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FOUR
REBECCA
“Your father is dead.” The voice on my office phone shocked me in so many ways.
“Mom,” I croaked out. I’d not heard from her since I sent my parents away last month on the heels of the Sunrise drug indictment for my father. “I sent word through a courier two weeks ago that Dad was in the clear and you could both come home.”
“I’ve been busy cleaning bed pans and changing IVs.” The anger in her voice stung. “He wasn’t well enough to travel.”
“I’m so sorry, Mom.” As if my father doing a deal to sell a date rape drug was my fault. All I’d done was flown them to the Maldives so my father wouldn’t die in jail. “Where are you now?”
“Where you sent me.” Yep, she sounded resentful.
“I meant, where on the island?” I hadn’t exactly sent them to a backward, third-world country.
“At this place’s idea of a morgue. I want out of here immediately. I’m burying him in New York. Either send a plane for me or—”
“I’ll send a plane for you. Just give me twenty-four hours. Do you have enough money?”
“Yes. Goodbye.”
The phone went dead and the silence rattled me.
My father was dead.
My hands shook as I picked up my cell phone, wondering who to call first. Sebastien? Despite being in love with him, as well as Anthony and Giancarlo, our history ran deeper and I often instinctively wanted him first. But my sisters needed to know. And Nate, of course.
Had my mother called them?
I put down my phone and stared at it. I had easily managed to charter a plane that sent them to the Maldives with the FBI breathing down my neck. Now the task of sending one to pick them up with my father in a coffin, unraveled me.
My phone stayed silent and I breathed watching it. I waited for a call from Camille or Christina or Nate. Nothing. This was the ultimate punishment from my mother. I had to call them. I had to hear their tears. Well, my sisters’. Nate wouldn’t cry. Unless he thought I was upset.
I felt...nothing.
I wondered if the FBI pursuing an indictment against my father sped up his death. He’d been given six months to live with his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. But medical advances were being made and he may have had a chance had he been here in New York where he could have gotten the best care in the world.
A thought jolted me, and without a second thought, I dialed a phone number that perhaps should have been at the bottom of my list.
“Rebecca?” Julian Russo, the FBI agent who threatened to take down my father answered, sounding surprised.
“Hi, Jules.” I took a breath. “My father... He’s...”
“Dead?” Did he know?
“You heard?”
“I hear it in your voice.”
“Yes.” It affected me after all. “I guess I couldn’t say the words out loud when it came time to utter them.”
“That’s natural. How are you?”
“Shocked. I have to tell my sisters, my brother. And I have to make arrangements to bring him home. I have your final assurances that my mother isn’t a suspect or a person of—”
“No. Your mother wasn’t even listed on any of Domenico Holdings’ financial paperwork.”
“That I knew.”
“Rebecca?” Julian calling me by my formal name stilled me. Sent a wave of...something through me.
What was that?
“I’m here. I just realized I have to call lawyers now too.”
“Sebastien will help you.”
“Right.” Funny how all I wanted was his arms right now. But his legal skills would certainly come to my aid. “And you promise that my mother is in the clear? She wants a plane to come home. I’m good to go on that?”
“Rebecca, is there anything I can do? As a friend? Semper Amici,” he whispered our motto from St. Mary’s Prep where he, Sebastien, Anthony, and I had gone to high school.
Friends forever...
“Semper Amici.” I’d found myself so attracted to him last month. All while he wanted to put my father in jail. Those events brought Sebastien back into my life. And Anthony and Giancarlo. Love. The thing I actually wanted more than anything before I had to assume control. Now I had love. But not a father. Sebastien, Anthony, and Giancarlo had given me everything I needed. So why did hearing Julian’s voice make me feel like something was still missing? Hating how I suddenly felt very vulnerable, I said, “There is something you can do.”
“What, Becca?”
