Zero, What a God!

Chapter 2

At twenty past five on Friday morning, a woman in black running clothes stumbled in front of Vittorio's patrol cart on the jogging path around the lake. She took two more steps and collapsed.

Vittorio had not slept since the ATM.

Almost four billion dollars waited behind the name on Teresa's card, and he had still spent the night lifting the barrier for residents' cars.

The woman was Celine Rhodes from The Crest 301, the CEO of Rhodes Holdings and the most untouchable woman in the complex.

Vittorio knew at once that the fall was staged. She had tucked her chin and landed on her shoulder, and he had watched recruits hit the mat for years.

Why would a woman like her study a night guard closely enough to stage a fall for him?

He carried her home anyway, half a mile in his arms, because he wanted that answer more than he wanted his bruised ribs to stop burning.

The door of 301 opened to her limp thumb on the scanner, and a note on the hall table said the housekeeper had the day off. He laid her on a white leather sofa, and before he could straighten, her eyes opened and her fingers hooked into his torn cuff.

Around them, broken bottles lay under the bar, the crystal table had a long scratch across its top, and the television was cracked from corner to corner.

Still gripping his cuff, Celine followed his gaze. "My husband did that last night… He throws whatever is closest when the board doesn't vote his way, and yesterday they voted against him three times. The housekeeper will sweep it up tomorrow and pretend she never saw a thing."

Vittorio filed that away and kept his face still. Adrian Kessler drove through his gate every night in a black Maybach, and he had never once rolled down the window.

She glanced at his swollen cheekbone. "And who did that to you, Mr. Moretti? That bruise looks fresher than my television."

"It doesn't matter, ma'am. It'll heal," Vittorio said, easing his sleeve free.

Then Celine pulled a banded stack of hundred-dollar bills from her running bag. "Fifty thousand. Consider it thanks for carrying me home."

"I can't take that, ma'am, because carrying you was part of my job." Vittorio kept his hands at his sides.

Without blinking, Celine added a second stack. "A hundred thousand, then. Nobody in this complex tells me no twice, Mr. Moretti, and the ones who try usually change their minds by lunch."

Vittorio shook his head without touching the money. Nobody on The Crest had ever offered him more than a nod, and now the richest woman in the complex was raising her price for a ride home.

Celine upended the bag, and bundle after bundle dropped onto the scratched table. "Two hundred and fifty thousand. Count it if you like."

A month ago, that pile would have been six years of his pay. After last night's balance, it was less than a single day of interest on Zero's account.

"Helping a woman who falls on the road is what any decent person should do, ma'am. The woman who raised me would have boxed my ears for taking money for it," Vittorio said.

His eyes dropped to her bare ankle. "And you can stop pretending that ankle hurts. You fell like someone who has been taught how to fall."

Celine studied him for a long moment, her head tilted. Then she smiled, a smaller and sharper smile than the one she wore for the society pages.

"If money can't pay you, Mr. Moretti, I'll give you what money can't buy." Celine moved closer until her running shoes touched his boots. She slid the zipper of her running jacket down. Under it, there was only black lace, holding two full, heavy peaches that made Vittorio's mouth go dry.

Without giving him time to step back, she took his hand and pressed it flat against her chest. Her heartbeat thudded under his palm through the thin lace, quick and warm, and his body betrayed him before his mind could catch up.

Vittorio could have stepped away. He stayed, and the air conditioning turned to ice. Goosebumps ran down Celine's skin from her neck to her knees.

She did not pull away. Her mouth curved, slow and satisfied, and she whispered, "There you are."

So she had known all along, through six months of morning runs past his gate, and she had been waiting for the cold.

Vittorio pulled her against him and kissed her, hard and certain. His hand found the hook of the lace behind her back, and Celine gasped against his mouth.

His voice dropped low against her ear. "Why so afraid now? You called me, didn't you?"

"It would be disgusting if a guard got to see what's under this lace," Celine said, stepping back half a pace with her chin raised.

Vittorio only looked at her, and Celine was the one who stepped back into his arms. The lace slipped to the carpet. What lay beneath it pressed warm against him, and his hand slid down to the curve of her waist.

BZZZT!

Celine's phone rattled across the glass table. Vittorio drew one breath and let the cold drain out of the room, then picked her jacket up off the carpet and held it out to her.

Celine pulled the jacket on and took the phone. Adrian's name lit the screen, and her face went hard.

"If you want my signature, return everything you took from me first. This house was in my name before you changed the papers, and your company still lives on my money. Did you really think the board turned on you by accident?"

A man's voice snarled through the speaker, too low to catch. Vittorio watched her free hand curl into a fist against her thigh.

"I'll make you pay for every cent, Adrian. Every single one." Celine ended the call and stood still.

For a moment, her shoulders dropped. Then she zipped the jacket to her throat, walked to Vittorio, and hugged him with nothing hungry in it. Her forehead rested against his collarbone.

"Sorry. I needed one minute where nobody was watching me," Celine murmured, her fingers loose against his back.

Vittorio let her hold on for three breaths. Then he asked the question that had followed him from the lake. "Who are you, Ms. Rhodes?"

Celine let go and sat on the arm of the sofa. "Do you know why I've run the same path at twenty past five every morning for six months?"

The question caught Vittorio off guard. As far as he knew, she had never once glanced at the gatehouse when she ran past it.

Celine gave him a faint smile and said nothing more. She walked to the bookshelf and turned a framed photo face down. Before it fell flat, Vittorio caught a glimpse of an old man's hand.

A silver ring sat on one finger, stamped with a leviathan. The same sea dragon was coiled across his own back and stamped on the card in his pocket.

"I found him, Father," Celine whispered, her palm pressed flat on the back of the frame.

After that, she opened the drawer under the cracked television and laid another photo on the scratched table in front of him. The woman in it was Teresa, smiling up at him in her housekeeper's apron the same way she used to smile over the stove on Mercer Street, and Vittorio's throat closed.

"Your mother didn't fall into Gallows Ravine, Commander. Someone threw her."