C4 Illina

Yeo had to tell Ilina. He even looked forward to observing her response.

Would she pity him enough to open her heart? Would that same violet shimmer play in her eyes once more?

Or would she maintain the same cool demeanor that she always met him with?

It was her eyes that struck him the first time he saw her in Tehran.

She was covered in a turquoise sari. Her iris eyes looked out from the long silk scarf that partially covered her face.

In a single flash, she turned toward him and locked eyes with him. The thick black eyelashes closed over them and she turned back to the silver bowl she was examining.

As she moved through the marketplace, she occasionally stopped to gesture gracefully and bargain with the seller. But she did not have the manner of a native.

The woman’s bearing and statuesque appearance seemed European to him. She seemed a stranger here, much like himself.

Yeo followed her through the market at a discreet distance, until she had circled the market and stood in front of him.

“You may walk with me to my hotel,” she said.

He had a meeting with the Shah, a company to buy, but negotiations had stalled.

He was overdue at headquarters. His father was starting to worry. But nothing mattered now.

“I’d be happy to,” he said in the same even tone.

It was an erotic moment for him. Her bold approach left him defenseless, tripped by a primitive impulse that bypassed logic, formality, simple cordiality—any set of civilized impressions that he might have approached a woman with in the past.

After a few days together, he stopped asking himself why he was so addicted to her.

Those moist, sultry eyes never lost their impact.

And her voice was just as sweet.

But he soon found that the sweetness of her voice and the moisture of her eyes were only a lure.

The ferocious beast that greeted him at the gate to her heart concealed some bitter wound, the nature of which she never revealed to him.

She seemed to cherish, not only the pain it caused her, but the pain it caused him.

He had not recalled these moments in years, as he sat in the back of the town car, on the way to her villa, overlooking Lake Como.

Yeo checked his cell.

In coded language, Chuck informed him that the Israeli operation had come off flawlessly.