Page 90 of Vengeance in Venice
The rest of the noise around Solomon, those chaining the big man, and the curious workers and boatmen trailing onto the bridge from both sides, seemed to fade. He could hear only Lampl.
“It seems we underestimated each other.”
“I didn’t underestimate you,” Solomon said with contempt. The rat had almost killed Constance.
Lampl laughed, showing the gaping redness of his mouth. “You see? You still think you won.”
It seemed he could still move quickly. He hurled himself at Solomon, who lashed out with the dagger. But Lampl barged straight past him and tumbled over the side of the bridge into the canal below.
Solomon was left staring at the reddened blade of the dagger, the murderer’s words ringing in his head, chilling his blood.
“You still think you’ve won.”
“Constance,” he said hoarsely, and began to run.
Chapter Twenty
Constance filled herlungs to scream.
“Don’t,” Pellini said casually. He was pointing a pistol at her heart.
For a moment, she stared at it, her mouth closing, a sense of unreality washing over her. After the first jolt, she didn’t even seem to be frightened.
“So you have come to kill me,” she said in Italian. “Why?”
The question seemed to surprise him, but in fact, she really wanted to know, although keeping him talking was also a reasonable tactic to extend her life. He advanced upon her, the pistol steady in his right hand.
“You don’t know, do you?” she said pityingly. “You just do what Lampl says, regardless. He won’t even care that you hang for it. You are a loose end he will need to tie off for his own safety. If he survives. Do you want to die? Because you will, if you shoot me. Whoever let you in, my other servants will break down the door so fast that you will never escape.”
That didn’t trouble him. He shrugged. “I leave by the window.”
So he would talk. That was good. “But how long would you remain free? A hunted man? Neither the Venetians nor the Austrians will stand for blatant murder. It is idiocy to shoot me.”
“I don’t want to shoot you,” he admitted, and the first, dangerous sparks of real hope ignited within her.
Too soon, as it happened, for he was taking something else from inside his coat. She remembered the feel, the smell of that coat when he had dragged her through the streets, his powerful fingers crushing her arm…
She blinked at the flask in his left hand.What on earth…?
Understanding iced her blood, even as he grinned at her, and she took an involuntary step backward.
“You are right,” he said. “I don’t want to shoot you, though I will. I want to have a drink with you.”
Somehow, she recovered her dignity and curled her lip. “Don’t be his dupe. Everyone knows I was poisoned before. If I die now, they will know it was murder. Let Lampl do his own dirty work. As he did before.”
“You’ll feel different once you drink,” he mocked. In a practiced movement, he unstopped the flask one handed and closed the distance between them.
Pride kept her still, her chin tilted in supreme contempt. “I will not drink.”
“You will,” he said with chilling certainty, and seized her round the neck with his left arm, the flask bumping against her jaw, while the pistol was pressed to her head, paralyzing her. “Face it, signora. One way or the other, you die, and I don’t care which. The drink is easier on everyone, and that’s my instruction, but…”
Is this it? Is this where it ends? Without Solomon… Oh, my poor Solomon…
While the wild, pointless thoughts flashed through her mind, she had shut her mouth tight, like a child refusing food, her whole body stiff with resistance, straining against him. It wasn’t bravery, it was mere instinct, and if it caused her to be shot—surely that was no less messy than dying from whatever filthy poison he would force down her throat…
And suddenly she didn’t care. If she had to die, she would do it fighting to the end so that Solomon was proud of her, so that he would know she’d tried to stay alive, for him.
Her resistance irritated Pellini. Despite his somewhat terrifying strength, he had too many things to hold on to—her wriggling head, the flask, the pistol. He needed two hands to force the contents of the flask on her with any efficiency. He hadn’t thought this through, she realized, but relied on fear of the gun to make her compliant. In fact, her fear of the poison was probably greater, though her body was certainly reacting without her permission.
