Falco: The Dark Guardian

“So, how would we do this, then? I mean, how could you watch over me, go after whoever this is, do whatever you need to do, without people knowing?”

Falco had considered that during the six-hour flight from New York. There were lots of ways to move into someone’s life to provide protection and search out information without raising questions. The idea was to assume a role other people would accept. He could pass himself off as her driver. Her assistant. Her personal trainer.

Okay. Personal trainer it would be…

“Mr. Orsini?”

“Falco,” he said, looking down into her eyes. He saw the rise and fall of her breasts, remembered the soft, lush feel of her against him, and he knew damned well he wasn’t going to pretend to be her trainer after all.

“Simple,” he said calmly. “We’ll make people think I’m your lover.”

She stared at him. Then she gave a little laugh.

“That’s crazy,” she said. “No one will believe—”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Yeah, they will.”

Falco reached out, gathered Elle in his arms, and kissed her.

About the Author

SANDRA MARTON wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her she’d be a writer some day, and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understood—though, looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.

At last Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love that’s rich with fire and passion, love that lasts for ever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance. Since then she’s written more than sixty books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® award finalist, she’s also received five RT Book Reviews awards, and has been honoured with RT Book Reviews’s Career Achievement Award for Series Romance. Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the north-eastern United States.

Chapter One

THERE were those who said that Falco Orsini was too rich, too good-looking, too arrogant for his own good.

Falco would have agreed that he was rich, that he was probably arrogant, and if you judged his looks by the seemingly endless stream of beautiful women who moved in and out of his bed, well, he’d have had to admit that perhaps he had something going for him that women liked.

There were also those who called him heartless. He would not have agreed with that.

He was not heartless. He was honest. Why let a competitor buy an elite investment bank if he could scoop it up instead? Why let a competitor get the edge in a business deal if he could get it first? Why go on pretending interest in a woman when he no longer felt any?

It wasn’t as if he was a man who ever made promises he had no intention of keeping.

Honest, not heartless. And in the prime of life.

Falco was, like his three brothers, tall. Six foot three. Hard of face, hard of body. Buff, women said. That was true but it had nothing to do with vanity. He was fit the way a man must be when he knows keeping himself that way could mean the difference between life and death.

Not that he lived that kind of existence anymore.

Not often, at any rate.

Not that he talked about.

At thirty-two, Falco had already led what many would consider an interesting life.

At eighteen, he’d grabbed his backpack and thumbed his way around the world. At nineteen, he’d joined the army. At twenty, he became a Special Forces warrior. Someplace along the way, he picked up a bunch of disparate university credits, a skill at high-stakes gambling and, eventually, a passion for high-stakes investing.

He lived by his own rules. He always had. The opinions of others didn’t concern him. He believed in honor, duty and integrity. Men who’d served with him, men who dealt with him, didn’t always like him—he was too removed, some said—but they respected him almost as much as women coveted him.

Or hated him.

It didn’t matter.

Family was everything.

He loved his brothers the same way they loved him, with a ferocity that made the four of them as formidable in everything as they were in business. He would have given his life for his sisters, who would happily have returned the favor. He adored his mother, who worshipped all her sons as perhaps only Italian mothers can.

His father…

Who gave a damn about him?

Falco, like his brothers, had written off Cesare Orsini years ago. As far as his wife and daughters were concerned, Cesare owned a carting company, a construction firm and some of New York City’s priciest real estate.

His sons knew the truth.

Their father was the head of something he referred to only as La Famigilia.

He was, in other words, the same as the thugs who had originated in Sicily in the last half of the nineteenth century. Nothing could change that, not the Brioni suits, not the enormous mansion in what had once been Manhattan’s Little Italy and was now Greenwich Village. But, for their mother’s sake, there were times Falco and his brothers put that aside and pretended the Orsinis were just another big, happy Sicilian-American family.

Today, for instance. On this bright, late autumn afternoon, Dante had taken a wife.

Falco still had trouble getting his head around that.

First Rafe. Now Dante. Two brothers with wives. And, Dante, it turned out, wasn’t just a husband, he was also a father.

Nicolo and Falco had spent the day smiling, kissing their new sisters-in-law and grinning at Dante and Rafe. They’d done their best not to feel like jerks cooing at their infant nephew—not that it was difficult because the kid was clearly the world’s cutest, most intelligent baby. They’d danced with their sisters and shut their ears to Anna’s and Isabella’s not-so-subtle hints that they had friends who’d make them perfect wives.

