Chapter Text
The car door swung open and a wall of light hit him.
The villa rose above Lake Como as though it was carved from the hillside itself, its terraces and balustrades cut from golden stone that glowed beneath the night sky. Below, the water lay dark and still, reflecting pinpricks of light from lanterns strung across the terraces. Music could be heard drifting through the open doors. The air was heavy with the scent of wisteria, and beneath it, deep water and wet stone.
Alex adjusted his cufflinks. The tuxedo fit him well. Rather too well, Smithers had said, with a look that mixed pride and concern, as if he still hadn’t adjusted to Alex being legally allowed to drink. Judging by the glances Alex was drawing, he might have had a point.
He climbed the marble steps past guests in couture dresses and tailored silk, catching fragments of conversation in Italian, French and English. Somewhere inside, Marina Valenti was waiting: pharmaceutical heiress, impossibly glamorous, and with a well-documented penchant for handsome young men. She was also heir to a set of patents that half the governments in Europe were openly interested in. The other half were just hadn’t admitted it yet. The science was well beyond Alex’s chemistry GCSE, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that nobody knew what Marina intended to do with her holdings.
He handed his invitation to the guard stationed at the door and was scanned through without a second glance. Inside, the entrance hall opened into a vast circular room that looked as though it had been designed by Michelangelo. Marble pillars soared toward a domed ceiling painted with a constellation of stars. A string quartet played Bach while the guests admired the frescos and each other. Everywhere Alex looked, something sparkled: diamonds, sequins, cufflinks, teeth.
He took a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. The target was easy to identify. Marina Valenti stood near the centre of the room, radiant in a gold gown, her hair glittering like sunlight. She was older than her Instagram suggested and younger than the tabloids implied. Men orbited her, many of them blond, all of them good-looking.
Glass in hand, he circled the room, noting the position of the exits, the location of security, the paths taken by the waiters. He was waiting for a lull in conversation, a pause when someone stepped back and he could move in and take his place in the inner circle. He was still deciding on the wording of his opening line, when a prickle at the back of his neck told him someone was watching.
He turned his head and his stomach dropped. Yassen Gregorovich was standing motionless near the edge of the room, one shoulder resting against a column. Pale hair, pale eyes, black shirt open at the throat. He held a tumbler in one hand and was watching events with detached interest, as though he had been there for some time and the party had sprung up around him. His gaze found Alex and he lifted the tumbler in acknowledgement.
Yes. I see you.
Great, Alex thought. Just perfect.
He raised his champagne flute to his lips, keeping his expression neutral. “Gregorovich is here,” he said quietly into his cufflink. “Can anyone tell me why?”
The answering silence told him everything he needed to know. He could hear rapid typing.
“We see him now,” Mrs Jones said.
“This wasn’t in the briefing.”
“He wasn’t on the guest list,” Crawley said. “No invitation under any of his known aliases. We’re cross-checking our records.” More typing followed his words.
Alex let his eyes sweep the room, as though admiring the architecture. Marina Valenti stood a few metres away, her laughter ringing out musically. The man beside her leaned in closer and whispered in her ear. He was tall, sandy-haired and wearing a cream jacket which rendered him immediately conspicuous in the sea of dark evening wear.
“Is this a hit?”
“Unlikely,” Mrs Jones said. “High-visibility environment, multiple witnesses. It’s not his usual MO.”
Yassen was still by the column. She was right. If Valenti was a target, Alex wouldn’t be watching him nurse a drink at a party. He wouldn’t be watching him at all. “What then?”
A brief silence. He could picture a team of intelligence analysts scrambling to summarise and rank the options.
“Four possibilities,” Crawley said. “First, he’s here to cultivate Valenti. We know we’re not the only group interested in the patents.”
“I’m not sure she’s his type.”
Nobody argued.
“Option two. His focus is someone else in the room.”
That hardly narrowed things down. Marina Valenti might be the host, but the party was full of people who mattered - Alex could count five without turning his head. Financiers, politicians, industrialists whose names never made the headlines. Yassen had never been interested in small stakes.
“Option three,” Crawley continued. “He’s selling something. Information, access, his own services.”
“And four?”
“Option four,” Mrs Jones said, “is that we don’t know.” She sounded resigned. “Gregorovich doesn’t attend parties by accident, but we can’t always predict what he’ll do.”
