He inches back and studies me a moment and then says, “You really do seem better.”
“I am. And Taco Bell will only make me all the better.” I quirk my lips with a thought. “Is it safe to go out?”
“You missed that part of the update with Blake. He cleared us of imminent threat and the more we hide, the more we seem like we have something to hide.
But we also have Walker shadowing us.”
“It’s weird, always having someone follow us around.”
“You’d be surprised. You get used to it. And Walker is discreet. They’re easy to ignore.”
“Did you always travel with security?”
“Yes, but before I found any recognition of my own, I’d had some threats related to my father’s work. He pissed some people off and he was rich. Hurting me or ransoming me held appeal to the wrong people. It was more about him than me.”
I open my mouth to ask more, but he kisses me. “Taco Bell now. Ask questions, any questions you want, later, but only when I have a burrito in my hand. That’s my ransom.”
My lips curve. “A burrito.”
“Or three or four.” He turns me to the stairs. “Hurry. Get your purse.”
He smacks my backside and with the shock and the memories of earlier, I hurry forward and glance back at him over my shoulder. The awareness between us in that tiny look speaks of a deepening intimacy between us. I can’t believe how close we’ve become or how much I need him. I head up the stairs and my mind travels to my parents. I thought they were close, but my father didn’t want his journal taken to my mother. Or Gio.
Once I’m upstairs in the master bathroom, I quickly fill my purse and I’m just about to slide it over my shoulder when a memory sends me into the past. My father grabs my bow before I can finish the note I’m about to play. “I told you. Every fifth note. Emphasize.”
“That doesn’t fit the song.”
“It’s about control. It’s about learning how to deliberately give certain notes attention. You can’t pick and choose when you have not mastered the skill. The fifth note, Aria.”
The door to the music room opens and Angelena pokes her head inside. “Those men are back.”
I know which men. The men in the suits that upset my father. “Again?” I ask. “What do they want?”
He scowls and then glances at me. “What they cannot have. I’ll be back, honey.” He kisses my forehead. “Keep working.”
He stalks toward the door and disappears. I set my instrument in the case and hurry after him.
I’m curled up under my father’s desk, hiding from the men in suits my father is meeting in the conference room. I hate it when they show up. They upset Dad. They keep coming back no matter how many times he tells them not to.
The door opens and I hear Gio say, “Are you going to take the money?”
“We have money,” my father says. “We do well for ourselves. We don’t need more.”
“Are you crazy? They offered you a fortune.”
“Once we sell that formula, the brand will be devalued. We were tasked by our ancestors to preserve the formula while protecting our brand.”
“That’s insane, Dad. We’re targets. Take the money.”
“Once again. We have plenty of money, son.”
“Do you even have the formula?” Gio demands. “Is that the problem? You don’t have it.”
I pull my knees to my chest and squeeze my eyes shut. I hate those men, but I hate when Gio fights with Dad even more.
“Son,” Dad says, his voice now a tight band, and I can hear the door shut. “No, I don’t have the formula. That’s the right answer. That’s the answer you had better memorize.”
“What does that mean?” Gio demands. “That’s the right answer. Do you have it or do you not?”
“There are people who would never allow that formula to see the light of day. They’d kill us to keep it a secret.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“Once it’s a mass-produced formula, the instruments that exist now, worth millions or even tens of millions, become devalued. Not to mention our legacy—Antonio’s legacy—is destroyed.”
“If you sell it, then it’s someone else’s problem.”
“This is our legacy, son. We, like our ancestors before us, have protected it. We protect it. And we make tough decisions to protect us and our family. You’re old enough to understand this now. It’s time to grow up.”
“And when someone decides the way to keep the formula a secret is to kill you, then what?”
“You’ve been talking to your mother, haven’t you?”
I gasp and crawl out from behind the desk, to stand up. “Someone wants to kill you, Dad?” My voice squeaks out.
I blink back to the present, not even sure how much of that memory is accurate. I mean, I was eleven and it was a long time ago, but I think Kace visited around that time. After. I think he visited shortly after. I feel as if it was the next day, perhaps. The memories of his visit feel connected to this one, but that could be because they are newly remembered pieces of the past. I don’t really know. I need time to process the memory, maybe even write it down.
