Zero, What a God!

Chapter 3

Vittorio pressed his palm flat on Teresa's photo. "Give me a name!"

"Not yet. You would walk out of here and kill him before lunch, and the people behind him would disappear the same day." Celine did not even blink.

Vittorio's hand stayed on the photo. He had waited six months already, and this woman wanted him to wait longer.

"Teresa worked in this house for years. She ironed my father's shirts, and she was the only person in this house who ever asked me whether I had eaten. Six months ago, while I was abroad, Adrian accused her of stealing my family's sapphire brooch and fired her."

Vittorio's chest tightened, because that week Teresa had come home early with her apron folded in her bag and told him only that the family no longer needed her. She had made soup that night and hummed over the stove, and he had believed her.

Seeing his face, Celine lowered her voice. "She came to the Crest gate twice in the rain, begging to see me. The guards turned her away on Adrian's orders, and nobody even told me she had come."

The gate Celine meant was the same gate he stood at every night.

Had Teresa stood in that exact spot, soaked to the bone, while men in his uniform sent her away? His fingers curled around the edge of the photo until the paper bent.

Celine looked down at Teresa's smile. "A week later she was dead. I was on a plane over the ocean when it happened, and I still haven't forgiven myself for being on it."

Vittorio remembered complaining about the rain every night that week, never knowing his mother had stood in it outside a rich man's gate.

"How do you know who I am?" Vittorio asked, his voice low.

"That's my father's secret, Commander. You'll hear it when you've earned it. Not one day sooner."

Nobody had called him by that rank in two years. This woman said it in a running jacket, as calmly as she might read a figure off a balance sheet.

Celine rose from the sofa and held out her hand. "I know why you took the night shift at that gate. You want the rich man who killed your mother, and so do I. Every man who helped him is still out there, laughing at her name."

Vittorio stared at her open hand. For six months he had searched every rich face that drove past the barrier for the one who had done it.

Celine kept her hand out. "One year as my partner and personal bodyguard. Name your salary, and I'll give you everything I have on the killer."

Vittorio left her hand where it was. "Keep the salary. I want two things, everything you know about that night and every door you can open to the rich men of Port Halden. Your partner can walk into rooms a guard never sees."

"You turn down money twice in one morning. What else?" Celine's brows rose a fraction.

"One condition. Nobody learns who I am until I decide it," Vittorio said.

"Agreed. In Port Halden, you're still a guard. I'm still the woman who fainted on your jogging path."

Vittorio looked at Teresa's smile for a long moment. Then he took Celine's hand.

Celine held on a moment longer. "At ten, go to Prestige Motors on Harbor Avenue, where an old friend has kept your car for two years. At eleven, Kessler Tower, floor thirty-five."

Vittorio searched the dark years for that old friend and found only a man's laugh he could not place. How much more of his life did this woman already know?

"Yes, ma'am," Vittorio said.

"And stop calling me ma'am. I'm thirty-one, and you make me feel sixty."

"Celine." Vittorio tried the name once, and it fit better than he expected.

Celine walked him to the front door and caught the torn edge of his sleeve as he stepped out. "Leviathan reads that tattoo every time it glows, and so does Crimson Wolf. Don't let anyone see your back!"

Vittorio thought of last night's bedroom and the cold he had let loose there. If the tattoo had glowed even once, someone out there already knew Zero was awake.

At a quarter to seven, Vittorio walked into the guard post with his windbreaker zipped over the torn shirt. Ron Diaz, the head guard, sat behind the desk with a cigarette and his ledger, while Brock Mason and Chase Doyle drank coffee by the window.

Brock rubbed his shaved head. "Look who's back. I saw you come out of Crest 301 at dawn, new guy, with your shirt torn open down the back."

With a smirk, Ron took the cigarette from his lips and blew smoke at the ceiling. "So how much did the rich wife pay you for the night? Is she as good as she looks?"

"Bored wives on The Crest always go for a young guard with a good body," Chase said, rolling a toothpick between his teeth.

An hour ago, Celine had offered him a quarter of a million dollars, and he had left every bill on her table. These three would never believe that.

"She collapsed on the jogging path. I carried her home." Vittorio unclipped his radio and set it on the counter.

Then Ron's face went serious, and he tapped his pen on the open ledger. "Carrying or not, you left your post for over an hour, Moretti. Rules are rules, and your whole night's pay is gone."

Vittorio's jaw tightened. Zero's account could buy this entire complex, yet the night's pay still mattered, because he had earned it with his own hands.

Before he could answer, Victor Langley stormed up to the post in a silk robe, his slippers slapping the pavement. "Somebody stole the gold statue off my porch last night! It's worth more than all of you put together. Which one of you idiots was asleep?"

Victor lived on The Crest and played golf with Adrian Kessler every Sunday.

"Ask the new guy, Mr. Langley. He disappeared for more than an hour right before dawn." Brock pointed his coffee cup at Vittorio.

Two minutes ago, Brock had seen exactly where he went. Now the same man was selling him to a resident.

Hearing that, Victor's face went red. "Then search him. Right now, in front of me."

Before Vittorio could move, Brock grabbed Vittorio's wrists from behind and slammed him chest-first against the counter.

THUD!

The edge of the counter drove into his bruised ribs. Brock held his wrists the way amateurs did, with the thumbs on the wrong side.

Vittorio could have broken that grip in half a second and Brock's elbow in one more. Still, he let Brock hold on.

Chase dug through Vittorio's pockets, pulled out the black card, and held it up to the morning light with a whistle.

"A guard carrying a black card can only be a thief," Victor said, snatching it from Chase's fingers.

Vittorio's eyes dropped to the counter. The card had been out of Teresa's tin box for less than ten hours, and it had already made him a thief.

Then Victor tapped the card against Vittorio's swollen cheek, once for every word. "People like you start with the silverware, then the cards, then the whole house. I've seen it a hundred times, and I'll see you in handcuffs before lunch."

Ron shook his head and stubbed out his cigarette. "This is what I get for hiring a nobody with no references."

Ron had called him a nobody. Once, men like Victor Langley had paid fortunes to stand in the same room as Zero, and this morning one of them was tapping his face with a plastic card.

"I've never stolen anything in my life. My mother taught me to go hungry before I took what wasn't mine. I've gone hungry plenty," Vittorio said through his teeth.

Chase laughed and flicked his toothpick onto the floor. "Your mother, the old maid who came crying to this gate in the rain? Everybody knows the Rhodes housekeeper got fired for stealing."

Vittorio's breath stopped, because Chase had been on duty that night. He had watched Teresa cry in the rain and sent her home.

Brock leaned close to Vittorio's ear. "Your mother died like the thief she was."