Dishonorable

“Sofia.”

Her sister tried to draw her away, but Sofia held her ground.

“I hate you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I know enough.”

I shrugged a shoulder.

“Go,” she ordered, pointing to the car.

I laughed at first, but my face hardened in the next instant, and I stepped close enough that she drew back. “Speak to me like that again, and you’ll be sorry,” I hissed.

“I’m already sorry,” she said, her voice trembling.

Lina caught her hands, forcing Sofia to look at her. I leaned away.

“Sofia?” Lina’s eyes misted.

Sofia shook her head and tried for a smile. “I’ll be fine. It’s okay.”

“Call me every day, okay?”

I could see the effort it took for Sofia to hold back her tears.

“We have a flight to catch,” I said, checking my watch.

They hugged each other tight, and it was Sofia who broke away, sniffling.

“Do you want to tell your grandfather good-bye?” I asked, although I pretty much knew the answer.

“No,” Sofia said. “I’m ready.”

“I hope for your sake, you are.”

Chapter Four

Sofia

Inside the envelope Raphael had given me were three sheets of paper, pieces taken from a larger document. When I’d asked him what it was, he’d said one word—truth. But it couldn’t be that. There was no way. Grandfather wasn’t that hateful. No matter what, we were his family, his only remaining family.

The night I’d first met my grandfather as a child had also been the night we’d celebrated my mother’s twenty-first birthday. The timing of his visit made perfect sense, now that I knew the details of my own inheritance. For as all-powerful as I’d always believed my grandfather to be, this one thing he could not control. At least not wholly. Because on my mother’s twenty-first birthday, she received majority control of Guardia Winery. My grandfather was merely given an allowance that she dictated.

One thing I hadn’t known was that my grandfather had taken my grandmother’s last name. She was Sofia Guardia, my namesake. He had never been head of the family. Not really. Even if he made it seem like he was. I guessed when my grandmother had died before I’d even been born, he’d continued to receive his allowance and lived in the family home, but only because of my mother. She was the heiress. He had nothing without her.

And now that she was gone, he had nothing without Lina and me.

That’s what Raphael had given me. History. History and proof of my grandfather’s dishonesty. He was stealing from us. He’d stolen from my mother, and now was stealing from Lina and me. He even had an offshore account into which he’d transferred sums of money too small to be noticed yet large enough to sustain a lavish lifestyle. Why did he need it, though? He already had everything he wanted, didn’t he?

My mother running away meant my grandfather had lost control, at least for a little while. It was natural he would be our guardian once our parents died. And with us, Grandfather had taken back the control he’d lost.

As we settled into our first-class seats, I glanced at the man sitting beside me. This stranger I would be married to. A man I would have to live with. I didn’t know what was expected of me. The marriage had to be in name alone. I represented half of the Guardia fortune for him. On my twenty-first birthday, I would inherit. And he would steal that inheritance, just like my grandfather had been doing all my life.

What would happen to me after the three years?

For the past six months, I’d spent all my free time learning as much as I could about Raphael Amado and the Amado family. I knew his age, twenty-four, and that he had two brothers, one a twin. His family had two homes, one in the states, and a second in Italy, where they spent most of their childhood. His mother was Italian, his father American, and Raphael and his brothers had been born in America. I knew that six years ago, he’d lost his mother in a fire intentionally set by his father at the house in Tuscany. And I knew that a few months after that fire, Raphael had been charged with the murder of his father. He’d spent six years in an Italian prison for it, and only eight months ago had the ruling been overturned and Raphael’s name cleared.

He’d wasted no time in coming for me, had he?

But what did my grandfather owe him? That, I did not know.

I learned his father had been a criminal with ties to some bad people. I knew he’d been accused of arson, but he’d died before he could be tried. Raphael’s mother had been killed in that fire, and I knew in my heart that her death, and perhaps the way she’d died, had been the thing that had brought about Raphael’s rage. It had been what had caused the violence that precipitated his father’s death.