The Twelve Zenati Pt. 12

"Good morning, Miss..." He paused so she could fill in the blank for him.

"Mrs Royce," Marcella said, using the fake identity she hoped would get her what she wanted from this obvious player. She had no qualms about lying and playing dirty to get the information she wanted and prove once and for all she was more capable than the Zenati men gave her credit for. She held out her hand to him and fought back her reaction to him based on Olivia's words as he took it in his own sweaty paw. Olivia was right, he was a player on the edge of the world of the rich and influential, and he was using their power and influence in his position here to boost his own persona. He certainly gave off an air of power and confidence as he introduced himself.

"Vincent Vella, this is my marina. Are you looking to purchase a berth?" he inquired, not letting go of her hand as he spoke to her tits, seemingly unable to draw his eyes away from them. She had dressed purposefully playing to this man's base nature, to entice him to be interested enough in her flirtatious come-ons to talk to her and perhaps tell her things he may not tell the other investigators who had come here before her.

"Perhaps," she said enigmatically and lifted an eyebrow. "I guess that depends on how helpful you can be. I've recently received a large inheritance, and I have always loved the sea, but I am looking for a particular boat, and I thought you might be able to help me," she practically purred at Vinnie. She withdrew her hand slowly from his, letting her fingertips glide across his palm allowing him to believe she was interested in more than just a birth for a yacht or boat. "Do I look familiar to you at all?" she asked, stealing herself against the lie she was hoping he would fall for. She looked enough like her sister to fool someone who didn't know either of them well, and she hoped the sleazy player in front of her had been ogling Olivia's tits instead of her face as much as he was ogling hers.

"Familiar?" Vinnie asked, narrowing his eyes showing he was clueless as he studied her face as if she was about to hit him with something he wasn't going to like. "If you think I'm your..." he paused and seem to rethink his words before spluttering "Baby-daddy. Think again!"

"God no!" she backed away a little. "I had a boat berthed here not quite a year ago. Then I got involved with a very rich, very powerful man and left my boat. Now I am a widow and trying to track down that boat because I left something very important aboard, something that could make anyone who helped me find it a great deal of money," she kept her voice in the same sultry purr she knew he appreciated now. "I know other people have been looking for my boat and that Remington hid it shortly after we started dating. You remember my husband, don't you?" she asked in a soft, breathy voice, stopping short of spelling it out for him.

Marcella watched as confusion, recognition and doubt clouded Vinnie's face. He seemed equally suspicious and horrified, and she leaned forward toward him drawing his attention back to her cleavage, she was giving him even more of a view now. Then she took a moment to consider what to say next to get him to break and tell her what she needed to know. She had quizzed Olivia relentlessly about this time in her life both before and just after meeting Remington. She knew enough to sway him if she could just get him to believe that she was Olivia. She opened her mouth to speak and add to the lie when he stepped back drawing his eyes from her tits and seeming to shake himself.

"You're the chick everyone's been asking about, Olivia," he looked instantly wary but regained his composure, stepping back once more to put distance between them. "Like you said, they took the boat. It's not here. I can't help you," Vinnie said slowly as if regretting each word as he put more distance between them.

"You forget I know you, Vinnie," she said using the name Olivia had always used for him. "I know you keep track of everyone and everything in this marina. I know nothing happens here without you knowing and that you would have kept proof of who took my boat and where it was taken. I am a very rich woman now, and I really need something that was on that boat without anyone else knowing I was here. I can make it worth your while," she purred again, allowing him to believe payment could be in more than just money. He wasn't so bad looking, and if she didn't have to look directly at him, she could do that. She knew how to play the game. She wanted the boat if it was at all salvageable, she wanted it for Olivia, she wanted it to get one up on Noah who always seemed to interfere with her plans and take over.

Vinnie's eyes drifted to the wall of glass at the front of the office that looked out on the carpark. His eyes seemed to take in all of the cars at once as if putting a name to each one to make sure nothing was amiss and that he wasn't being duped by the agents who had come before her seeking this information.

