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CHAPTER ONE
Once you experience loss, the kind that turns your heart to glass and then shatters it to a million pieces, a loss that keeps cutting you and making you bleed, you are left with a fear you will lose someone else you love. For me, with my mom and dad gone, my fear of losing Gio has always been a living, breathing thing—a knife-wielding monster stalking me, about to cut open my heart and watch me bleed. And now, now that Gio is standing here in front of me, the only thing I’m bleeding is joy.
I fling myself forward and wrap my arms around him, but my joy is not his joy. His hands come down on my arms. “Move, Aria,” he says, and when my chin tilts up to study him I find more than his dark, Italian good looks and a three-day stubble—he’s glaring over my head at Kace. “What the fuck are you doing with my sister, Kace?” He tries to set me aside.
My leg steps wide, in front of his, hands pushing against his steel wall of a chest. “What are you doing?” I demand, holding onto him with all that I am. “Stop.”
His jaw tics and his eyes lance mine. “What is he doing here, Aria?”
“I invited him.”
“He’s Kace fucking August, Aria. I don’t even want to know how that happened and I don’t care. Step aside and let me deal with him.”
There’s a tiny pinch in my chest at the familiar way Gio references Kace. I mean they’ve met years before and Kace is famous, but this reads like more. “He’s an old friend of Dad’s. You know that.”
“Which is exactly my problem,” he says. “You really think him being here is innocent?”
“Don’t go down that rabbit hole with him, Aria,” Kace warns, his voice ticking with agitation. “Don’t do that to me or us.”
Gio’s gaze jerks toward Kace. “Us? There is no fucking ‘us’ for you with my sister, Kace. I’m here now. I can tell her how it is.”
There’s a shift of energy behind me and I know Kace has lost patience. He’s moving toward us and I rotate just in time to press my hands on the chests of both men. “Kace,” I plead, my eyes meeting his. “Don’t. He’s just trying to protect me.”
“And who protects you from him?” Kace demands.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Gio snaps. “She doesn’t need protection from me.”
“Really?” Kace challenges. “You’re the one who knocked on doors and brought trouble to her.”
“Like you?” Gio challenges.
“I’m not trouble for Aria. I might be for you.”
“Kace,” I warn, balling my hand around his T-shirt, and when he looks at me, I remind him of what matters. “He’s my brother.”
“There is nothing you don’t know,” he says. “Your brother’s just freaking the fuck out.”
“Yeah, I’ll show you freaking the fuck out,” Gio snaps. “He knows who we are, Aria. I’m about two seconds from snapping, August. How are you with my sister? And it seems you’re fucking her, too, to top it all off.”
I hit Gio in the chest. “Stop talking like that. Stop it now. Both of you, back off now.” They don’t move. “Now!”
Both men grimace, staring each other down, but a heavy moment passes and there seems to be some general, unspoken agreement between them. In unison, they both take two steps back. I do the same to allow myself to get a good view and read of the two people I both love and want to throttle right now.
“I didn’t find Aria,” Kace says. “She found me. And I love her, man. I am not here to hurt her or you. I don’t want anything that’s yours.”
“You love her?” Gio challenges. “Bullshit.”
“You left, Gio,” I say. “I found my own way.”
He flicks me a frustrated look. “You’re too naive. Mom made you that way. You found a path he wanted you to find.” He glares an accusation in Kace’s direction. “I should beat your ass.”
“I’m not going to fight you,” Kace says. “That’s not good for Aria. That gets us nowhere.”
“Because you know I’ll break every bone in your hand and make sure you never play again.”
I step in front of Gio and shove him. “Stop. You will not touch his hand. Dad once called him the one true daisy in the wind. That might not mean anything to you, but it does to me and it did to Dad. The one person he felt worthy of playing a Stradivarius.”
“And now, maybe he feels he’s the one person worthy of the secret of its creation.”
“No,” Kace says. “Absolutely not. That’s you and Aria.”
“But if you’re fucking her, you have access.”
“No,” Kace says. “That is not what this is.”
“And yet here you are, and the only good thing about that is I now have access to your ass to beat.”
“If you touch him,” I say softly, “we’re done, Gio. Done. I am all but done right now.”
His gaze jerks to mine. “You’d shut me out for him?”
“I love him. He has done nothing wrong.”
Gio’s eyes meet mine, a brutal anger in his, scolding like lava from a volcano about to erupt, but like Kace, he’s a man of control and I watch him wrangle with his emotions, watch him restrain himself. His attention jerks to Kace’s. “Leave. Now.”
“He owns the building, Gio,” I say, losing my patience with my brother. “He is not leaving.”
“I don’t own the building,” Kace counters. “You and Gio own the building.”
“The deed is on your desk, Gio,” I say. “He paid it off for us.”
“Because he wants something,” Gio bites out. “Why don’t you see that? You of all people should see that.”
“If you have a reason not to trust Kace,” I say, “speak it now.”
“He’s Kace-fucking-August. He spent weeks with Dad. It’s not an accident that he’s here. He didn’t just innocently show back up in our lives.”