“I’m starving, woman,” Kace calls out from the bottom of the stairs. “Hurry.”
At Kace’s shouted plea, I shake off the memory and grab my purse. “Coming!”
Once I’m downstairs, I find Kace standing at the front door, leaning on the wooden surface, casual in jeans and a T-shirt, confident not just in his clothes, but in his own skin. The man has demons, but they do not defeat him, nor do they steal his principles, and I believe in that, he is all too like my father.
I join Kace and he pushes off the door and when he would reach for my coat, I press my hand on his chest, holding him in place, heat radiating up my arm and across my chest. He doesn’t move. He seems to sense there is something in my mind right now and there is, so many somethings. And so, we stand there, staring at each other, a current of energy pulsing around us. We are connected. We are one. My father’s words are on my mind: we make tough decisions to protect us and our family. You’re old enough to understand this now.
“Your family turned their backs on you,” I say. “My mother and brother turned their backs on my father and then he adopted you.”
His blue eyes darken. “You remembered something.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me,” he urges softly.
“The men in suits visited often. They wanted to buy the formula. My father told him they didn’t have it. One day, I was under my father’s desk when he and Gio fought. Gio wanted him to take the money. Dad told him that we had plenty of money and to reveal the formula would devalue the instrument and the legacy. He told Gio we have a responsibility to protect those things.”
“And Gio said?”
I tell him the rest of the story, everything I can remember. “My father believed the safest answer for us as a family was to tell the world that we didn’t have the formula.”
“But you believe he did?”
“Oh yes. I believe he did and we know I believe we do. Bottom line, he knew what we have figured out. Some people will kill for the formula and others for the chance to destroy it. I believe my father knew that in his death that Mom would destroy it.”
“And Gio.”
I think back to that memory of Dad and Gio fighting over cashing in the formula and all that I know of Gio’s personality. “I think Dad thought Gio would sell it.”
He tilts his head, studying me. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“I think that losing your family and seeing time passing, no, feeling it pass, begins to redefine priorities. He wanted our legacy back. He talked about it. We talked about it. I believed that to be his driving passion.”
“Then let’s talk about the men in the suits. You have brought them up several times. Angelena spoke about them taking your father. What do you remember about them?”
“Not much really, but the very fact that Angelena says they took him and he’s now dead, leads me to one conclusion: they wanted the formula to destroy it and when he wouldn’t sell it, they killed the only man who could reveal it.”
“Which would mean those people who own a Stradivarius would be the most likely suspects. Especially those in Italy at the time.” He pulls his phone from his pocket. “Like t
he old man who wants us to come to Italy to sell us a Stradivarius.” He punches in a rather long text message before he says, “I know Blake is looking into the seller, but I just want to be sure he’s putting together the pieces as we just did.”
I nod, a clawing sensation in my gut. “My father didn’t give the formula to them. I know he didn’t. It’s what my mother feared would happen. I know they killed him.”
Kace shoves his phone back into his pocket and then settles warm, strong hands on my shoulders. “If that’s the case, baby, they would have killed him anyway because it was in his head and his heart.”
“And now it’s in ours.”
“Yes,” he agrees, “but we have a plan.”
“Is it a good one?”
“Don’t start doubting now.” His hands come down on my shoulders. “We’ve got this, Aria. You and me. We will not let your father down.”
We.
Just the two of us.
Which is so very right and so very wrong. I’m missing one thing. I need Gio to come to his senses. I need my brother back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fifteen minutes later, Kace and I have taken a short, chilly, winter wonderland walk to Taco Bell. With way too much food in front of us, we sit at a table stuffing our faces and laughing. I am always laughing with this man and this new life where I share everything with Kace is more than a little surreal. We’re just finishing up when his phone buzzes with a text. “Jenny,” he says. “She wants us to come by and try a new cookie. We need to go tell her we’re headed to Germany the day after tomorrow.”
I straighten. “That soon?”
“I want you out of a city that’s become a pitstop for every asshole that wants what is yours.”
What is mine.
I toss my burrito wrapper on the tray, a bit of our conversation before we left the apartment coming back to me. “I’ve never thought of the formula like that at all.”
He tosses his paper as well. “It’s time you do. That’s one of the many things I want you to talk to the attorney about tomorrow. I want you sheltered from any liability your name represents and—”