A Thief in Venice by Tara Crescent Read Free Book Online Page A

my head. Staying the night was the one thing I never did. It had to be only about sex. Never anything more. The whip might have assuaged the pain of my parents’ death, but it hadn’t managed to heal the deepest gash inside me. I wanted nothing to do with love. Love was heartache. Love was watching your mother wasting away as the cancer ravaged her body. Love was finding the body of your father with his head blown away. There was no room in my life for love.
    ***
    Antonio:
    I didn’t want her to leave. She left anyway.
    She belonged to me, this little thief. And I belonged to her. I was the head of Thieves’ Guild. Not a man given to fancy, but I knew this feeling to be the truth. Silly phrases that I would have once mocked – that we were meant for each other, she was my destiny, and I was hers – they were all true when I thought of Lucia.
    We fit together. She was the daughter of Guild thieves. My world was her world. The demands of my job she would deal with in her strong, feisty manner. And when she played? This woman played like no one I’d played with before. This woman played fearlessly.
    For the first time in my life, I was falling in love.

Chapter 11
    Antonio:
    Twilight in Venice. I was in a water-taxi, winding my way homeward. The most normal and innocuous of things to do in Venice.
    “Stop here for an instant,” I told the taxi-driver. But this was no ordinary taxi-driver. Giovanni was my second-in-command. Only a very few were privy to my secrets; Giovanni was one of them.
    A man came walking towards the taxi, treading the relaxed footsteps of someone taking an after-dinner walk. Had someone been watching us, any attempt at furtiveness would have aroused suspicion. He walked towards the boat and got in. Giovanni nodded a greeting at him and got out. The exchange had taken seconds, and we were sheltered from sight by a cluster of buildings.
    I moved to take Giovanni’s place and the boat moved again, heading towards more open waters. Finally, we were past the point where our conversation could be heard, and I turned towards my passenger.
    “Enzo,” I greeted the Chief of Police of Venice. I didn’t move towards him. I was playing the role of a water taxi driver, and anyone could be watching the boat.
    He rolled his eyes at me. “This is all very cloak-and-dagger, Antonio. Our usual meeting couldn’t have sufficed?”
    Enzo Peron and I had breakfast together once every two weeks. Another secret, one we both guarded. The Chief of Police could not be seen together with the head of Thieves Guild. Not without people assuming that Enzo’s loyalty was for sale to the highest bidder.
    The truth was something else entirely. Enzo and I went way back. We had grown up together; we were like brothers. Brothers who had taken two very different paths in life. But brothers nonetheless.
    “I need to ask you something,” I said. My voice was reluctant. The question I was going to ask Enzo – the wrong answer would gouge a hole in my heart.
    He raised an eyebrow and waited for me to continue.
    “Lucia Petrucci.” My voice was harsh. “Is she important to you?”
    “I gather by your tone that she’s important to you,” Enzo replied dryly. “How did the two of you meet? You don’t play at Casanova.”
    I didn’t tell Enzo that Lucia moonlit as an art thief. He was still the Chief of Police and he took his job seriously. “We didn’t meet at Casanova,” I said. “Is that the only place one might meet Lucia Petrucci?”
    He ignored that, and answered my earlier question instead. “I like Lucia,” he said. “But she doesn’t have a hold on my heart, if that’s what you are asking. We have slept together though.”
    I shrugged. What did the Americans call it? Realities on the ground. She had slept with other men, and I had slept with other women. I couldn’t waste any sleep over it. The past was the past. I was more concerned with the present and the future.
    “I like this girl,” I said, declaring