"See, you're a closet romantic," Casey teased.

Tessa chuckled in that throaty tone of hers and smiled endearingly at Casey.

"Being a hopeless romantic is something I just don't have the time for, little one."

Casey stared at Tessa for a few long seconds, as if she were trying very hard to remember something. Meanwhile, Tessa's smile froze on her face as she grasped the words she just uttered.

"What?" Tessa asked, stalling for time.

"Uh, nothing...nothing," Casey said, shaking her head. "I just had the strangest sense of deja vu, like...I don't know, like I'd heard you call me that before. Weird, huh?"

"Yeah," Tessa agreed.

*Tessa was more than a little confused. She cursed herself for her mental lapse in using the pet name in the first place. Then she wondered why Casey still didn't remember that Easter twenty years ago.

Chapter 4.

Tessa leaned back in the thickly cushioned leather chair in her office. Her eyes remained closed, even as Alex and Stefano ushered two college-aged men into the s.p.a.cious room. The melodious strains of Art Tatum's piano filtered through the stereo speakers, and Tessa held up a hand, requesting silence when Alex cleared his throat nervously.

Tessa had been reliving the moments she spent with Casey the night before, not wanting to lose the feeling of contentment that flowed across her like the music that filled the room. It was almost as if she were asking forgiveness from Casey for the woman she would have to become. It caused an ache in her chest, being so close to atonement, yet so far. When she sat with Casey, it was easy to think of a future that contained neither violence nor pain. Yet, here in her office, with the smell of her victims' fear hanging in the air along with the last few notes of song, she felt that familiar feeling of power clutch at her belly.

It wasn't merely darkness; it was a feeling that coursed through her, just as blood flowed through her veins. It was the thrill of the chase and the rush of victory mixed together. She breathed deeply and let the beast loose a little at a time until her demeanor barely resembled the woman Casey knew.

Pushing away from her desk, she rose and stood silently, searching their eyes, these men who were more boys than anything else. Her penetrating stare and deeply etched scowl caused them to *look away from her harsh gaze. When Tessa spoke, her awareness of that other side of herself, the one who could still love, feel, and want, was gone, replaced by this woman. The one who raised her lip in a sneer and asked, "Which one of you is Mikolo?"

"I am," the young man with the new beard said quickly.

Tessa walked around the desk to stand before the man who spoke. She moved with a subtle power and a grace that belied her true intent. The non-threatening way she moved put the men at ease. With lightning speed, so fast it was almost a blur, she lashed out with her right arm and backhanded the man across the face. "That is the last time you will be allowed to lie to me," she hissed.

"Please don't hurt him. I'm George Mikolo," the man on Tessa's right admitted.

He looked like an Athens University student, clean-shaven with wire-rim gla.s.ses. Tessa wondered where a boy like this got the arkhedhias to shoot at her and the woman under her protection.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she got.

"I want to know why," she said through clenched teeth.

She held up a hand as Mikolo opened his mouth, silencing him before he said a word. She reached across her desk for something, and when the object in her hand came into view, she nodded to Alex and Stefano.

The two large men grabbed Mikolo and held him down in the chair, his friend too terrified to move. Tessa went to the immobilized man and unfolded the ivory-handled straight razor in her hand. She lifted her leg and pressed the weight down onto the tops of his thighs, then she slowly unbuckled the belt at his waist.

All the while, her cold gaze watched his face.

Mikolo's friend, Yannis, whimpered in his chair and mumbled a string of Hail Marys under his breath. Mikolo's breath was coming in audible pants that resounded throughout the room.

Tessa chuckled, but it was an entirely unpleasant sound.

"I think you know she's not going to help you, don't you?"

she asked rhetorically as she stared down at the man under her, referring to Yannis's prayers.

"I can be a very forgiving woman, most people don't know *that about me. You see, I'm going to give you three chances." She fixed an almost reverent gaze on the blade in her hand, tilting it so the light gleamed brightly when it hit the metal, then she looked down at Mikolo's crotch.

"For every lie you tell me, you'll become one member short of a threesome. If you lie to me more than three times, I'll leave you to bleed to death on my nice Persian carpet and not think twice about it. Katalavaynes?"

Sweat rolled off his brow and into his eyes, and he blinked to wash away the burning sensation, nodding fiercely.

Tessa brought the razor up to her own eyes and ran her thumb lightly along its edge. She never even looked at Mikolo when she asked her first question.

"Who fired the shots?"

"I did," he said truthfully.

