“I have uses for them,” Sebastian explained.
Of the three brothers, Egan was the youngest and most interested in pleasing others. Sebastian considered it a weakness, but, then, Egan had been only fourteen when their father passed. He’d not learned firsthand how to be hard.
“I’ll make sure to give you an inventory,” Egan said, and left by the main hall.
With the two of them gone, the sound of high-heeled boots clicking against the marble floor turned Sebastian around. Coming down the hall toward him was the lithe form of the youngest member of the family.
Calista was fifteen years his junior and as different from the brothers as night and day. Unlike them, she dressed as a commoner. Though with only half as much style, he thought. Today she wore black from head to toe, including a cowboy hat, which she took off and placed on the head of a priceless statue.
Her short hair wa
s dyed the color of coal. Her nails were painted darkly, and she’d done her eyes with enough mascara that she resembled a raccoon.
“Hello, Calista,” he said. “Where have you been?” “Out riding,” she said.
“And dressed for a funeral, I see.”
She put an arm around him provocatively and reached up to set askew his perfectly centered tie. “Is that what’s on the agenda today?”
He glared at her until she stepped back.
Restraightening his tie, he spoke bluntly. “It will be if Acosta does not return what he’s taken from us.”
She perked up at that. “Is Rene coming here?”
“Your personal interest in him bothers me,” Sebastian scolded her. “He’s beneath you.”
“Sometimes a cat plays with a mouse,” she replied. “Sometimes she kills it. What concern is that of yours?”
Calista was a lost child. She didn’t bond well with people. Not that she avoided human relationships; on the contrary, she was always entering into or leaving one. But from their father on down, all her relationships were a mix of love and hate, anger constantly set off by a crushing devotion for all the things she could never have.
And once she possessed them, it changed. Sudden and cruel indifference was the usual response, or even a desire to cause pain and torment to that which she now controlled. How perfect, he mused, to have a beautiful little sociopath for a sister. It made her useful.
“Rene’s disobedience is my concern,” he told her. “He’s betrayed us.”
She seemed ready to defend her ex-lover. “He took the woman to Iran as you asked,” she said. “She’s done what we needed her to do. The Trojan horse is in place. The trapdoor link is active. I’ve checked it myself.”
Brèvard smiled. Calista had her charms, one of which was her ability with computers and systems. At least they had that in common, for Sebastian was an accomplished programmer in his own right. But she couldn’t see the big picture like he did.
“The Iranians are just one part of the plan,” he reminded her. “Giving them access does us no good unless she is back here and in our possession at the appropriate time. Unless the world fears what we can do, they will not react as we need them to.”
She stared at him and shrugged, hopping up on a five- hundred-year-old credenza and swinging her legs back and forth as if it were a sideboard from a secondhand store. “That piece once graced Napoleon’s summer retreat,” Sebastian chided her.
She glanced at the antique wood with its perfectly curved lines and ornate finish. “I’m sure he doesn’t need it anymore.”
Sebastian felt his anger building but held back.
“We shouldn’t have given her to Rene,” she added, suddenly becoming the cold, dark version of herself again. “We should have made a deal with the Iranians ourselves.”
Brèvard shook his head. “Rene is the front. His presence insulates and protects us. We set him up in business for that very reason. We need to keep that in place. But he needs to be reined in.”
“Then we have to find a way to motivate him,” she added. “I suggest violence. Plenty of it.”
“Really?” he said. “Why am I not surprised?”
“It’s all he understands.”
“We are not blunt instruments like Rene,” he insisted. “We must succeed with style and grace. More to the point, we are artists. When we take what we’re after—”