Read Online The Romanov Legacy by Jenni Wiltz - Free Book Online

wasn’t so
strange, he thought.  The women who knelt before the icons in the
Arkhangelsky Sobor believed a divine essence inhabited a painted piece of wood. 
Why shouldn’t it inhabit a person, too? 
    He bent down and rummaged in the under-sink cabinet. 
Tucked in a small wicker basket, he found a pair of men’s Levi’s and a white
t-shirt.  He carried them back out to her.  “This is all I can find,”
he said, shaking them out.  “They’re a little dirty.”
    “I like things that are dirty,” she said.  “Didn’t you
see my apartment?”  
    He smiled then turned his back while she dressed, listening
to the sound of the scratchy denim sliding up over her hips.  He tried to keep
his mind from replaying images of her in the tub.  It didn’t work.
 “Okay,” she said.  “You can turn around now.”
    The t-shirt hung loosely over her breasts, dark nipples
visible through the thin cotton.  He gulped.  Natalie glared at him
and pressed her scarred forearms to her chest.  “Why are you staring at my
arms?  Isn’t there something else I can wear?”
    Arms? he thought.  Does she really think I’m
staring at her arms?
      “There’s nothing wrong with you or your arms,”
he said, guiding her back to the bed and sitting beside her.  “I know
someone who has scars, too, remember?”
    Her eyes remained wary but she tilted her head, as if she
were interested in spite of herself.  “Why did she do it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Why not?”
    “She won’t talk to me.  Can you tell me how you got
yours?”
    “Why the hell would you want to hear about that?”
    He touched one of her scars and felt the soft, puffy
skin.  “It might help me understand why she did it.”
    “I guarantee you, it won’t.”
    “I’d really like to know.”
    “Are you going to shoot me if I don’t tell you?”
    He smiled.  “Of course not.  I wasn’t going to
shoot you earlier, either.”
    “I didn’t think so,” she said softly.  “But it wasn’t
even my fault.  It was Dante’s.”
    “Dante?”
    She nodded matter-of-factly.  “Belial brought him to me
in a dream.  Dante said he needed me to transcribe a message for
him.  He said it had to be in blood or the devil would see it.  I
guess they do things differently where he is.”
    “Right,” Constantine said slowly, trying to hold his facial
expression steady.  “Why didn’t you say no?”
    She looked straight at him and then frowned.  “When
Italy’s greatest poet tells you to do something, you do it.”
    “Of course,” he replied, as if her answer were the only
logical one.  “So what did you do?”
    “I went into the kitchen, picked up a knife, and held it
across my wrist like a violin bow.  But then Dante said I was doing it
wrong and corrected me, like this.”  She held an imaginary blade parallel
with her ulna.  “I sliced away and used the blood for ink, writing every
word he said on my kitchen wall.”
    Constantine pointed at her right arm.  “What happened
to that one?”
    “Canto XXXII.  That fucker is long.”
    He bit his tongue until tears came to his eyes.
    “I wrote down everything he said, which turned out to be the
eighth circle of the Inferno.”  She shook her head.  “The bastard
could have just told me to look it up.  I almost ran out of ink.”
    “Ink,” he repeated.    She calls it ink.  
“But someone must have saved you.”
    “Beth had been calling me for an hour straight and when I
didn’t answer, she called 911 and took a cab to St. Luke’s.  When I woke
up, I asked her to go read Dante’s message.  She compared what I’d written
to the real thing and found one line of verse that didn’t belong.  It said
not to believe the German, that cowardly hearts sought salvation with a pen
instead of a prayer.” 
    “I don’t understand.”
    “We didn’t either.  But Beth found out that a
German-owned manuscript copy of the Divine Comedy had come up for auction at
Sotheby’s,