Alex took a sip of champagne. That, too, was consistent with his experience. Yassen was the deadliest man he had ever met, but also the reason he was still alive. He worked for the most dangerous men in the world and, occasionally, on a whim, he would kill them. It was hardly a conventional career path, though Alex was in no position to judge.
“Shall I disengage?” he asked, trying not to sound too eager.
“No,” she said at once. “Your cover is sound. Proceed as briefed. We’ll update if our assessment changes.”
“Understood.”
The connection cut. He lowered his glass, his eyes returning instinctively to the column. It was empty. Yassen had vanished.
Alex swore under his breath and spun on his heel, almost colliding with someone in the process. Yassen had materialised at his elbow as though he had always been there. He was the only man in the room not wearing a tie and he made everyone else look overdressed.
“Alex,” he said. “How unexpected.”
He smiled for the benefit of any onlookers. “Funny. I was just thinking the same thing. I haven’t seen you since the Bahamas.”
“Ah, Nassau.” Yassen took a sip from his glass. It contained a clear liquid over ice, no garnish. “You left in a hurry, I recall.”
“Your timing was unfortunate,” he allowed.
“My timing was impeccable,” Yassen corrected gently. His eyes met Alex’s, cool and amused.
He kept his smile in place. They’d known each other for nearly a third of Alex’s life, but Yassen could still knock him off balance with a few words. “What are you doing here?”
“Business. The same as you.”
“You don’t know why I’m here.”
“You’re wearing a tuxedo,” Yassen said, glancing up at him, “at a party full of oligarchs, politicians and trust-fund royalty. I can make an educated guess.”
“Which is?”
“Seduction.”
The word was spoken quietly, without inflection, but Alex winced nonetheless. MI6 never used that term. In briefings it was asset development, or access acquisition if they were feeling unusually honest.
“Relax,” Yassen continued, with a wave of his hand. “They all do it. It’s the oldest game in the book. Governments, corporations, syndicates. When brute force is inconvenient, they send in someone attractive and hope chemistry does the rest.” His eyelashes lowered reflectively. “Even I was assigned to it, once or twice in my youth.”
“Really?” Alex said before he could stop himself. “What happened?” Had Yassen been convincing, he wondered. Had anyone ever looked at that pale face across a candlelit table and understood, too late, what lay beneath?
“It didn’t play to my strengths.” A shrug. “I’m a fighter, not a lover.”
He gave a reluctant snort of laughter. That was one way of putting it.
Yassen glanced toward Marina, who was laughing as her companion whispered in her ear. The chandelier light caught in her hair as she tipped back her head, entirely at ease with being the centre of attention.
“In any case, it was the obvious inference. Ms Valenti has wealth, influence and a well-documented taste for handsome blond men.” A thoughtful pause. “Perhaps I should go say hello.”
“Aren’t you a little old for her tastes?”
“I’m only thirty, Alex.”
“If you're thirty, I’m eleven,” he pointed out.
A gleam of amusement entered Yassen’s eyes. “Well perhaps. But some people value youth. Others, experience.”
He decided not to touch that one. He couldn’t see it ending well.
Across the room, Marina noticed them. She said something brief to the man beside her and crossed the floor, a smile already forming on her face. She arrived in a cloud of wisteria perfume. The emeralds at her throat matched her eyes. She was, Alex thought, a great deal more everything than her photographs suggested.
One manicured hand settled on Yassen’s arm as though it belonged there. “Yassen,” she said, in a voice as warm as her smile.
“Marina,” Yassen said politely, switching to Italian. “You look lovely. As ever.”
“I’m so glad you came,” she said, kissing his cheek. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I gave my word.”
“You did.” She turned the full force of her smile onto Alex. It was like stepping into sunshine, radiant if a little blinding. “And this is?” she asked in English.
“Alex,” Yassen said. “A...friend.”
“We met abroad,” Alex supplied, stepping into the gap. It wasn’t the opening line he had planned, but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances.
“Mm,” Yassen murmured, as though abroad carried with it a number of private footnotes.
Marina’s curiosity sharpened but before she could ask more, a couple beckoned to her from the entrance. She excused herself with a promise to return, leaving behind the lingering scent of wisteria.
“You know each other,” Alex said, as soon as she was out of earshot.
Yassen watched her cross the floor, his expression unreadable. “I did some work for her father. Years ago.”
“What kind of work?”
