Masquerade: Her Billionaire - Venice by Lisa Marie Rice

Author:Lisa Marie Rice [Rice, Lisa Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lisa Marie Rice
Published: 2018-08-31T18:30:00+00:00

Anya stumbled repeatedly and would have fallen several times if not for the hard arm holding her up.

It was fake. She had excellent balance, but she wanted to delay the moment when they arrived wherever it was they were going.

Presumably the men would have taken off their balaclavas out on the streets. True, it was Mardi Gras — Carnevale — but people wore fancy costumes, not black fatigues with ski masks. Were they wearing other types of masks? She couldn’t see them but she was starting to sort them out.

Outside the Palazzo, they’d been joined by the man who’d walked into the room in Palazzo Maltese. The American with an eastern seaboard upper class drawl. The man who’d been dressed in costume as a musketeer. Though she couldn’t see him, she recognized the voice.

The three soldiers were Chinese who spoke decent English with the American. Between themselves they spoke Chinese — standard Mandarin, with no regional accents. The American was coordinating something on his cell, speaking quietly. She could barely hear his words, catching one word in ten. Something about a journalist and the signing of the Accords tomorrow.

They appeared to be walking along side streets, narrow ones, so narrow that sounds echoed off the walls. The further they got from St. Mark’s Square, the fewer people there were.

For a while she was escorted by two men, one on each side, but at a corner, one fell away. The one who remained kept the gun pressed to her right side. She put out her left hand and felt a wall. A calle so narrow more than two people had difficulty walking side by side.

They were close to the action, though. The sounds of thousands and thousands of revelers was close by, footsteps clanging on the cobblestones and voices raised in merriment. It was so hard not to call out for help. But a gun pressed to her rib cage was a great deterrent.

Her hand dropped to her side and she tore another black bead off the skirt and surreptitiously let it drop close to the wall where she hoped it wouldn’t be kicked away. She’d been pulling beads off and dropping them all along the way, like the breadcrumbs dropped by Hansel and Gretel. Hoping it would lead Cal to her.

Another bead.

Such a flimsy hope. Hopes. Hope that he’d wake up soon from the chloroform. That no one had stayed behind to hurt him so badly he couldn’t get up or — she shuddered at the thought — to shoot him with a suppressed gun. The gun stuck in her side had an extra long slim barrel — it was suppressed.

If they shot her, no one would hear.

And now they were headed into very narrow side streets that were deserted. The Mardi Gras revelers wanted to see and be seen. The streets they were walking on were all but empty.

Anya was very aware that her life hung by a thread, a series of improbable things having to happen if she were to be rescued.

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