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His mood shifts, darkening, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “What I know is that you almost died last night. Had Savage not been with us, you might have. We can’t do forever if you aren’t here. This fight is for nothing if you leave me. And so, I cannot, and will not, blindly trust Gio with your life. And I’m asking you not to either.”
“I’m not.” My hand settles on his chest. “You know I’m not.”
You say that. I hear you say it, but I watched you on the plane go from persecuting him to protecting him in a matter of minutes.”
I bristle, stepping out of his reach and folding my arms in front of me. “He’s my brother. Of course, I want him to be good. Right now, I just want to listen to the messages. Can I do that?”
He studies me a long moment that turns into three, and then inclines his chin, turning away to open his suitcase. After a quick grab, he hands me a phone. “This one is for your use here in Europe. Don’t use it to call anyone but me, Walker, or those in Kayden and Ella’s circle. Adrian already programmed all the numbers in for you, including mine.” He holds up another phone. “I have it with me.” He shoves it in his pocket and adds, “Use another phone for anything else and destroy the SIM card afterward.” He reaches into the suitcase again and tosses a half dozen phones on the bed. “We have plenty. But it’s safe to check your messages on your new personal phone without risks.” He then gives me instructions to check the messages.
“Got it,” I say when he finishes.
His reply is one of his heavy-lidded stares that I can’t begin to read. Then without a word, he walks to the fireplace and leans a hand on the mantel, staring into the flames, his broad shoulders bunched. The Gio thing is getting to him and I get it. I’d react the same if he’d been drugged, but I can’t just shut Gio out. Not yet.
Sitting down on a giant oversized chair at the corner of the fireplace, I dial in the codes to get my messages. There is one new message that begins to play. My heart sinks when I hear the weak, elderly voice that is not Gio. “Ms. Alard, this is Donelle Bianchini. I realize that you planned to visit me here in Italy later in the month, but I am not a well man. It would in both our best interests if you could meet me sooner. Please call. I’d like to die peacefully with all that is dear to me properly attended to.”
I swallow hard and set the phone on the chair. “Kace,” I say, setting the phone on the mattress.
He pushes off the fireboard and turns to me, tilting his head. “What’s wrong?”
“Gio didn’t call, but Donelle Bianchini did.”
His eyes narrow, his spine straightening. “The seller of the 1685 Fetzer Stradivarius that we’re supposed to meet here in Rome?”
“Yes,” I say, feeling chilled to the bone with where this leads me. “He says he’s sick and doesn’t have much time left, as in dying. He sounded weak, Kace, but this all feels weird.” I stand up and we close the small space between us. “We’ve talked about this, about him,” I say, my hand settling on his chest, my need to touch him right now almost urgent. “It’s as if we were being lured to Rome and now we’re here, and—”
“It’s almost as if he knows we’re here,” he supplies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Fifteen minutes after I’ve discovered that voicemail, we’re at a kitchen table that sits in an alcove of the castle’s chef-style kitchen with steaming coffee in our cups. With us are Adrian, Kayden, and Ella, while Marabella fills coffee cups for each of us. I don’t ask where Savage is and neither does Kace, who is clearly on a mission for answers as he gets right to the point.
“The buzz about Donelle Bianchini came to me through my agent,” he says, “and right about the time we now know Sofia and these Blue Owls were hunting me and Aria down. My question is where are we on finding out his real story?”
“Point blank,” Kayden says, “he’s not a random seller that just happened to connect with you.”
Kace leans in closer. “What does that mean?”
I sit up straighter. “Yes, what does that mean?”
“He went to school with your father,” Kayden replies. “After which, the two of them stayed in touch and were part of a historic society.”
“In other words,” Ella says, “they have a deep history.”
I sit back, the air knocked out of me. “So it’s all a setup.”
“Seems that way,” Ella agrees, as Marabella sets a croissant in front of me.
“This will help,” Marabella promises and my lashes lower with the impact of her mothering, so like that of my own mother in this very moment when the past has chosen to collide with the present.
She starts to move away and afraid I’ve been rude, I catch her hand. “Thank you, Marabella. Very much. You just reminded me of my mother there a moment.” I ball my hand at my chest, over my breast. “It got me right here.”
“Of course it did, bella. You need hot chocolate. It soothes the nerves. Coffee frazzles the nerves.” She pats my hand and walks away.
“Does Donelle know Aria’s here?” Kace asks, clearly focused on the danger at hand.
Kayden arches a brow. “You mean does he know you’re both here? Because they need you both. And logically, no,” Kayden adds, sipping his coffee, his tattooed arms now exposed with his jacket gone, the ink on his wrist that of a hawk that matches the one on Ella’s wrist. I wonder about the tattoos that bind them while a name, my name, Stradivari, binds me and Kace in ways I never imagined possible. The same name that wants to destroy me and us.