By late afternoon, they were more than ready to slip away and toast their bachelorhood with a few well-earned cold beers at a place the four brothers owned. Not their investment firm. This place was called, simply enough, The Bar.

Cesare headed them off before they could get to the door. He wanted to talk to them, he said.

Not again, Falco had thought wearily. One look at Nick’s face and he knew his brother was thinking the same thing. For months now, the Don had been giving his “after I’m dead” speech. The combination to his safe. The names of his attorney and his accountant. The location of important papers. Stuff none of the brothers cared about; none of them wanted a penny of their father’s money.

Falco’s initial instinct was to ignore Cesare and keep walking.

Instead, he and Nick looked at each other. Maybe the long day had put them in a mellow mood. Maybe it was the champagne. What the hell, Nick’s expression said, and Falco replied with a sigh that clearly said, Yeah, why not.

Their father had insisted on talking to them separately. Felipe, Cesare’s capo, jerked his head, indicating Falco should go first.

Falco gave a moment’s thought to grabbing the capo by his skinny neck, hoisting him to his toes and telling him what a slimy bastard he was to have spent his life as the Don’s guard dog, but the family celebration was still going strong in the conservatory at the rear of the house.

So he smiled instead, the kind of smile a man like the capo would surely understand, moved past him and entered Cesare’s study. Felipe shut the door behind him…

And Falco found himself in an endurance contest.

His father, seated at his desk, the heavy drapes behind him drawn so that the big room with its oversized furniture seemed even more gloomy than usual, looked up, nodded, waved a manicured hand toward a chair—a gesture Falco ignored—and went back to leafing through the contents of a manila folder.

According to the antique mahogany clock that hung on a wall, all but lost among photos of politicians, old-country ancestors and age-yellowed religious paintings, four minutes ticked away.

Falco stood perfectly still, feet slightly apart, arms folded, dark eyes locked on the clock. The minute hand ticked to yet another marker, the hour hand made its barely perceptible jump. Falco unfolded his arms, turned his back on his father and went to the door.

“Where are you going?”

Falco didn’t bother turning around. “Ciao, Father. As always, it’s been a pleasure.”

The chair creaked. Falco knew the Don was pushing back from his desk.

“We have not yet had our talk.”

“Our talk? You were the one who requested this meeting.” Falco swung toward his father. “If you have something to say, say it—but I assure you, I recall your touching words the last time I saw you. Perhaps you don’t remember my response so let me remind you of it. I don’t give a damn about your safe, your documents, your business interests—”

“Then you are a fool,” the Don said mildly. “Those things are worth a fortune.”

A cool smile lifted the corners of Falco’s mouth. “So am I, in case you hadn’t noticed.” His smile vanished. “Even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t touch anything of yours. You should know that by now.”

“Such drama, my son.”

“Questa verità, Father. Such truth, you mean.”

Cesare sighed. “All right. You’ve made your speech.”

“And you’ve made yours. Goodbye, Father. I’ll tell Nicolo to—”

“What were you doing in Athens last month?”

Falco stood absolutely still. “What?”

“It’s a simple question. You were in Athens. Why?”

The look Falco gave the older man would have made anyone else take a hurried step back.

“What in hell kind of question is that?”

Cesare shrugged. “A simple one. I asked you—”

“I know what you asked.” Falco’s eyes narrowed. “Did you have me followed?”

“Nothing so devious.” Cesare moved his chair forward and reached for an elaborately carved wooden box. “Pure Havanas,” he said, opening the box to reveal a dozen fat cigars. “They cost the earth. Have one.”

“Explain yourself,” Falco said sharply, without a glance at the box. “How do you know where I was?”

Another shrug. “I have friends everywhere. Surely you know that by now.”

“Then you also know that I was in Athens on business for Orsini Brothers Investments.” Falco smiled again, even more coldly. “Perhaps you’ve heard of us, Father. A privately held company started without any help from you.”

Cesare bit the tip off the cigar he’d chosen, turned his head and spat the piece into a wastebasket.

“Even in these bad economic times, we’ve made our investors wealthy. And we’ve done it honestly, a concept you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“You added a private bank to your stable when you were in Athens,” Cesare said. “Nicely done.”

“Your compliments mean nothing to me.”

“But banking was not all you did there,” the Don said softly. He looked up; his eyes met Falco’s. “My sources tell me that during that same few days, a child—a boy of twelve—held for ransom by insurgents in the northern mountains of Turkey, was somehow miraculously returned to his fam—”

Falco was around the desk in a heartbeat. His hand closed on his father’s shirt; he yanked him roughly to his feet.

