irony as he slipped past it to climb to the rooftop patio.
The stairs gave a nostalgically familiar creak as he reached the top—where he discovered someone had arrived ahead of him.
The sound and light from the party were blocked by the rise of the west wing of the house, casting the space into deep shadow. He could only see a silhouette and the lighter shadow of her mask as she turned from gazing across the moonlit Mediterranean. Even so, he recognized her as the woman who had careened into him as he was bidding on the portrait of his mother.
For one second as he’d steadied her, he had forgotten everything—his thirst to punish, his purpose in coming here. Something in her uninspired costume gave him the impression she didn’t belong here any more than he did. That she was hiding in plain sight. His male interest had been so piqued, he had nearly asked her to dance.
“Oh.” The lilt in her voice told him she had identified him from their brief encounter as well, which also told him she had found it as profound as he had.
“Were you expecting someone else?” He adjusted his mask to peer harder into the shadows. The rickety bench where his mother used to read to him was gone, replaced by a dark shape that suggested a comfortable, L-shaped sectional.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
That was good news. On many levels.
“Did you follow me?” she asked.
“No.” He would like to think he would have timed things differently if he had known she was up here, but he wasn’t sure. Nor was he as dismayed as he ought to have been that she was now an obstacle to his goal.
“Did you invite someone to join you?” she asked, vaguely appalled.
He should have said, Yes. She sounded so uncomfortable at intruding, she probably would have hurried away, but something in him balked at letting her think he was involved with anyone.
He heard himself say a throaty and inviting, “Not yet.”
Her silhouette grew more alert. The air crackled between them.
“Who are you?” Her voice sharpened and her mask tilted as she cocked her head.
It struck him that he couldn’t tell her. Damn.
“I think the purpose of a night like this is to maintain the mystery.”
“And telling me would identify you as the buyer of that portrait you bid on so generously. And anonymously.”
“True.” The peril he was in began to impact him. She could place him with the painting and here on the rooftop. Maybe she didn’t know his name, but there was a chance she could find out.
Dared he linger? Was it worth the risk?