Page 87 of Fastest Kill

"No matter what happens tomorrow, I want you to know I'm glad you left that bullet casing," Dario said softly. "The one in Rome with the heart carved into it."

Frederica snorted. "I left it to mess with you."

"I know, and it worked really well. Especially the love heart."

"You can't prove it was a love heart."

"Frederica."

She huffed in annoyance. "Fine. Maybe it was a love heart. I don't know I wanted you to come play with me! I was in a particular mood that night."

He made a sound that lived somewhere between a laugh and a sigh of exasperation. "Of course you were."

"Do you still have it?" The question came out before she decided to ask it. He lifted his head to look at her.

"Hmmm, wouldn't you like to know?"

She pinched his side. "That's not an answer."

"No," he agreed, and he lowered his head back to her chest. "It isn't."

She tugged his hair. "Dario."

"Darling Spartana?"

"Tell me."

"Make sure we survive tomorrow," he said and reached up to kiss her scowl. "Get us through the fight with Agrippa in one piece, and I'll tell you after."

"Dick." She wasn't going to start a fight. She was too tired, and he felt too good lying on her like the world's sexiest weighted blanket.

In a few hours, they would have to get dressed and go and find her mother and bury Agrippa for good.

She would get them through it, no matter what.

"Fine," she huffed.

"Fine," he echoed, sounding entirely too pleased with himself.

37

They flew out of Venice at first light, the lagoon still dark below them and the Adriatic going gold at the horizon.

Dario sat next to Frederica, their knees touching but their game faces on. All the words and softness had stayed in Venice. He had kissed her that morning, long and hard, and they had both shut away everything that wasn't the mission.

The flight to Cologne took just over an hour, and two cars waited for them at the private terminal. By the time the wheels touched down at Cologne Bonn Airport, Rodrigo had already run them through their assignments, and everybody knew their entry point, their target, and extraction window.

Rodrigo's crew would hit the estate's outer security from the north. Kon and Athena had the secondary access point, a section of Roman sewer that ran beneath the city's western ring road and, according to Serapis, connected to the deeper tunnel network below the old Praetorium district.

Silas and Iz would handle communications from the vehicle and coordinate with Tore, who was outside. Altun would go in with her own approach, and nobody asked too many questions because Altun didn't explain herself to people with fewer centuries of experience. Julian went as her backup, and they knew that was all Altun needed.

Altun had pressed necklaces into their hands that morning when they had arrived in Cologne. The pendants hung on leather cords and were made of silver, each carved with tiny sigils and an evil eye at their center. She had pricked their fingers and rubbed their blood on them to activate them.

"These will make you harder to see. Not invisible, not if he is looking for you, but they will cost him attention to find you and distract him," she told them, and everyone had put them on without argument.

The Tears of Theotokos, a small icon of a faceless saint, and three others Dario couldn't name were in Serapis and Kon's keeping. They would act as a distributed ward, hiding their magical signatures and physical presence long enough to reach where they were needed before Agrippa sensed them.

Dario didn't need to understand the mechanics of all the items. He knew better than to try to figure out magic. If they said they worked, he believed them. He only needed to keep the Thriae Bee on his person and get it into the chamber to say the phrase Serapis had drilled him on.