“What is this?” he snarled.

“Take your hands off me!”

“Not until I get answers. No one followed me. No one. I don’t know where you got all this crap but—”

“I was not foolish enough to think anyone could follow you and live to talk about it. Let go of my shirt and perhaps I’ll give you an answer.”

Falco could feel his heart racing. He knew damned well no one had followed him; he was far too good to let that happen. And, yes, though he would never admit it, there had been more to his trip to Greece than the acquisition of a bank. There were times his old skills came in handy but he kept that part of his life private.

Falco glared at his father. And silently cursed himself for being a fool.

He had not let Cesare get to him in years. Fifteen years, to be exact, on a night one of his father’s henchmen had caught him sneaking back into the heavily guarded house at two in the morning.

The Don had been furious, not at where his seventeen-year-old-son might have been, not at how he’d defeated the alarm system, but at how he’d gotten by the silent men who kept watch from the shadows outside the front door and deep within the walled garden.

Falco had refused to explain. He’d done more than that. He’d smirked as only a badass teenage boy could.

Cesare had backhanded him, hard, across the face.

It was the first time his father had hit him, which was, when he’d had time to think about it, a surprise. Not the blow; the surprise was that it had not happened before. There’d always been a hint of violence in the air between father and son; it had grown stronger when Falco reached adolescence.

That night, it had finally erupted.

Falco had stood still under the first blow. The second rocked him back on his heels. The third bloodied his mouth, and when Cesare raised his hand again, Falco grabbed his wrist and twisted the Don’s arm high behind his back. Cesare was strong, but at seventeen, Falco was already stronger.

He was also fueled by years of hatred.

“Touch me again,” he’d said in a whisper, “and I swear, I’ll kill you.”

His father’s expression had undergone a subtle change. Not fear. Not anger. Something else. Something swift and furtive that should not have been in the eyes of a powerful man who’d just lost a battle, physically as well as figuratively.

Falco’s face was badly bruised the next day. His mother questioned it, as did his sisters. He said he’d fallen in the shower. The lie worked but Nicolo, Raffaele and Dante had not been so easy to fool.

“Must have been a pretty awkward tumble,” Rafe had said, “to blacken your eye as well as give you a swollen lip.”

Yeah, Falco had said calmly, it was.

He never told anyone the truth. Had the beating been too humiliating to talk about? Was it his shock at the intensity of the quicksilver flash of rage that had almost overcome him?

Eventually, he understood.

Power had changed hands that night. It had gone from Cesare to him…and then back to Cesare. What he’d seen in his father’s eyes had been the knowledge that despite Falco’s vicious threat, he, Cesare, had actually won the battle because Falco had let emotion overtake him. He had lost control of his emotions and somehow, he had no idea how or why, that loss of control gave the other person power.

And now, here he was, fifteen long years later, losing control all over again.

Carefully, he unfisted his hand, let go of Cesare’s starched white shirt. Cesare fell back into his chair, his jowly face red with anger.

“If you were not my son…”

“I’m not your son in any way that matters. It takes more than sperm to make a man a father.”

A muscle knotted in the Don’s jaw. “Are you now a philosopher? Trust me, Falco, in many ways, you are more my son than your brothers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that what you so self-righteously claim to hate in me is what is also inside you. The lure of absolute power. The need to control.” Cesare’s eyes narrowed. “The willingness to shed blood when you know it must be shed.”

“Damn you, old man!” Falco leaned over the desk and brought his angry face within inches of the older man’s. “I am nothing like you, do you hear? Nothing! If I were, God, if I were…”

He shuddered, drew back, stood straight. What was he doing, letting his father draw him deeper into this quagmire?

“Is this what you wanted to talk about? To tell me you’ve come up with absolution for yourself by pretending your genes are my destiny? Well, it won’t work. I am not you. And this so-called discussion is at an—”

Cesare took something from the folder on his desk and pushed it toward Falco. It appeared to be a glossy page, an advertisement, torn from a magazine.

“Do you know this woman?”

Falco barely spared the picture a glance.

“I know a lot of women,” he said coldly. “Surely your spies have told you that.”

“Indulge me. Look at her.”

What the hell did it matter? Falco picked up the photo. It was an ad for something expensive. Perfume, jewelry, clothing—it was hard to tell.

The focus of the page, though, was clear enough.

It was the woman.

She was seated crossways in an armchair, one long leg on the floor, the other draped over the chair’s arm, a shoe with the kind of heel that should have been declared lethal dangling from her toes. She wore lace. Scarlet lace. A teddy. A chemise. He had no idea which it was, only that it showed almost as much cleavage as leg.