“Walker kept you off the books,” Kayden continues, drawing me back into the moment, “and I have eyes and ears all over Italy and France. I’d hear a buzz about Aria Stradivari returning from the dead.” He glances at me. “I knew about Gio.”
I tilt my head, confused. “I thought Blake said you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know who he was at the time,” he replies, “but I knew about the new man working with the Blue Owls. We’ve now been able to reconcile the two as one.”
“What do you know about his involvement with them now?” Kace asks.
“Word on the street is that he’s still involved,” Ella replies, “and that’s a problem because that puts him at odds with Kayden.”
“They’re a rogue and dangerous operation,” Kayden says. “If I allow that to continue, I’ll not just appear weak, I would be weak. That has consequences I won’t try to explain. What matters here is that I won’t allow the Blue Owls to survive. Gio needs to get on the right side now.”
There is a lethal quality to Kayden in that moment that is downright palpable. “He was just trying to find out what they knew about our father and the formula,” I defend quickly. “We both secretly hoped he was alive.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Kayden says, “but the lure of easy money can be a drug. I’ve seen it happen too many times.”
Adrian sets his cup down. “I told Kayden about what went down at the club. He’s aware of our uncertainty about Gio’s motives.”
Kayden eyes Kace. “What do you think?”
“She loves him,” he says. “Therefore I need to protect him, but not at Aria’s expense.” His tone is absolute and he leaves no room for discussion on that topic. He moves on. “Do we know if Donelle is working with the Blue Owls or is this an entirely different attempt to get the formula?”
“I was going to bring that up next,” Kayden replies. “He has no obvious connection to the Blue Owls that we can find, but there could be a more elusive connection to someone in his circle. We’re working on that.”
“Let’s dissect one thing at a time,” Adrian says. “We need to decide what to do about Donelle, Gio, and then the Stradivari name reveal. Starting with Gio, who seems to be this wildcard affecting every plan we make. What are you doing to fix that?”
Kayden sips his coffee. “Gio and the Blue Owls become a non-issue if we remove their motivation to hunt Kace and Aria, at least for everyone but me. I say we deal with Donelle first simply because I don’t like unknowns. Then we dive into the Aria Stradivari reveal.”
“We’re against the Louvre for placement by the way,” Ella adds. “Not only is the Stradivari a piece of Rome’s history, we’d have to travel for the reveal.”
“I’ve already talked to Blake,” Kayden says. “The Galleria Borghese here in Rome will do what we need, and as a bonus, I’ll put the word out that the formula is under my protection.?
??
“And I’d prefer to leave Chris and Sara out of this,” Ella says. “For their protection.”
Kace glances at me. “Yes,” I say in answer to his silent question. “My father would approve. And I certainly approve of leaving Chris and Sara out of this.” I eye Kayden. “You know we don’t exactly have the formula yet, right? We’re close but we don’t have it.”
“The story I told the Galleria Borghese is this,” he says, “your father inherited what was left of the formula which is incomplete and damaged. You’ve had experts try to put it together but at this point in time, you’ve decided it’s forever lost. We’ll present them a sealed envelope and a partial formula the public can see.” He glances at Kace. “And I understand you have a violin to go on display with it.”
“I do,” Kace says. “We brought it with us.”
I glance over at him. “We talked about this. That’s millions of dollars.”
“Decision made, baby,” he says. “The gallery needs an incentive to do this. We’re doing this.” He glances at Kayden. “What if the press asks Aria why she came forward now?”
Adrian lifts his cup in my direction. “What do you want to say?”
“The truth. My father disappeared. My mother hid us away and as I’ve gotten older, I felt we did his memory a disservice.”
Adrian glances at Kayden and Ella and there’s a silent consensus between them before Adrian says, “Then say that.”
“What about her father’s murder?” Kace asks. “Will it spook the killer to find out that she’s alive?”
“It might,” Adrian says with surprising frankness. “But this is all going to come back to the Blue Owls, who Kayden plans to dismantle.”
“Sooner than later,” Kayden agrees and then gets back to the topic. “The same way I feel about dealing with Donelle and the reveal.”
“When?” Kace asks.
“Donelle two days from now on Thursday,” Kayden says. “The reveal and a press conference on Monday. I’ll handle the museum.” He eyes me. “You handle Donelle. Call him. Set up the meeting. If the Blue Owls show up after the call, we’ll be ready and one step closer to erasing them as a threat. Maybe we’ll even get lucky and Gio will show up.”