"You know what else Vinnie? I keep track too, I have the receipts for payment for my berth, and it details my boat. You were responsible for it, and you let someone other than me take it. Of course, you may have had a good reason, like a murder that was never reported to the authorities. A murder I witnessed on your docks in your marina," she let that shadow of a threat hang between them for a moment. "You and this marina were responsible for my boat even if there was no murder," she charged on. "If you didn't allow someone to take to take it, you should have reported it to the police as stolen which you didn't. That puts you in a difficult situation, doesn't it?" Marcella let him think about that for a moment before speaking again.

"There was no murder, you're delusional!" Vinnie growled seeing the threat for what it was and not being prepared to let this woman take him and everything he had worked so hard for down.

"I'm sure we can come to an arrangement. One where you tell me where my boat is hidden and I will continue to conveniently not remember asking my husband to move it for me. Then when we find my boat, you can get what it is you want out of this arrangement. What is it you want Vinnie? Money? A yacht of your own? Something..." her voice dropped back into the sultry purr that had been working to well to muddle his mind. "Perhaps you have something more satisfying in mind?"

A range of emotions sped over Vinnie's face as he stared between her tits and her eyes. She could tell he was torn which meant he did know something. He may not know exactly where the boat was, but he knew something. Now she just had to get him to tell her. She considered her next move carefully as tension-filled silence fell between them, and Marcella knew she couldn't let it linger or he would think too hard about what she had said and see her lies.

Realising she was losing him, she boldly walked behind the counter closing the distance between them. She smiled as his eyes dropped to her bouncing breasts which she knew would look as if they were about to jump out of the top she was wearing. Trying not to over think and remind herself she had done worse things to get what she wanted, she reached out a hand to place it at the top of his chest near his shoulder. With determination, she looked him in the eyes, holding his gaze as she ran her hand down his chest, over his waistband to settle over his half erect cock. "Men are so easy," she thought to herself, keeping the smirk she felt blossoming beneath the serious look on her face under control. Marcella knew the moment she had him. His body relaxed under the hand that glided over his cock making it stiffen more, and the look in his eyes went from wary to heated.

"Are you sure you can't help me find my boat?" she purred close to his ear, not moving any closer, just stroking him softly and breathing into his ear as if she was equally turned on. Knowing he couldn't see her, she let her smirk free as he groaned deeply. It was a sound she knew well, a sound she had heard in this kind of game before. That groan signalled his willpower cracking and opening the lock he had on his secrets. She just wasn't sure if they were the secrets she needed yet.

"Fuck!" Vinnie growled and stepping back again. "There's a black car out there, you're being followed," He announced as if she were an idiot that wouldn't know that. "I don't know what you're trying to do, but the people you're playing games with are dangerous. I'm not as easy to manipulate as you think, but I have to admit you were always a tempting little slut," he paused and shook his head. "Such a fucking hot little slut," he growled again, and for a moment Marcella thought he would step back into her and try to force her to pay out on what was virtually promised if he helped her find the boat. "You may look high class now, but I have no doubt how much of a filthy, dirty slut you had to be to get Royce to marry you. If we do this, make this deal, we do it my way," he said his whole demeanour changing before her eyes.

"Your way," Marcella repeated wondering what that meant exactly and what price she would have to pay to get what she wanted. She wasn't some shy wilting flower, and she could play the slut if that was what was needed. She knew how to handle men like Vincent Vella and stood her ground as he closed part of the distance again, one large hand reaching her breast and squeezing it painfully in his fist as his thumb and forefinger found her nipple and pinched making her elicit a small whimper making him smile. Then he began whispering instructions into her ear.

*****

"Okay, here's what we know for sure," Claudio said. He was still sitting in the same position at the table with just the leaders from both tables and Orlando with him. The others had all left with their own agendas in the wake of the revelations of the meeting. Genesis and Gideon had been reticent to leave Noah but had gone with assurances that he wouldn't be far behind them.