This surprised Tessa. She didn't think this scrawny boy had the stomach for it. She half expected him to p.i.s.s his pants in fright.

Usually, the first thing the guilty did was to beg for forgiveness, groveling and crying for mercy. She'd seen grown men in this same position who acted much worse than this one.

"Who was the target?"

"Meridio's d-daughter." His voice cracked in response.

"Now you may tell me why," she said slowly, grinding her teeth in an attempt at control.

His response came out in a torrent of Greek and bits of English.

"We didn't mean to hurt her. We only wanted to scare her! I swear on the Virgin, it's the truth. I thought she was here to take over her father's business, and I talked some friends into helping me. We thought if we scared her, she would go back to America. I was only supposed to break the gla.s.s in the car she was standing by, but...I'm such a poor shot...I-I never shot a pistol before."

Tears streamed down his face by this point.

Tessa wavered, fiddling with the razor anxiously held in her right hand. Mikolo's words were so pathetic they had to be the truth. She stared hard into his eyes and saw the verity of it. Easing the weight of her leg off Mikolo, she waved Alex and Stefano to let go. She folded the razor back into its handle and tossed *it absently onto the desk. Walking behind the large olive wood structure, she bent to a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of ouzo and three gla.s.ses.

She poured a generous helping of the liquor into all three gla.s.ses. She was only going to pour two at first, but the throbbing pain in her arm returned and a metallic taste on her tongue that she knew was adrenaline had her pouring the liquid in a gla.s.s of her own. She handed the young men each a drink and leaned upon her desk, sipping the clear liquid.

"You know, we have a decision to make now," Tessa began.

"We could leave Greece. No one would have to know," Yannis pleaded.

Tessa kept her gaze on Mikolo and raised an eyebrow. "I think you know better than that, don't you?"

Mikolo swallowed and looked down.

"I cannot only be forgiving, but I can also be merciful. You see, I can't just let you both walk out of here. What kind of a message would that send to the foolish boys who might do me and mine harm the next time? No." Tessa swallowed the rest of her drink and moved around the desk to seat herself. "Someone must pay for the crime, and someone must go back and tell the others what a compa.s.sionate woman the Meridio Kare can be." Tessa smiled at the irony in her words. "I leave it to you two to decide who stays...and who goes."

Tessa leaned back. This was the part where she usually learned the most about men and human nature. For all their machismo and bravado, Greek men-no, men in general-turned out to be a pathetically weak bunch. She watched as housewives walked to their deaths, wanting nothing more than to spit in Tessa's face one last time. She also watched grown men grovel and offer up their daughters in exchange for their own lives.

"I'll stay," Mikolo said quietly.

Tessa watched as Yannis warred within himself. He wanted to be brave; she could see that. He wanted to offer himself up, but his terror got the better of him. Instead, he hung his head, his silence saying more than his words could. She knew Mikolo was frightened, probably not at his own death, but by the methods *that would bring it about. He held himself together, and Tessa felt that if the time had been different, he would have made a good student of hers. He seemed as if he held the potential to be as cold and ruthless as the position of the Meridio's Kare demanded. She shook her head mentally. It was not to be, for today would be the last day this young man would be seen as George Mikolo.

With a nod, she watched as Stefano hustled Yannis from the room; he refused to look his friend in the eye as he pa.s.sed.

Alex looked at Tessa and motioned a questioning eye at Mikolo, still seated in the chair. Tessa rose and pulled a compact 9mm Glock 26 and its holster from her desk, tucking it into her waistband at the small of her back.

"No, Alex, I won't need any help. This one I'll do by myself,"

she said with a chilling tone of finality as she put on her black suit jacket. She moved to walk away from her desk, and seemingly as an afterthought, she picked up the straight razor, sliding it into her pants pocket.

Mikolo's knees shook, and they had all the strength of a newborn calf as he walked along the office halls with Tessa.

There was never a question in his mind about running. It seemed, standing next to the powerful woman in the elevator, that there was nowhere in the world for him to hide from Tessa's all-seeing gaze, so he obediently followed along.

Tessa stood outside in the early morning sun waiting for the valet to bring her car around to the front. She knew Mikolo stared at her, but she couldn't look at him, her anger was too great. She practiced a few control techniques to push the beast back down for a while. If she looked over at the man who had very nearly taken Casey's life, she would gut him right on the street.

Once they were settled in her silver Mercedes, Tessa gunned the vehicle down the road to the docks. She only had to wait a few minutes until the car ferry that would take them to Athens pulled into port. Mikolo watched Tessa and hoped that she had one shred of human compa.s.sion left in her and that she would send him to the Virgin swiftly. The possibilities of what she could and probably would do to him filled his mind until his hands shook constantly.

