a lucrative marker before his case even went to court, hadn’t he? Zeno craned his neck toward the upper floors of the Tristan, grinning as the bank of windows he’d spent the better part of the past few days casing lit up. Time to retrieve his cell phone. Put his new and improved mission into motion. Prove to the boss for once and for all he was ready to move up in the organization.
And if the boss was right and he didn’t have a way with words?
Well, there was always Sally.
Anticipation hummed in Zeno as he fingered the meticulously honed blade sheathed at the waist of his trousers. He’d named the old knife after the faithless bitch who’d once sworn to stick with him for life. In a way, she had. Part of her. After all these years, the blade’s wooden handle still carried the stain of Sally’s blood. Ironic when he thought about it.
That’s all the boss had ordered him to get this time.
A single drop of blood. The rest was his to amuse himself with. Another reason Zeno knew he was smart—he’d come up with a lot of ways to amuse himself over the years….
Abby gently hung her brother’s latest masterpiece on the wall and scrambled off the couch to admire the results of her handiwork. Not bad. The painting—a depiction of her new apartment building at sunset—was absolutely gorgeous.
She wasn’t surprised.
For all her brother’s difficulties with numbers and directions, Brian was an amazing impressionist. Tristan Court’s stately turn-of-the-century facade was awash in soft reds, warm golds and a soothing burnt orange. Brian had even sketched in the impression of the doorman with a few strategic strokes of dark gray, highlighted with white. The phone rang as Abby reached out to adjust the bottom of the frame. Sighing, she turned to thread through the empty cardboard boxes still cluttering her living room, wondering if her uptight upstairs neighbor would revise his opinion of her brother if she showed him the painting.
She knew the answer before she reached the kitchen counter. She’d spent years dealing with the prejudices of strangers regarding Down’s. Heck, getting to know Brian one-on-one for six months the year before hadn’t even put a dent in her ex’s carefully concealed, holier-than-thou bigotry.
And speak of the devil.
Abby glared at the name and number in her phone’s caller ID window. It was Stuart Van Heusen, in the flesh—or rather, in her ear. If she picked up. Abby spun around and waded back through the boxes to retrieve her hammer. By the fourth ring she was tempted to send the tool sailing across the room and onto the phone. Her own prerecorded voice kicked in on the fifth shrill, only to cut out in mid-hello as Stuart decided against leaving a message and hung up.
Smart move.
She’d yet to return his first three calls.
Frankly, she still couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to show up at the concert hall that afternoon. Fortunately, she’d been onstage, halfway through rehearsal along with the other 105 members of the Philharmonic. By the time they’d finished, Stuart had given up and left. She’d been tempted to dial his cell number then, if only to tell him that the next time he stepped foot in her dressing room—assistant district attorney or not—she was going to have security escort him out. But then Marlena had arrived and her thoughts of Stuart had vanished as her friend practically bounded toward the stage.
At first Abby hadn’t been able to tell if Marlena was heading for the violin or cello section—much less why. A cellist with the Philharmonic, Marlena’s husband, Stephen, had taken Abby under his wing a decade ago when he learned the gangly new violinist had a twin with the same genetic condition as his infant son. But it was Marlena Abby had really bonded with. When Marlena and Stephen had decided to turn the upper floors of their apartment house into a group home for adults with Down’s, Abby had been thrilled. So much so that when her brother had confessed two years ago that he wanted to follow her to New York to study art at a special school, she’d persuaded their dad to let Brian move into the house.
But Brian hadn’t been doing well this past year. He’d taken their father’s heart attack and subsequent death especially hard. It was the main reason Abby had bowed out of a second year with the string quartet tour and come home instead. When Marlena waved to her, she’d assumed something had happed to her brother. Fortunately, other than a cracked tooth, Brian was fine. Marlena had already taken him to the dentist that morning. The reason Marlena had been so animated was the item she’d stumbled across while in the waiting room.
Abby laid the hammer on the coffee table, her gaze drawn to the dog-eared magazine in the center. Like her, Marlena rarely purchased Saucy. Still, she hadn’t been able to resist flipping through a free—though year-old—issue of the Cosmo-wanna-be rag. Marlena had stopped to chuckle over the feature “Snagging a Billionaire Bachelor,” only to learn that, according to Saucy, there were ten such men in the U.S. alone. Number two was none other than Darian Sabura, the very man who’d climbed through Abby’s window three days before!
Of all ten men, Dare was the only one who’d refused to be interviewed. Undaunted, the magazine had made up for the loss with a series of unauthorized photos, rumors and outright conjecture about Dare and his bachelor life. The raciest gossip concerned his parents. According to Saucy, the blood running through Dare’s veins was bluer than Tristan Court’s original residents combined, at least on his mother’s side. As to his father’s—evidently there’d been some speculation as to which man actually held that title. Especially when Dare’s mother, Miranda, retired to her country home at the start of her pregnancy and saw no one until Dare was nearly a year old. As Dare matured, the rumors faded…until a falling-out between Dare and his father added an entirely new set to the mill—and the hint of a deeper, darker scandal, as well.
One that again concerned Dare’s mother.
According to a police report Saucy had obtained from an unnamed homicide detective within the NYPD, Dare’s mother had either fallen or been pushed off a subway platform when Dare was fifteen…or had she simply lost her balance due to the effects of the contents of the silver flask found in her purse?
Neither the detective nor Saucy would say, no doubt for fear of a lawsuit.
Either way, Abby didn’t blame Dare for refusing to comment. Nor could she begrudge him the lifestyle he’d pursued since his mother’s death.
But his father apparently did.
Victor Sabura’s blood might run more toward an earthy red, but his legal brilliance and relentless work ethic had made up for it among most of New York’s wealthy upper crust. To Victor’s disappointment, his son didn’t appear to have inherited that same work ethic. Instead, Darian Sabura—aka Triple Dare, as he’d been dubbed by the extreme sports media—had spent his teens and early twenties honing skills more suited to recreational pursuits. Skiing, scuba, snowboarding, surfing, skydiving, auto racing, motocross, mountain climbing, Dare had mastered them all—in lieu of settling into a job. Any job.
Rumor had it Victor Sabura had washed his hands of his adrenaline-addicted son years before and never looked back. If Abby was smart, she’d follow suit.
Except…she couldn’t.
Saucy’s cameras might have been too far away to catch the shadows she’d seen in Dare’s eyes, but Abby hadn’t been. She could still see those dark emerald pools when she closed her eyes at night. She’d seen similar shadows darken her father’s stare after her mother died when she and Brian were nine. She’d seen them dim her own gaze the year before, the night she’d gone to meet her future mother-in-law,
