“You’re good,” he says. “I hit you with two types of reversal agents and you responded well. We drew blood before we took off. Since that was the middle of the night, we’ll get the results shortly after we land. Eat. You’ll feel better. We have a fridge full in the back.” He winks and disappears.
I focus on Kace. “How do I know I won’t have long term side effects?”
“Savage assures me you’re fine, but he still arranged to have Kayden’s staff doctor look you over in Italy.”
“What if I’m pregnant?” The question pops into my head and out of my mouth before I can stop it.
Kace goes still, his eyes sharp on my face. “Aria, baby,” he says slowly. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
“No.” I grab his arm for emphasis. “No,” I repeat. “But I’m due to start my period any day and what if I don’t? We had sex way before we should have once I started on birth control pills. What if I am and the drugs caused damage to the baby?”
He covers my hands with his. “You’re going down a rabbit hole that leads no place good. You haven’t even missed your period.”
“I should take a test. I know it’s illogical to worry about this right now, but for some reason I am, and I don’t do things randomly. I mean, if I were pregnant and then something happened, I just couldn’t take it. Which is probably why I can’t be a mother. I’d be paranoid and worried all the time.”
“Everyone needs a mother who worries. You’d be a wonderful mother.”
“Oh God,” I murmur, touching his face. “I didn’t mean to take you down memory lane.”
“You didn’t. Not at all. This isn’t about memory lane. I’m simply speaking the truth. And we’ll take a test if you’re worried, but I need you to try to relax.”
“We?” I ask.
“We, baby. We’re in this together. You know that.”
“Yes, well, my father sure made sure of that. He really left a mark on you, hasn’t he?”
“In the best of ways. Go to the bathroom. I’ll grab you some food.” He stands up and offers me his hand.
The minute I press my palm to his, the chill I didn’t even realize I‘d felt until this moment fades—the fear of the unknown, a return to my home country, a new future, the familiar left behind, all dust in the dark night. The uncertainty of when, where, why, and who is no longer a question. Every answer to every question in my life is me with this man.
He pulls me to my feet, and I sway, slightly unsteady. As if he’s trying to prove that yes, he is the answer to every question in my life, Kace reacts instantly. He wraps his arm around my waist and fits me snugly to his body. “You okay?”
He is a perfect contradiction. A man who is both tender and caring, demanding and fierce, damaged but never broken, and most of all, my warrior in a time of need.
“Now I am,” I say softly. “Now, I absolutely am.”
***
The airplane bathroom is a decent size and with my toiletry bag, I wash up, re-do my make-up, and brush my teeth. Somehow I’m lucky enough to find my birth control pills in the bag. Obviously, Blake’s wife knew they were important. I open them and have one hormone pill left. In other words, I should start my period in a few days. I have no idea why pregnancy is on my mind, but then unprotected sex, which is essentially what Kace and I had, has a way of doing that to do a girl. I don’t know what time it is, but it has to be close to morning back home, so I pop it in the back of my mouth and swallow it.
Done. Pill taken.
I’m not pregnant. End of story.
Forcing that silly idea from my head, I quickly change into leggings, a long-sleeved tee, and sneakers. Unbidden, just as I’m about to exit the bathroom, I once again flash back to that hallway in the bar. I squeeze my eyes shut and I see what I didn’t during the attack. Sofia was holding the gun on Gio, her lovely face transformed into ugly anger. She wasn’t going to let me go even if she had to shoot Gio. I don’t know if Gio backed out of the plan they had set or what, but he meant to save me and almost died for his efforts.
Almost.
Where is he now?
I open the bathroom door and rush down the aisle to find Kace, Adrian, and Savage sitting in a lounge area. “Where is Gio?”
Kace stands, his powerful body crowding mine, his hands on my waist as he stares down at me. “Aria—”
“Where is my brother?”
His expression tightens with his words. “We don’t know.”
I blanch. “What do you mean, we don’t know?”
I twist out of his arms and look between Savage and Adrian. “You’re the best of the best. How do you not know?”