“The kind people prefer not to remember once it’s done.”
Alex let it rest. It was answer enough.
Yassen’s gaze returned to him, faintly speculative. “So,” he said. “That was Marina. Are you man enough for her, do you think?”
“Absolutely,” Alex said, without missing a beat. Privately, he gave himself even odds. He suspected Ms Valenti could eat him for breakfast. He wasn’t sure if he’d enjoy it or not.
Yassen’s slow nod said he found this answer interesting rather than convincing. “Then I should let you get on. Your entrance was good. Don’t let me spoil it.”
Before Alex could answer, he had stepped away, dissolving into the crowd - another dark suit among many.
“That was efficient,” Crawley said in his ear. “He made you in under forty seconds.”
“Yep,” Alex muttered. His eyes found Marina as she accepted a glass of wine, her attention absorbed by the woman in silver at her side. “What can you tell me about Valenti Senior?”
“Giovanni Valenti built the company from nothing,” Mrs Jones said. “Aggressive acquisitions, questionable ethics, but he kept his hands clean. He died three months ago. Heart attack. No signs of foul play.”
“Any links to Gregorovich?”
“None we can find,” Crawley said. But-” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to. They all knew that meant nothing when Yassen was involved.
“Like father, like daughter, do we think?”
“Possibly,” Mrs Jones said. “Don’t underestimate her, Alex. None of the Valentis are fools.”
“Understood.”
A small gap had opened up by Marina. It wouldn’t last long. He straightened his shoulders, adjusted his expression, and moved in.
She noticed him before he reached her, angling her body to include him without breaking the flow of conversation. “This is Alex,” she said to the group in English. “Yassen’s friend.”
He hesitated. His cover was as an associate at a Geneva-based investment firm, but in this company being Yassen’s friend might open more doors than a business card. Whether those were doors he wanted opened was another question entirely.
“That’s right,” he said with a smile.
As the conversation continued around them, she looked him up and down. Whatever her criteria, he passed muster. “How are you finding the party, Alex?”
“It’s my first time in Como,” Alex said in Italian. He let his eyes drop briefly to the emeralds at her throat - they were very good emeralds, and the cleavage beneath them was also, he registered with slight discomfort, very good - then back to her face. “I’m still trying to work out whether the surroundings or the company are more impressive.”
She laughed and gestured for him to walk with her. The conversation that followed stayed general: travel, politics, the relative merits of northern Italian cooking. She gave away just enough to seem candid, and nothing that she hadn’t decided to give. By the time the dinner gong sounded, Alex had learned all about her favourite restaurant in Milan, which arrondissements she preferred in Paris, and her opinions on Brexit, and precisely nothing about anything else. What she had learned about him, he couldn’t say.
The string quartet broke off and conversations paused, to be replaced by the collective shuffling of a group of people preparing to relocate.
Marina slowed near the tall doors leading deeper into the villa. She studied Alex for a second. A brief nod passed between her and the woman in silver standing nearby.
“You should join our table,” Marina said. “I think you’ll be more interesting than most of the men I’ve invited.”
He held her gaze for a moment. “I’ll try not to disappoint.”
Before she could answer, the man in the cream jacket appeared at her side and offered his arm. She took it without hesitation and let him lead her toward the head of the line.
As the guests moved forward, Alex let his fingers brush his cufflink.
“Smoothly done,” Mrs Jones said.
Her tone was dry but he thought he detected an undercurrent of relief to her words.
“The woman in silver?” he asked.
“Marina’s cousin,” Crawley replied. “Elena Valenti. She handles the company’s commercial interests. Financially astute. Loyal.”
“And the man in the cream jacket?”
“We don’t have anything on him yet. We’re looking.”
“Competition?”
“Could be. Gregorovich has been keeping close tabs on him.”
Alex spotted Yassen ahead, already passing through the doors. As he started after him, Elena Valenti fell into step by his side. Her hair was dark and her eyes a clear grey, nothing like her cousin.
“It’s interesting,” she said in Italian.
“What is?” he said, with what he hoped was a winning smile.
She didn’t smile back. “I didn’t know Yassen had friends.”
“It’s a long story.” Longer, he hoped, than she had time for.
He was saved from having to elaborate by the maître d’ approaching with a question about the seating arrangements.
“Excuse me,” she said, stepping aside.
Alex joined the line of guests and followed them into the dining room.