“You’re right,” I say. “Sofia made that happen.”
His eyes sharpen, his stare cutting to me from Kace. “What does that mean?”
“The letter from Sofia I found on your desk told me there was an auction at Riptide for a Stradivarius. It also declared that auction was the answer to finding our family secret. I went there looking for you. I found Kace. He was bidding on the Stradivarius, as you would expect of the greatest violinist on planet Earth. I found him, Gio, not the other way around.”
Gio captures my shoulders and pulls me to stand in front of him. “What letter from Sofia?”
A chill races down my spine with the confirmation of what I already knew. “You didn’t leave it, did you?”
“No. I didn’t fucking leave it.” He draws in a deep breath, the lines of his handsome face drawn tight. His lashes lower and he abruptly sets me away from him, his gaze pinning Kace’s. “We are not done.”
With that, he turns on his heel and walks toward the back of the store. I stand there and watch him, my heart in my throat. He cuts right and turns into his office, slamming the door. Kace steps behind me, his hands settling on my shoulders.
“There’s nothing you don’t know, Aria. Not where I’m concerned.”
I twist around in his arms and face him, my hand presses to his side. “I know, but I don’t understand what that was with Gio.”
“It wasn’t about me. I made the mistake of hiding something from you once. I won’t do it again and I would have told you everything then. You know things about me now that could destroy me. Use it, if you must, to give him leverage over me.”
“No. He might actually use it.”
“Baby, I’m willing to take the risk.”
“I’m not,” I insist.
“You might change your mind. This is for you, and us, Aria. I need your brother’s trust. Walker needs his trust if they’re going to help us.”
The door behind us opens and Savage walks in. “I waited until he was in his office,” he says. “I didn’t want to scare him off. What do I need to know?”
Kace turns back to me, his hands resting on my shoulders. “I’ll update Savage. Gio’s rattled by the letter, more than he was me, and that says a lot. We need to know what’s going on.” He lowers his voice. “I love you. He’s alive. Go talk to your brother and hug him properly.”
In that moment, I fall more in love with Kace than ever. He knows Gio will try to turn me against him. He knows and he still wants me to go to my brother. I press to my toes and kiss him. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Not a chance in hell. I’ll be right here waiting for you.”
I turn and run toward my brother’s office, suddenly afraid he’ll disappear again.
CHAPTER TWO
I open Gio’s office door to find him standing behind his desk, his hands planted on the top of the wooden surface, his head tucked low, a pulse of agitation radiating from him. He doesn’t look up. I step inside the room and shut the door. Still, he doesn’t look up but then he knows it’s me. “Sofia left the letter for me to find, didn’t she?”
His jaw tics. “Yes, I suspect she did.”
“You have feelings for her,” I say, unable to tame the accusation in my statement.
His eyes cut through me. “Where’s the letter?”
“Who is she?”
He pushes off the desk and runs a rough hand through his hair before his hand settles on his jean-clad hips. He’s in all black and I can’t help but believe that’s because he’s been skulking around places he shouldn’t be. Because he should have been here, damn it. “Her mother worked for Dad,” he says. “She and I had a little thing when we were in high school.”
“And she just rang your number?”
“I was looking for answers, Aria. I know you know that. My questions led me to her
.”
“In Italy?”
His lips press together. “Yes. I went to Italy.”
My anger is a hot whip that has me lifting off the door and rounding the desk, where I shove his big ass, which does nothing, so I rest my palm on his chest. “You could have died. You are such an asshole. I didn’t even know you were there. You might not have come back.” I rear back to hit him again and he catches my wrists.
“Pipe down, little sis. I’m here. I was never not going to come back.”
I push against him. “Let go.”
“Are you going to hit me?”
“Yes, and you deserve it. You were begging for the trouble you apparently found. You didn’t even take my calls.”
“I ditched my phone. I didn’t want to be connected to the States or to you.”
“You could have found a way to communicate,” I snap. “For instance, before you left. And you’re holding me. You can let go of me anytime now.”
“Are you going to hit me?” he asks again.
“Yes, again. I just told you, you deserve it.”
He growls and lets me go anyway. I palm him hard in the chest with both hands and then face the desk, leaning on the hard surface. “Damn it, Gio.” I glance over at him. “Who’s her mother?”
“Angelena Bertoni.”
“Angelena?” I push off the desk and turn to him again. “Wasn’t her daughter Sonia, not Sofia?”
“It’s a running joke between us. I forgot her name way back when we first met and called her Sofia. Sofia became our thing.”
“Oh. Well, that’s weird, but whatever. I loved Angelena. So did Mom. She was mom’s assistant in the office, not Dad’s, or that’s how I remember it. I was much younger than you were. Did you talk to Angelena? Does she know anything about the day Dad disappeared?”
“The answer to that question is why I went to Italy. She disappeared about three months after Dad disappeared.”
I blanch and lean on the desk, a twisting feeling in my belly. “That feels wrong.” I glance at Gio. “And connected.”