"That she's even more reckless than we gave her credit for?" Noah grumbled, his voice deep and concerned. "You realise now why we can't give her the freedom you all want her to have. She is chaos personified! A walking talking disaster zone!"

"Marcella Gambaro went to the marina to meet with the manager, Vincent Vella. It was a short conversation, barely twenty minutes long," Claudio rechecked his notes, ignoring Noah's words. "From there she drove to the apartment she is staying in and changed into casual clothes and drove herself to Wak Wak. She bought a ticket on the Jumping Crocodiles Tour which she had already been on with Vivienne only a few weeks prior. When the boat returned, she did not return with it."

"What do you mean she didn't return?" Noah frowned not wanting to accept the obvious. "The watchers lost her?"

"Or she evaded them," Claudio said without any hint of censure. He was as pissed off as Noah sounded but he hid it better. Giving the girl a little more freedom was one thing but having her disappear so completely was quite another. "Head counts are always taken on the tours. Thirty-two people got on the boat, thirty-two people got off the boat. There is no explanation other than a swap somewhere in the creeks around there, and there was no safe place for that."

"Disguises?" Xavier suggested.

"Perhaps," the whispered word came from the usually silent Gianni who sat forward, joining the conversation and stared at Noah. "You know her well, and Dom says you have as good if not better instincts than him, so concentrate. Put your personal feelings about her stupidity aside for a moment and concentrate. Why would she purposefully evade a watcher she obviously knew was there? Then once you have the why think of the how." Gianni took the tablet from Claudio and slid it across the table to Noah and Dominic. "Look and her and tell me what was in her mind."

Noah took a moment to compose himself. He closed his eyes and pushed down the frustration he felt when dealing with Marcella's approach to investigating her sister's story and Remington Royce's vast estate. When he opened his eyes, he got a different picture from the one he had been holding during the conversation. He stared at the picture on the screen and scrolled through the subsequent ones, slowly forming a story in his mind of what had happened. Once he had that story, he scrolled back to the beginning of the photos and began to speak.

"She was pretending to be Olivia. That's not her style. She doesn't flaunt her body or looks, and she has her hair pulled back which is the starkest difference between her and Olivia. She went there to spook him into revealing something, something she knew she would need to coerce from him. She's a straitlaced, button-down dresser. She never reveals this much skin unless by the pool and even then, not so much flaunting it as hiding it," he began.

"The discussion was serious, even intimate at times, looking at this and reading into that further," Dominic said as they scrolled slowly again through the next few pictures.

"I didn't even know she owned an outfit like this," Noah pointed to a picture that showed Marcella in denim shorts and a non-descript t-shirt, her hair hidden under a wide-brimmed hat. He smiled, noting she still wore heels in the photo despite the casualness of the photo. The thought amused him, and he scrolled quickly to the shot where she was boarding the boat and realisation hit him. The woman boarding the boat wore Adidas joggers not heels, and he knew for certain now that she had never actually gone on the tour. He had guessed at it, but this was confirmation. Now the question was where she had gone? Did she take her car? Were the watchers so intent on the tour boat they didn't notice her car leaving? He asked the question out loud to the stunned group and then had to explain himself.

"The car's still there, but she could have left on one of the helicopter tours of the swamp lands," Claudio surmised. "We can't know for sure; the men were concentrating on the woman they thought was her on the boat tour."

"She went back to the marina," Noah said after a moment where he drew a breath and closed his eyes clearing his mind of all rational thought and letting the irrational, illogical movements of this woman wash over him. "She went back to meet with Vincent Vella without her watcher. Now the question is why? What does he know? And what sort of danger is she in now without anyone there to protect her from herself?"

