Page 85 of Forging Caine
Antonio’s body jerked. “You what?” He hadn’t been at the meetings with Foster Mutual or the FBI, so maybe he believed it. Maybe he trusted me and was going along with it.
“I’m sorry, Antonio. I couldn’t let Matt go to jail like his father.”
He spun me to face him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew you’d react like this.”
Baptiste’s low chuckle almost had me break character, but this was too important.
Antonio leaned in to glare into my eyes, his words coming out with a slow rasp. “You let me play the fool.”
My heart could have sung. It was a line fromThe Merchant of Venice. He was telling me he understood.
“I’m mortified, Antonio,” I said, hoping I’d picked the right word from later in Gratiano’s line in the play.
“As you should be.” He straightened but pulled me against him again.
Fiori pushed off the railing. “To save your own skin, you’d risk not just your life, but your fiancé’s life, your sister’s, your little niece?”
Antonio said, “And my sister and nephew.”
“Selfish,” muttered Fiori. “Not to mention dishonest.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“I knew you were going to be the wildcard in all of this, but I didn’t realize quite how much.” Fiori shook his head, returning to the room. The bodyguards resumed their positions next to the railing, away from us. “Let’s get to business, shall we? I have a proposition for the two of you.”
The two of us? Elliot must have been right.
Fiori gestured for us to follow him to the bar, where one of his staff opened a bottle of red wine. “As I was telling Antonio earlier, I have people working for me who aren’t doing their jobs properly. The challenge is in determining whether it’s incompetence or if they’re sabotaging my business. How good would you say the first two forgeries were?”
“Excellent.” Antonio kept his pace even with mine as we approached the bar. No more than an inch separated us at any second.
“Ms. Caine? Your opinion?”
“I don’t know, I’m just a—”
Antonio touched my arm. “He knows about your past with the FBI, bella.”
But how much? “Alright, they were very good.”
Fiori handed Antonio and me each a glass of the wine. “I have four more paintings that I’ve been told are authentic, but I want to be sure. I no longer trust many of my employees to provide me with the correct information.”
I stared into the glass, debating whether it was safe.
“Don’t worry,” Fiori chuckled. “If I wanted you unconscious, Dr. Ivan would have seen to that. And if I wanted you dead, well… we could have easily arranged that, as well.”
“Why us?” Antonio inspected his glass. “And why not simply sign a contract?”
Baptiste held out a hand and the bartender poured another glass. “You don’t believe in verbal contracts?”
Fiori frowned in his son’s direction. “I’d like to put all that in the past. Time to look to the future and our new agreement.”
“I’m not interested in a new agreement. You said two paintings—”
“The scales have shifted, young Dr. Ferraro. Your debt to mewaspaid. But now? Now you are deep, deep in debt. Authenticating four paintings will get you out of it. That, your lives, or four other lives.”
I placed the glass on the bar without having drank any. “What if we agree to do this for you? Are we to believe that we can just leave afterward, after everything you’ve done today?”