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      Chapter One

      Renata forced the cutting edge of her blade against the war criminal’s cheek, just below his eye. The man didn’t tremble with fear the way she wished he would—not the way she still trembled when she remembered the explosion. Neither did his cruel mouth quiver the way hers did when she remembered being engulfed in flames. No, the war criminal’s expression didn’t change.

      Even though she held his fate in her hands, he wasn’t afraid of her. He was cold, stony and remote—even as she brought her hammer down and drove the sharp chisel into his face, for he was made of marble and knew this was as close as the sculptress would ever dare to come.

      In the quiet of her studio, Renata slowly came back to herself. She realized that it was dark; she had been carving with nothing to guide her fingers but moonlight and her own depthless rage. And now her dust-covered hands were shaking. Her mind reeled with memories of the war that had killed her father and little brother. Her throat swelled with grief like it had when her mother was abducted by an enemy soldier. Tears burned beneath Renata’s lashes and she knew she had to stop working, if only for a moment. She wiped her eyes with the back of an aching forearm, smearing her cheeks with grit and reminding herself that the war was long over.

      It was one of those notoriously hot summer nights in New York City, and Renata’s unruly tresses were already coiled with perspiration, wet against her neck. Her cotton tank top clung damply to the small of her slender back, perspiration tickling the scars along her spine. It was sweltering.

      Renata considered turning on the air conditioner, but she hoped the heat might bring her pet snake from its hiding place. The snake could be anywhere amidst the boxes, stone chips and art magazines that littered Renata’s studio, and she sighed knowing that her foster family would scold her for letting Scylla escape her cage and slither off. Then again, they had never liked her pet snake. True, Scylla wasn’t cuddly like a cat or a dog, but Renata knew that just because a snake—or a person—didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve didn’t mean she didn’t have one.

      It was already midnight though; Renata had no time to search for runaway serpents. She had to put her obsessive final touches on The War Criminal in time for the art exhibit tomorrow.

      Steeling her courage, Renata took a deep breath and lifted her tools to work again, but as she did so, she heard rustling in the draperies over her window. “Is that where you’ve been hiding, Scylla?” she asked, and before she could turn around, she felt a cool breeze lift the downy hairs at the nape of her neck.

      Was she imagining she heard someone lifting the sash? Had the emotion that always gripped her while working on this sculpture finally driven her mad? Even over the thumping of her heart, she heard a small tearing sound, like fabric being snagged on a latch. Someone was breaking in!

      Renata’s mind reeled with disbelief and fear. She was alone; she had deliberately rented a studio off the beaten path. It had seemed like a good idea because she prized her solitude, but now she wondered if anyone would even hear her if she called for help.

      In the stillness of her studio, Renata gripped her wooden mallet in one hand and the chisel in the other, her knuckles going white. Her instinct was to not make any sudden movements, so she turned slowly, and she glimpsed a dark figure shadowed under the sweep of the drapes. A large lumbering man was silhouetted against the moonlight. Renata forgot to breathe. She saw a gun in his hand. Her heart forgot to beat. She was too afraid even to scream.

      The last time someone had pointed a gun at her, she was just a little girl in war-ravaged Bosnia, but the man aiming the cruel barrel of his weapon at her now didn’t look like a soldier. “I won’t hurt you if you come with me,” he said, his voice thick with some accent that Renata didn’t immediately recognize.

      At his words, Renata went weak all over, terror rushing through her veins like a hot, withering poison. Who was he? What could this hulking stranger possibly want with her? And why should she believe that he wouldn’t hurt her when he was pointing a gun at her?

      Since she was a little girl, she had been a victim, as her sculptures attested. But Renata wasn’t a little girl anymore, and this wasn’t Bosnia. Something inside Renata snapped—like the angry strike of a whip—and she decided then and there that unlike her mother, she wouldn’t be taken. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

      With nothing but anger to direct her hand, Renata launched her hammer through the air towards her assailant. In slow motion, she watched the tool hurtle towards the intruder, cartwheeling end over end.

      The hammer struck him square in the forehead.

      It was only a wooden hammer—not one of the metal ones she sometimes used—but it made an audible and satisfying crack against the intruder’s skull. Shocked, the man staggered back, his arms tangling with the curtains. Only then did Renata cry out, but it was the intruder who screamed the loudest.

      A gyrating tangle of scales and fangs had slipped from the draperies and coiled around the man’s shoulders.

      Scylla had been hiding there after all, and—as hostile to intruders as its owner—Renata’s pet python constricted around the assailant’s neck. Perhaps scenting the man’s fear, the python pulled into strike position. “Get it off!” the intruder shrieked, fumbling with his gun.

      Renata could see that the man was genuinely terrified, but her survival instinct was stronger than her compassion so, seizing the opportunity, she turned for the door and ran.

      Only after the detective showed her his NYPD badge for the third time did Renata accompany him inside her studio. Even then, she crossed her arms over herself and tucked her fingers under so that he wouldn’t see her tremble.

      There was no sign of the intruder or the snake.

      Dark, swarthy, and clad in a black leather jacket, the detective took a brief look around the studio. “This is the scene of the crime?”

      Renata merely nodded; even under the best of circumstances, she was guarded with strangers, and these were not the best of circumstances.

      Still, there was something familiar about the detective’s shadowed eyes. He’d introduced himself several times, but she found that she just couldn’t remember his name. Maybe it was because she was in shock, or perhaps it was because she couldn’t stop staring at his startlingly handsome face.

      Renata had nearly been kidnapped, so now was not the time to notice a handsome man, but as a sculptress, she revered chiseled cheekbones and strong jawlines like his.

      “Let’s go over this one more time,” the detective said.

      “I’ve already told you everything,” Renata snapped, fixing her cool gray eyes on him. With practice, she had perfected that classic New York City bitchy-but-beautiful stare that drove most men to take