CHAPTER TWELVE
Seconds tick by and Kace and Gio do not appear.
I pace back and forth and suddenly I question the idea of having Kace answer the door when Gio might confront him. I’m about to charge my way to the hall when the two of them appear and I swear they’re a sight—two men who could be enemies or friends, riding on the cusp of that discovery. Two men who are powerful, good looking, and confident in their own rights, and so very different on the surface. Gio is a wild card, all about risks and danger, impossible to predict. Kace is calculated, focused, structured. But what they don’t see and I do is they both had the courage to walk away from the family business. My brother never wanted to hold a violin. Kace’s father never wanted him to hold a violin. And they both know what they want, and go for it, at all costs. Kace stops on the opposite side of the couch, but Gio does not. He closes the space between me and him and as I turn to face him, Kace says, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
“No,” I say, angling in his direction. “We need to talk, all three of us.”
“We need a word alone,” Gio counters. “And then I’ll talk to Kace.”
“I’ll grab us all a drink,” Kace offers, and he doesn’t wait for a reply. Class act that he is, he turns away and generously offers Gio his moment alone with me.
My attention is now on my brother, the person that I’ve leaned on and spent a lifetime trusting. He has always been my hero, my best friend, my only remaining family these last few years. Now, I am looking at him with accusation and distrust.
“Why’d do you come?” I demand.
“You’re my damn sister, Aria.”
“And you just remembered this?”
He scrubs the thick dark shadow on his jaw that’s threatening to become a beard. “I fucked up,” he says, his hands settling on his hips, under his thin North Face down jacket. “But I had a deep instinct that we were not going to survive much longer hiding in the shadows. You weren’t going to hear that from me and listen. I didn’t want a problem to come to us. I wanted to head it off. I was trying to shelter you.”
“You wanted out of the shadows, but you knew what you did, you forced me along for the ride. I was the inconvenient sister.”
“That’s not true.”
His reply is rapid, but it’s short and without conviction. “It is,” I say. “You just convinced yourself if I didn’t know what was going on that somehow it wouldn’t affect me at all.”
“I was only gone a month, Aria.”
“More than a month and living this double life a whole lot longer,” I say. “I know, Gio. I know a whole lot more than you think I know.” I don’t give him time to fight back. “Angelena sent me pages from Dad’s journal.”
He blinks, his brows dipping. “How the hell did she get Dad’s journal?”
“She was with him when ‘they’ whoever they are took him. Did Sofia tell you that, Gio?”
A muscle in his jaw tics, but he doesn’t cut his stare. “No. She said her mother disappeared a few weeks after Dad. That’s all.”
“You’re the one who told me that Sofia believes Kace has the formula but needs me to decode it. Well, guess what? That’s what Angelena said, too. Seems like they’ve been talking or perhaps reading the same journal?”
“What does the journal say?”
“I can’t read the pages she sent me. The text was too small. Walker’s enlarging it.”
“Walker,” he snaps. “Again with Walker. Even if they are good at their jobs, that doesn’t make them people to trust. In fact, it may well be the opposite. You trust too many people.”
“You trusted the wrong people, Gio, but I’m not and I know you’re doubting everyone over Sofia, but don’t doubt me. Trust me.”
His voice lowers. “Learn from my mistakes, Aria.”
I open my mouth and quickly snap it shut. I’m done beating up this topic for now. “You told me Angelena was missing.”
“That’s what they told me.”
“They? Sofia? Or the Blue Owls? Her father?”
“All of the above.”
“Is Angelena working with all of the above? She is Sofia’s—or rather, Sonia’s—mother.”
“Sofia was looking for her mother. She had pages and pages of investigative documents on her walls that were all about finding her mother. Documents that dated back years. If that was a lie, it was an elaborate one put together quickly when I showed up. How did Angelena find you?”
“Dad told her to give me the journal when I turned eighteen. She knew from the journal that Kace was a piece of the puzzle. She was watching him. That’s how she found me. I was with him.”
“Why the fuck would Dad tell her to give it to you at eighteen? Why not me or Mom, right when he disappeared? I don’t believe that shit. She’s lying to you.”
“Her disappearance near Dad’s is weird. You said that yourself. Maybe they were—”
“Don’t say it,” he snaps. “They were not together.”
“You said it, Gio. You put the idea in my head.”
“I was wrong. Mom and Dad were solid. I was older. I could see they were solid. We can’t trust anyone. We both forgot that.”
“I feel like this conversation is on repeat. We can trust Kace.”
He eyes the apartment and then gives me a once over. “Because he spoils you? Because you want security for the first time in your life? What do you think people do when they want something from you? They give you what you want and need.”
“I don’t need or want his money. You know that’s not who I am.”
“So he’s doing all of this because he loves you?”
My heart begins to race. “Stop now, Gio, before you go too far—again. I’m begging you.”
But he doesn’t stop. “Are you foolish enough to believe he didn’t know who you were when you hooked up?”
My defenses bristle. “Sofia’s note to you is how we came together. You know that.”
“Maybe he was in on it with her. She’s a lying, conniving bitch. I wouldn’t put it past her to ride another train when riding me didn’t work.”
“That didn’t happen,” I bite out.
He continues as if I didn’t even speak. “And come on, Aria. You think Dad gave him part of the formula and didn’t even tell him?”
“He was a kid just like us when Dad disappeared.”
“Old enough to release a best-selling fucking album and travel the world without his parents.”
“Dad didn’t tell him, Gio. He put it in the journal left for me.” My fists are now balled at my sides. “Kace isn’t even convinced he knows anything to help at all. The only reason he’s considered it is that Angelena sent me a coded message and he knew what it meant. It was something Dad said to him.”
His eyes narrow. “What? Tell me.”
I inhale sharply on what my gut is telling me before I say what I thought I’d never say to my brother. “I don’t know what team you’re playing on, Gio.” I fold my arms in front of me. “I’m not telling you.”
His eyes burn with anger, and he steps closer, his temper seething. “Are you really saying that to me right now?”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t have the formula. We don’t know what part I play in any of this. We only know Angelena, and apparently, Sofia as per you, thinks I do. You could torture us, Gio, and we couldn’t tell you. If this is all we know, we will never have the formula.”
“What if he and Sofia really are plotting together. What if, Aria?”
My defenses bristle, but I do not doubt Kace. “For the last time, because I’m done with this topic, Kace didn’t plot against me.”
“Because he loves you?”
“Yes. He does. And I love him. And you know what? He’s made what is his, mine. As far as I’m concerned, what is mine is his as well. If we find the formula, obviously Dad wanted him to be a part of where that takes our lives.”
He chokes out a laugh. “Seriously? Either you are far more naïve than I realized or you are a sellout.” He leans closer. “Maybe you like the money more than you thought you would.”
The air shifts and I can feel Kace even before I see him and reality hits me. Gio said that now because he knew Kace would hear. I glance toward the outer edge of the living room to find Kace standing there, two glasses in his hands. Slowly, precisely he rounds the couch and steps to my side, offering Gio a glass. The two men stare at each other, time standing still, the air crackling. Gio breaks the stare down and studies the amber liquid before he clinks the ice on the glass and downs it.
“Smooth,” he says. “A thousand-dollar whiskey? Or no, two thousand? You’re a very rich man. Rich men often want what they can’t have because they have every fucking thing else. So, what is it that you want? Obviously, that’s not my sister. She was easy.”