Kiss Me While I sleep Read Online Free

moved quickly. He dispatched three men to take M. Durand from the restaurant and bring him to the house, while he himself, with Tadeo driving, took Lamberto and Cesare to find Denise Morel. She was the last person his father had been with before falling ill, and poison was a woman’s weapon, indirect and indefinite, depending on guesswork and happenstance. In this case, though, the weapon had been effective.
    But if his father had died at her hand, she had then poisoned herself, too, instead of fleeing the country. He hadn’t truly expected her to be at her flat, since Salvatore had said she was going to Toulouse to visit her ailing mother; Rodrigo had taken that as a handy excuse. It seemed he’d been wrong-or at least the possibility of error was strong enough that he hadn’t shot the woman on sight
    He slid out of the car and hooked his hands under her arms, then dragged her out behind him. Tadeo helped support her until Rodrigo could slide his arm under her knees and lift her against his chest. She was of normal height, about five and a half feet, but on the lanky side; even though she was dead weight, he handled her easily as he carried her inside.
    “Is Dr. Giordano still here?” he asked, and received an affirmative reply. “Tell him I need him, please.” He took her upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms. She would be better off in a hospital, but Rodrigo wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. Officials could be so annoyingly official. And if she died, then she died; he had made all the effort he was willing to make. It wasn’t as if Vincenzo Giordano wasn’t a real medical doctor, even if he no longer had a practice and instead spent all his time in the lab on the outskirts of Paris that Salvatore had funded-though, perhaps if Salvatore had called for help earlier and asked to be taken to a hospital, he would still be alive. Still, Rodrigo hadn’t questioned his father’s decision to have Dr. Giordano brought in, had even understood it. Discretion was everything, when vulnerability was involved.
    He laid Denise on the bed and stood looking down at her, wondering why his father had been so besotted with her. Not that Salvatore hadn’t always had an eye for the ladies, but this one was nothing out of the ordinary. Today she looked awful, her hair lank and uncombed, her color as terrible as if she were already dead, but even at her best she wasn’t beautiful. Her face was a bit too thin, too austere, and she had a slight overbite. The overbite, however, made her upper lip look fuller than the lower one, and that alone gave her features a piquancy she would otherwise have lacked.
    Paris was full of women who were better looking and had a better sense of style than Denise Morel, but Salvatore had wanted this one, to the point that he’d been too impatient to completely investigate her background before approaching her. To his astonishment, she’d refused his first two invitations, and Salvatore’s impatience had turned into obsession. Had his preoccupation with her caused him to relax his guard? Was this woman indirectly responsible for his death?
    So great was Rodrigo’s pain and rage that he might have strangled her just because of the possibility, but beneath those feelings was the cool voice that said she might be able to tell him something that would lead him to the poisoner.
    He would have to find out who had done this, and eliminate him-or her. The Nervi organization could not let this go without retaliation, or his reputation would suffer. Since he was just now stepping into Salvatore’s shoes, he couldn’t afford the least doubt about his ability, or his resolve. He had to find his enemy. Unfortunately, the possibilities were endless. When one dealt in death and money, all the world was involved. Because Denise had also been poisoned, he even had to consider whether the perpetrator could be a jealous ex-lover of his father’s-or one of Denise’s old lovers.
    Dr. Vincenzo Giordano tapped