A spectacular body. An equally spectacular face. Oval. Delicate. The essence of femininity. High cheekbones, eyes as amber as a cat’s, lashes long and thick, the same ebony color as her long, straight hair.

She was smiling at the camera. At the viewer.

At him.

It was, he understood, a deliberate illusion. A damned effective one. Her smile, the tilt of her head, even her posture, dared a man to want her. To be foolish enough to think he could have her. It was a smile that offered as much sexual pleasure as a man could want in a lifetime.

Something hot and dangerous rolled through Falco’s belly.

“Well? Do you recognize her?”

He looked up. Cesare’s eyes locked on his. Falco tossed the photo on the desk.

“I told you I didn’t. Okay? Are we done here?”

“Her name is Elle. Elle Bissette. She was a model. Now she is an actress.”

“Good for her.”

Cesare took something else from the folder. Another ad? He held it toward Falco, but Falco didn’t move.

“What is this? You expect me to spend the next hour playing Name the Celebrity?”

“Per favore, Falco. I ask you, please. Look at the photo.”

Falco’s eyebrows rose. Please? In Italian and in English. He had never heard his father use those words or anything close to them. What the hell, he thought, and reached for the photo.

Bile rose in his throat.

It was the same ad but someone had used a red pen to X out her eyes. To trace a crude line of stitches across her lips.

To draw a heavy line across her throat and dab red dots from her throat to her breasts. To circle her breasts in the same bright, vicious crimson.

“Miss Bissette received it in the mail.”

“What did the cops say?”

“Nothing. She refuses to contact them.”

“She’s a fool,” Falco said bluntly, “if she won’t go to the authorities.”

“The parents of the Turkish boy went to you, not the authorities. They feared seeking official help.”

“This is America.”

“Fear is fear, Falco, no matter where one lives. She is afraid or perhaps she does not trust the police. Whatever the reason, she refuses to contact them.” Cesare paused. “Miss Bissette is making a film in Hollywood. The producer is, shall we say, an old friend.”

“Ah. I get it now. Your pal’s worried about his investment.”

“It concerns him, yes. And he needs my help.”

“Send him some of your blood money.”

“Not my financial help. He needs my help to safeguard Miss Bissette.”

“I’m sure your goons will love L.A.”

Cesare chuckled. “Can you see my men in Beverly Hills?”

Falco almost laughed. He had to admit, the idea was amusing—and, suddenly, it all came together. The talk of what had happened in Turkey, this conversation about Elle Bissette…

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Falco nodded. “I know some guys who do bodyguard work for celebrities. I’ll call around, put you in touch—”

“I am already in touch,” Cesare said gently. “With you.”

“Me?” This time, Falco did laugh. “I’m an investor, Father, not a bodyguard.”

“You did not say that to the people you helped in Turkey.”

“That was different. They turned to me and I did what I had to do.”

“As I am turning to you, mio figlio, and asking that you do what must be done.”

Falco’s face hardened. “You want some names and phone numbers, fine. Otherwise, I’m out of here.”

Cesare didn’t answer. Falco snorted, turned on his heel, headed for the door again, changed his mind and decided to exit through the French doors hidden by the heavy drapes. The mood he was in, the last thing he wanted was to risk running in to his mother or his sisters.

“Wait.” His father hurried after him. “Take the folder. Everything you need is in it.”

Falco grabbed the folder. It was easier than arguing.

By the time he’d taxied to his mid-sixties town house, he’d come up with the names of four men who could do this job and do it well. Once home, he poured a brandy, took the folder and his cell phone and headed outside to his walled garden. It was close to sunset; the air was chill but he liked it out here, with the noise of Manhattan shut away.

There was nothing of much use in the folder. Stuff about the movie; a letter from the producer to Cesare.

And the pictures. The one with her in lace. The markedup duplicate. And another that his father had not shown him, a photo of Bissette standing on a beach, looking over her shoulder at the camera. No lace. No stiletto heels. She was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts.

Falco put the three pictures on the top of a glass table and looked from one to the other.

The one of her sexy and mysterious was a turn-on if you liked that kind of thing. He didn’t. Yeah, he liked crimson and lace and stiletto heels well enough; was there a man who didn’t? But the pose was blatantly phony. The smile was false. The woman looking at the camera had no substance. She might have been looking at a million guys instead of him.

The mutilated picture made his gut knot. It was an outright threat, crude but effective.