Turned to Stone by Jorge Magano Page A

aerodynamic design. Whenever she set foot on the family yacht she was filled with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, she enjoyed the sense of abundance, wealth, and danger that went with her family’s activities. On the other, she was filled with self-loathing because her attempts to leave it all behind had been in vain. A luxury yacht of the highest caliber, the Phoenix served as a reminder of everything she abhorred, even as it offered her an exciting life. Her father, the businessman and antique expert Angelo Carrera, had been on the ship when it sank off the coast of Cyprus three years earlier. Its recovery and restoration had cost the family a fortune, but the yacht was seaworthy once more and had been rechristened the Phoenix after the mythological creature reborn from its own ashes.
    A man of about forty, dressed in a blue-striped T-shirt and shorts, stepped through a glass door and beamed at Rosa.
    “The enchanting Mata Hari has returned.” He approached her with open arms. The red kerchief on his head and the ring in his left ear gave him the air of a pirate. He gave her a quick hug and led her toward the door. “Our venerable elder was just wondering aloud about when you might return.”
    “Then why didn’t our venerable elder pick up the phone?” she said, sounding irritated. “I’ve been trying to call for hours.”
    “You know how particular Papà is. He only likes to talk to us on the boat’s lounge. I spoke to him yesterday; he’s hoping you have some good news for him.”
    “Well, he can keep on hoping,” Rosa muttered, shoving her brother aside and walking through the door.
    At the bottom of a set of stairs was a short teak-floored hallway that led to a spacious lounge with tinted windows. The place had the look of a miniature museum, with oil paintings depicting ancient landscapes and ruins and busts representing historical figures from Socrates to Napoleon Bonaparte. In the corners of the room were marble pedestals decorated in relief, and above those were carvings of the Four Evangelists and their corresponding symbols—angel, lion, ox, and eagle. A bartender dressed spotlessly in white offered them glasses of champagne.
    “So, how did it go?” Rosa’s brother raised his glass and gave her a look of genuine admiration.
    “You’ll find out soon enough. I don’t like explaining things twice.”
    “Uh-oh. Little sister’s in a bad mood.”
    “I’ve been away from the gallery for almost a week.”
    “I’m sure it’s fine. Your boyfriend will have taken care of everything.”
    Rosa’s face turned red.
    “Leave Dino out of this. That poor man would run for his life if he had any idea what his fiancée really did when she was supposed to be away on business.”
    “Come on, I bet dangerous women like you are a turn-on for him.”
    “Me, dangerous? Not dangerous enough for this job. At least I won’t have to quit. Papà won’t just fire me, he’ll disown me. And I’ll be glad of it.”
    The man ran the tips of his fingers under the kerchief as he registered her implication of failure. “The policeman . . . ?”
    “Amatriaín? He escaped from right under our noses. And so did the other guy, Jaime Azcárate.”
    “Two screwups for the price of one, little sister.”
    “It wasn’t my fault,” Rosa protested. “One of them disappeared and the other managed to put that moron Clark out of action and then kidnap me . I don’t get why Papà still trusts that idiot.”
    “I think you’re about to find out.”
    Rosa nodded with her characteristic self-assurance. But deep down, she envied her brother. Although Leonardo occasionally undertook fieldwork—the most recent example being the theft of the Medusa from the Verona museum—his primary responsibility was coordinating the organization’s activities. Thus he spent most of the day in a luxurious cabin on the family yacht, flicking through documents while sipping mojitos and caipirinhas. Rosa, meanwhile, was the one out