Page 24 of A Dangerous Bargain

“Queuing outside the door!” Leonardo elbows me, smiling brightly. “See, we’re not late after all. You didn’t have to sigh so much.”

The queue snakes from the palazzo’s main entrance into the piazza. I join the end of it, unease humming beneath my skin.

I tap the apprentice ahead of us. “Excuse me, do you know what’s going on?”

He turns, and I immediately wish I’d asked someone else.

It’s Bartolomeo Rucellai, one of Botticelli’s apprentices and the only other apprentice who hails from a wealthy family like I do. He sizes me up with a smirk. “Niccolo Pitti. I was sorry to miss you at the Strozzi wedding.”

“It’s Virgil.”

Bartolomeo dips his head. “Sorry, I forgot about your affectation,” he says sweetly, not sounding sorry at all.

I count to three and allow myself to have a very brief, vivid fantasy of watching his face crumple when my and Leonardo’s wedding portrait wins over his. I give myself another two—to factor in the tears pouring from his eyes—but that’s it! A boy shouldn’t indulge too much.

And I’ve indulged far too much of Bartolomeo Rucellai in the past.

I made the mistake of kissing him when I was thirteen. An eager curiosity was growing inside me, and I wondered if kissing a boy would feel different from the girls who pressed their shy lips to mine in the garden’s shadowy corners. Sodding Bartolomeo seemed into it during our sweaty, nervous moment, but then he soured on me and told his father, who told my father, and well, we all know what happened then.

Niccolo Pitti’s enraged shouts filled Casa delle Volpi. If we open a rarely used cupboard, I’m sure one final, ghostly no son of mine! will wail out of it. He beat me so hard, Niccolo had to help me use the chamber pot afterward.

It’s when I learned our father would never, ever accept the parts of me he didn’t like. When I learned that keeping secrets would keep me safe.

“Yes, such a shame to miss it.” I’d rather let Verrocchio’s cats eat me one finger at a time than willingly mingle with the people from my family’s world, especially Bartolomeo. “What can you tell us about the queue?”

“They’re searching everyone for some reason. Medici guards are just inside the doors.”

Every feeling abandons me except gray dread.

The key I walked off with yesterday winks on the floor beside my bed.

Another apprentice steps through the palazzo’s door. He’s swallowed by darkness at once.

Lorenzo de’ Medici and his guards won’t find the key on me. But if they see me, they’ll find something far more damning: the memory of my face and the stumbling, clumsy lies I told yesterday.

They’re not looking for something; they’re looking for someone.

Me.

I take one step back. Then another.

“You know? I just realized we forgot charcoal,” I say.

Leonardo frowns. “You made us go through everything twice before we left.”

“Verrocchio… asked me for a favor.”

He shrugs and turns away. “Better go deal with your problem, then.”

He knows I lied to him yesterday and hasn’t forgotten. Fine, that’s fair. I wasn’t that nice to him. Except he’s made himself memorable to the guards and Lorenzo, too. If they see him, they’ll remember that I was with him. I won’t let him take the fall for my mistake.

I link my arm through his and tug. “Verrocchio said he needed you, too.”

Leonardo doesn’t budge. For such a tall, slender person, he’s shockingly solid. “Is this some sort of prank? First, you howl all morning to hurry up and get here, and now you want to leave?”

Bartolomeo Rucellai bursts out laughing. “Cristo, you two bicker like old women!”

I flinch, and Leonardo’s nostrils flare. “Actually, elderly women deserve a lot more respect—”