Lazaro's Revenge

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She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed, wishing her heart wasn’t flopping around inside her.

She was glad. How could she be glad? She hated him.

I do, she firmly told herself, opening her eyes and staring at the dark-beamed ceiling. She’d grown to like the yellow plaster walls in her bedroom that contrasted with the dark beams. The tapestry cover on her bed was woven in shades of yellow, deep rose and green.

Everything was so different in this house, so different from the way she’d grown up. Four days after arriving here, she still felt completely alien.

Luz didn’t help much, either. The housekeeper-cook was less than hospitable, taking every possible opportunity to shut a door in Zoe’s face, serve cold food, ignore Zoe’s halting questions.

A knock sounded on the door just seconds before the door opened. Luz entered the bedroom with a tray and her now familiar glare of disapproval. No, Zoe thought, sitting up in bed, relations hadn’t exactly warmed up between the two of them.

“Cafе,” Luz announced curtly, setting the tray on the edge of the bed with just enough force to slosh coffee up and over the rim of the cup.

Somehow Zoe knew the coffee would be lukewarm, too. “Thank you,” she answered stiffly.

“You might try ‘gracias,’” a voice said from the doorway. “Luz would at least understand your thanks.”

And here he was, freshly returned from battle. Or civilization. Or wherever he’d gone. Her temper grew to near bursting point, and she dragged the covers higher against her chest as if she could control her anger. “You’re back.”

“Happy to see me?”

“No.”

His cool silver eyes flashed and she saw a hint of amusement and something else in the pewter depths. He moved to the foot of her bed and stood, arms folded, eyes narrowed in appraisal. “You’re still in bed. It’s almost noon.”

He made her feel difficult, unreasonable. “I didn’t know I had social obligations,” she answered tersely. But this was his problem, not hers. He was the one who kidnapped her. He was the one who dumped her here and flew away, back to Buenos Aires, because that’s where she suspected he’d gone.

Back to work.

With Dante.

“Did you see him?” she asked, fingers tightly stretching the linen.

“See who?”

Lazaro was playing dumb. He knew perfectly well who she meant. Zoe’s chest hurt as she drew a deep breath, fighting for patience as well as control. “Dante.”

“Oh.” Lazaro smiled lazily, and walking around the foot of the bed, approached her side. “Yes. I did see him, but then as I’ve already told you, I work with him. Closely.”

The word closely hung there between them, strange, rather sinister. The word implied trust, intimacy, safety.

It still stunned her to think that Dante’s confidant, his most senior in command, intended to betray him.

Like Iago and Othello, she thought, and she knew the tragic outcome there. Zoe suppressed a shiver. “Does he know I’m here?”

“Yes.”

Lazaro stood so close to the bed that he could touch Zoe with the tips of his fingers if he wanted.

And he wanted to. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone and he didn’t know why, or how. It just was. Something about her made him hungry to touch her. From those brief caresses he knew he liked the feel of her and in the past three days he found himself craving her, craving to know her skin, her smell, her taste.

He’d thought she’d looked beautiful in the black turtleneck and sunglasses, and yet now, virtually stripped bare, long blond hair tousled, her delicate features scrubbed of all makeup, she looked even more astonishing. Beautiful and sweet. Heartbreakingly innocent, too.

He watched her eyes close, her cheeks pale. She took a deep, shuddering breath before opening her eyes again. “What do you want from him?”

“I’ve already told you.”

“Revenge,” she spit back, as if unable to stomach such a word, much less the concept.

“Exactly.”

Her face lifted, her lavender eyes wide, incomprehensible. “But for what? Revenge against what?”

“The Galvаns.”

She drew the sheet higher, tighter, so that it pressed against her breasts, outlining the rise and swell, the delicate ridge of nipple. “But you work for the Galvаns, you are president of their corporation.”

“Yes.”

“You must have spent years working to get where you are.”

“Nearly thirteen.”

“So…why hurt them? Why destroy your career?”

He slid the tray over and sat down on the mattress next to her. She shuddered as he sat down. But she wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of the attraction.

Good girl. Smart girl. She should be afraid. He’d never felt anything so powerful in his life.

“My career,” he said carefully, placing a hand on the bed, near her thigh, drawing the cover taut across the tone muscle, “has but one focus, and one purpose. To destroy the Galvаns.”

Zoe had never punched anyone in her life. She’d never raised a hand, made a fist, used physical violence of any sort. But suddenly she’d closed her fingers, wrapped her thumb over her knuckles and slammed her fist into his chest, in the hollow at his breastbone. It hurt when she struck him and it wasn’t even a fierce blow, more pathetic than anything, and he, she noticed through the tears filling her eyes, didn’t even flinch.

“How can you be so cruel?” she choked. “How can you care so little about other people?”

He shrugged. “Habit.”

“That’s a lousy excuse!”

“Blame it on my family then.”

“Your family?” Zoe flung her head back, unshed tears glittering in her eyes. “And just who is your family?”

“The Galvаns.”

Zoe felt sick. She felt physically ill, ill to the point that she actually crouched over the toilet in her red-marble bathroom, hugged the sides of the lavatory seat and heaved and heaved—nothing came up—but the tears didn’t stop.

He couldn’t be Dante’s brother.

Half brother, she corrected, but a brother was a brother was a brother.

My God, they had the same dad. They were practically the same age, born just six months apart.

It had all come out, or most of it had come out, and she’d begged him to stop talking but he hadn’t, not until he’d filled her head with words that wouldn’t go away.

Lazaro had left her room and she’d run in here, to crouch at the lavatory and gag on the horrible awful things he’d said.

How could a brother destroy a brother?

The bathroom door opened. Luz stood there, dark eyes narrow and unfriendly. “?La gripe?” she asked, freshly laundered towels in her arms.

Zoe sat back, wiped her nose and eyes on a crumpled tissue. “La gripe?” she repeated dumbly, hating that she couldn’t communicate in the slightest with the housekeeper.

Lazaro appeared behind Luz. “The flu,” he translated. “She wants to know if you’re sick.”

At heart, Zoe thought, swallowing hard. “Tell her I’m fine. Just sad.”

His light eyes narrowed. “There’s no reason for you to be sad. This isn’t your problem.”

Zoe rose. “Of course it’s my problem.” She took a step forward, hands balled at her sides, anger making her head light. “He’s my family now, too, and if you think I’ll stand by while you do whatever it is you intend to do, you’re wrong.”

“You don’t know him.”

She took another step, fury growing by the moment. “Maybe you’re the one that doesn’t know him. Maybe you’re the one that just thinks you do.”

He lifted a hand, gestured Luz away before reaching out and clasping Zoe lightly around the wrist. He brought her toward him despite her obvious reluctance. “How well do you know him, Zoe?”

His voice had dropped lower, huskier, and it shivered down her spine even as the heat of his hand burned through the skin at her wrist. The heat was the main thing, the most pressing thing. She felt warm from the inside out, warm just touching him, warm from standing so close to him.

Her mouth went dry. Her heart was pounding inside her chest. She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip, trying to ease the dryness. “Don’t you dare insinuate—”

“Insinuate?” Lazaro softly interrupted, drawing her closer still. “I’m not insinuating anything. I’m telling you. I’m telling you how this is, how this works. You’re here because Dante told me to bring you here. This was his idea, corazоn. His plan.”