Noah felt queasy that Marcella's recklessness had put her in this much danger. He was furious that she had been so underhanded, sneaking off without any protection at all. Maybe he had been too friendly, too offhand with her. He had rejected her initial interest in him, and they had friend-zoned each other. They sniped instead of flirting and recently their banter had developed a cruel edge to it that they both laughed off. Perhaps Gideon had been right, and he had made a mistake that first night, and she had been playing him ever since. His stomach rolled with the thought that she was so cold and calculating that she would use her friendship with him to be part of the investigation and criminal proceeding just to get what she wanted and not trust them in the same way.

"Bitch," he muttered and got to his feet. "I'm going to the marina," he grumbled with such a dark expression on his face that Gianni barked an order at him to stop.

"I think you better tell us the rest before you go, don't you?" Gianni said in a deceptively mild tone, and Noah retook his seat trying to decide how much of what he felt he could tell and how much he needed to keep hidden deep inside.

*****

Marcella was in control; she'd been delivered to the mid-range speedboat by helicopter and Vinnie's handsy friend, Greg. Then told to wait downstairs until he arrived. Surprised by the fact that he had people ready and willing to do his bidding, she had done as he had instructed. There was a lot more to Vincent Vella than met the eye, and she intended to discover all that he was hiding about Olivia and the Suebi, who obviously frequented the marina, before she was done with him. She sat in the salon not prying into any of his personal effects lest he arrive and catch her. Instead, she sat and plotted his downfall and how to get all of the information she needed before that happened.

Vinnie, like so many before him, would be easy to seduce and subdue. She knew men well, she had learned to become a master manipulator where men who played at being dominant were concerned, and she hadn't gotten any real alpha vibe from him. Even those who had true dominant personalities gave up their power easily enough once they believed they had a woman's submission on some level.

The problem with that was, she never gave her submission easily, and if anyone ever managed it, she didn't give it up for long. That type of dominant men were few and far between, and when she turned the tables on them, they either walked away believing her duplicitous and manipulative or they submitted to her wishes in order to keep her. Only one had ever walked away, and she was sure he regretted that decision. Still, she never indulged in more than a brief affair, even with the men who got her and could meet her on equal ground.

Marcella tended to stick with short-term affairs or one-night flings. She wasn't the type to become involved in messy relationships or, god forbid, real feelings. She cared only about her mother and her sisters with any real feeling. Perhaps Vivienne had also wormed her way past all of Marcella's fortifications, but she never exposed herself to anything more than surface feelings for her friends and colleagues at home in Perth and pure indifference to the rest of the world.

Marcella knew without a doubt that she was in no danger as she boarded the cruiser and was not troubled at all when Vinnie arrived and order her to stay below as he manoeuvred out of the marina and small harbour. When she knew he was driving the boat, she poked around the small salon and single bedroom below deck. She found an interesting draw full of sex toys and restraints and smiled to herself. A perfect little treasure she was sure she could make use of later when she gave in on her promise to him and interrogated him at the same time. He would not be the one using those toys on her, she grinned.

It might have been seen as dangerous, heading out to open waters with a man like Vinnie, and she could practically hear Noah's lecture about being reckless in her mind. The thought of Noah made her consider what she was doing, but she was supremely confident that she was in control of this little excursion and she could handle a man like Vinnie easily. He thought he was getting a sweet little slut in the form of Olivia, little did he know what he was truly getting in exchange for the secrets he had been keeping. She found a book in the bedroom and went to stretch out on the couch until Vinnie was ready to negotiate, talk or whatever for her to get the information she wanted.

The engines seemed to slip into a drone of neutrality that told her they were stopping or at least slowing and she twisted her head toward the stairs as she heard his footsteps descend down to where she was. She waited until he was standing close enough to observe her properly before she stretched languorously, her arms and the book lengthening above her head as she arched her body provocatively.

"Reading?" Vinnie raised his eyebrow.

"Your friend took my phone back at the tour, so you left me little choice. It was read or sleep," she answered with a shrug.

"I thought you might have taken the opportunity to get comfortable at the very least," he smirked at her. "I intend to claim payment in full once you have what you need from the old boat. Do you need to change?"