Kace turns me back around to him, his hands on my shoulders. “When he left us outside the club, the Walker team followed him. He turned a corner in an alleyway and then just—disappeared.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“What happened to being the best?” I demand again, scowling at Savage and Adrian, my fear for Gio driving me and the surge of adrenaline in my body right now. “What happened? I thought no one could get past you?” I press my hands to my face and drop them. “Sorry. Sorry.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “You saved his life, Adrian. I saw you take the gun from Sofia. And you saved me, Savage.” I turn to Kace. “And I’d be alone without you, Kace. I just—I just have a bad feeling about Gio. A really bad feeling.”
Kace’s hands, those warm, strong, talented hands, skilled in a way that made my father call him the one true daisy in the wind, settle on my waist. “You’re underestimating your brother. No one made him disappear. He chose to disappear.”
“Except a gun can turn the invincible dead,” I say. “What about Sofia and Lorenzo?” I ask, and when the plane jumps, Kace pulls me into the lounge and down on a seat across from Adrian, while he settles in beside me across from Savage. “What about—”
“They’re gone,” Adrian states. “All three are gone.”
“How is this possible?” I ask, calmer now, but not by much.
“A blackout for a two-block radius around the club,” Adrian says, “that lasted exactly five minutes to the second. People rushed from the club in a crush and the street cameras were out.”
“In other words,” Savage says, “someone on Sofia’s team has skills. We have no way of knowing if Gio was with Sofia when she disappeared.”
“I want to believe he wasn’t,” I say. “I believe, I really do believe, at the very least, he backed out of whatever plan they had and helped me escape.” I change gears for a moment. “What about Angelena? I know that’s who called me. Maybe she knows where they are.”
Kace’s hand covers mine. “You won’t like this answer.”
I twist to face him. “What does that mean?”
“She was found in a hotel room by the cleaning lady,” he says, “dead from what appears to be an overdose. We’re well-connected with the NYPD and were pinged.”
“Let me guess,” I say, my gaze sweeping the three of them. “The same drug I was drugged with.”
Savage gives a nod. “You guessed it, sister.”
“And the journal?” I ask. “Or copies of the journal at least?”
“Nothing,” Adrian replies, “and she’d only been in the hotel for three days. Blake’s working to track her steps.”
“What else don’t I know?”
Savage takes that prod. “You want to believe Gio is innocent. I don’t. We have every reason to suspect your brother was involved with what happened last night.”
“Except that he saved me,” I snap. “And Adrian saved him. He didn’t need saving becaus
e he was on their side.”
“He’s the one who sent you to the bathroom by the stairs,” Kace reminds me. “He’s the one who bought your drink.”
I angle toward him. “But now I remember the look on Sofia’s face when she held that gun on him. She was angry. I really think she would have shot him.”
“I don’t,” Adrian says. “You were drugged and you’re not trained. I was not and I am. She wasn’t aiming at him. She was aiming beyond him. She wanted to make sure that if Kace rounded that corner he’d stay back.”
“I saw the look on her face,” I argue.
“She was pissed at Gio, but she’s not stupid enough to shoot in a public place,” Adrian says. “She wants to leave the country with the formula, not a most wanted poster. She knows a bullet fired doesn’t make that happen. Gio was not in danger.”
“Then why take her gun?” I challenge.
Adrian doesn’t miss a beat. “You never leave an enemy with a weapon, if you can take it.”
“Amen to that,” Savage murmurs.
“She had to have killed her own mother,” I argue. “Angelena was her mother. I don’t believe for a minute she wouldn’t kill my brother.”
“Hard truths, sweetheart,” Savage says. “We don’t know what happened to Angelena but we’re also not telling you Sonia, or Sofia, or whatever the fuck she calls herself, wouldn’t kill Gio. We’re telling you she wouldn’t do it in public.”
“In other words, they could have grabbed him and killed him,” I say, but I don’t wait for a reply. I pull my hand from Kace’s and stand up, walking back toward the area where I woke up, but I don’t sit down. I step into a galley way where there’s a fridge and microwave, and collapse against the wall, out of sight, out of my own mind. Kace steps in front of me, his legs framing my lips, hips molded to mine. “We’ll get through this. We’re doing all the right things.”
“I can’t lose Gio, Kace. I need to know he’s on this earth breathing for me to keep breathing. He doesn’t even know how to find me.”
“Call him when we land. And even if you can’t reach him, he’ll find you when you tell the world you’re Aria Stradivari.”