*The French doors were ajar, and even in her sleep, Casey smiled as the warm, late morning breeze blew across her skin. Her mind was a million miles away, reliving a different time, her eyes moving rapidly under her closed lids. Casey awoke, breathing deeply at the suddenness of her return to reality.

She ran a hand through her short locks, her brow furrowed in concentration. She hadn't experienced that childhood dream in years, but what would prompt it now? She could never remember what she dreamt upon waking, but she remembered the feeling. It started out as undiminished happiness and contentment and ended as if her life were suddenly incomplete, as if something had been torn away from her.

Why in the world would I be dreaming like this again? Geez, eighteen months of therapy...you would have thought I'd be cured by now, wouldn't you?

Casey rose and stood in front of the doors that looked out onto Tourlos Bay, wondering, as she had numerous times in her life, how she could attain that feeling of completeness once again.

Andreas Meridio sat at the large wooden desk in his office and hung up the telephone as Tessa walked into the room. Tessa didn't say a word; she walked up to where Meridio was seated and tossed a paper sack on the desk.

"What's this?" he asked in confusion.

"You said you wanted them in a sack on your desk," Tessa said ominously.

The man carefully opened the sack and inside lay a plastic bag containing a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s of something. As much as he had seen in his day, the vision of this still made him exhale in a small groan under his breath. Tessa smiled to herself. All men reacted this way at the sight.

Meridio closed the paper sack. "Did he admit it?"

"They all do in the end."

"Did you keep him alive?" Meridio asked.

"Yes, Mr. Meridio."

"Good. I want him and any of the others to know who they're *f.u.c.king with. I want him to remember the day he tried to hurt a member of the Meridio family."

"Trust me when I say that George Mikolo will remember this day for the rest of his life."

"A good morning's work . Come, join Ca.s.sandra and me for lunch," Meridio said, rising from the desk.

He walked to the door, then turned abruptly.

"Oh, Tessa. Dispose of that." He pointed to the sack on his desk before leaving.

Casey sat on the outside patio, sipping a frappe, waiting for her father to join her for lunch when Olympia set another place at the table.

"Do we have company, Olympia?"

"Oh, no, miss. Tessa will be joining you and your father."

"Oh." Casey brightened a little.

Olympia tried to disguise her reaction. Meridio's daughter would not be the first woman to fall for the enigmatic Kare, but Tessa best be aware that it could be a deadly affair should Casey's father discover them together.

"Can I help you, Olympia?" Casey asked, already knowing what her answer would be.

"No, miss, you just relax. These bones aren't that old yet,"

Olympia said with a smile.

Olympia made three trips back to the table before she was finished placing platters of food on the table. Casey had forgotten about the three-hour-siesta rule to lunch in Greece and how enormous the midday meal was.

"Kalimera, " Tessa said to Casey as she approached the table.

"Good morning yourself," Casey said. "Pappa," Casey acknowledged her father as he placed a light kiss on her cheek.

Tessa sat and commanded her body not to react with Meridio so near. Ca.s.sandra sat across from Tessa in a pale pink sleeveless top and a white skirt. Casey's tanned muscular legs were tucked under her as Tessa quickly realized was Casey's favorite repose.

Tessa accepted a gla.s.s of iced tea from Olympia and allowed Casey, as the lady of the house, to fill her plate from the larger platters.

*Tessa was impressed that Casey chose some of her favorites. Of course, all the fare was exceptional, and it helped that Olympia had been an excellent chef in her younger days. Tessa sprinkled pepper over the Meltizanes imam baildi, small eggplants filled with a ragout of onions, tomatoes, and herbs, smiling to herself as she realized that the dolmades, parcels of grape leaves tightly stuffed with currants, pine nuts, and rice, were Casey's weakness.

Of course, no Greek lunch would be complete without bread, cheese, and fresh fruit.

"What will you do today, Mahtia Mou? " Meridio asked.

"I was thinking of going into town, unless you don't think it's safe," Casey said.

Meridio looked at Tessa for the answer. He valued her opinion, and this was her area of expertise, after all.

"I think it would be a good idea," Tessa said. "It would be good for people to see you out after yesterday's incident, show them you're not afraid."

"But I have to admit I am afraid, at least a little." Casey smiled weakly .

"Only little children and the simple-minded live without fear, Ms. Meridio," Tessa said.