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WithBoonesick,thethree of us were swamped with our work, plus another the next day. Besides Boone’s shitty timing—literally—a bug had broken out in our on-site daycare, and many of the parents of the children who usually took advantage of the work benefit had to call out to work to stay home with sick kids.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I could corner them all in our private gym. Keene and Royce were at the bench press while Boone, who still looked under the weather, was attempting to jog on the treadmill. Royce had a white stick in his mouth, his cheek popping out on one side like a squirrel packing in acorns. He’d come in yesterday sucking on a damn sucker and hadn’t gone more than a handful of minutes without having one in his mouth since.
“Y’all are fucking idiots,” I said as I reached earshot, my fury at them only building over the last day instead of winding down. “You realize Lessia is only going to tolerate your shit for a little while longer—assuming she hasn’t already hit her limit—before she permanently moves to New York City or Milan or wherever the hell she’s been spending most her time over the last few years?”
Keene carefully placed the bar back on its perch before sitting up. “I will not apologize for looking after my baby sister. I did, however,” he continued before I could rip into him, “apologize to her for how I went about it.”
That pulled me up short. Maybe I had allowed myself to get worked up over nothing. “You said you were sorry to Alessia?” I hated gray areas in anything. The world ran smoother when everything was black and white. Having to clarify every detail was a habit so ingrained in my DNA it didn’t even piss off my brothers anymore.
“Yes,” Keene said simply. “I apologized for how I went about working around her and asked her not to sleep with Brody in retaliation.”
I felt my eyebrow lift. “You think he would let her?” Whether or not she would fuck Keene’s friend to make her point wasn’t even a question in my mind. I was more curious if it would have worked. Sleeping with Brody so she could get back at Keene was something I wouldn’t have put past her at all. Brody was the outlier in that plan. I would have thought he would keep his hands to himself, considering Alessia was Keene’s sister, but even as mad as I was the other morning, I could see the interest in his eyes before he could mask it.
Keene wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel before flinging it aside. “If you’d asked me that a few days ago, I would have laughed in your face. But he got that goofy look watching her when I drove them to the airport yesterday.”
“The one that men always get when they fall under Alessia’s spell?” Royce asked.
He hesitated. “Brody might be interested, but he’s not one to be led around by his cock. No way in hell will he let Alessia run wild over him.”
I saw the thought hit him as surely as a cartoon light bulb going off over his head. I knew my brother enough to know that he assumed that, while Brody wouldn’t be led around by his dick, our sister might be easier to handle if she was distracted by her interest in the man.
“I should call him and give him some inside—”
My fist flew into his face before I comprehended my impulse. In typical Accardi fashion, Boone and Royce jumped in, but even two against one, they were no match for me. I didn’t let the beast in me slip his leash often, but between Alessia, Gia, and the minx who invaded my dreams, leaving me waking up bathed in sweat night after night, my hand wrapped around my erection and her name on my lips, I couldn’t control myself. “You’re not giving your friend pointers on how to gain our sister’s favor. You’re not interfering in her life anymore. None of us are going to meddle in her life any more than we would in each other’s.” My fist didn’t slow, didn’t differentiate between the three of them, determined to knock sense into them equally. “Our sister is a grown-ass woman, not the snot-nosed teen she was when we left home. Every time you make a decision on her behalf or otherwise try to run her life, you’re telling her without words that you don’t trust in her ability to live her own life. We will no longer tell the females in our lives that they are somehow not qualified for or otherwise unfit to do anything they set their minds to. Is that clear?” I laid the three of them out on the ground as I loomed over them, breathing hard, my hand flexing with still pent-up anger. The pain in my knuckles felt good, the minor discomfort giving me a slight release, just enough to keep me from blowing up completely, though not nearly enough to clear the anger from my system.
“Is this all about Alessia?” Royce always was a shrewd bastard.
“She’s most of it.” But not all of it. I threw a few towels down to where they were still sprawled out at my feet. “Gia’s opened my eyes to how we’ve been treating them, her and Lessia. I didn’t mean for it to turn into a gender thing—I know none of us have an issue with a capable woman, but with Gia being so sickly when she was born … I guess I’ve coddled her in some ways. It had nothing to do with being a girl, but she and Alessia took it that way, especially given how we’ve handled our sister until now.” I blew out a breath. “Alessia pointed out to me that just because her choices aren’t ours doesn’t make them wrong. We’ve belittled her job, her life, and then get our noses out of joint when she puts space between us. And because she pulls away, we turn into rat bastards and interfere even more. No wonder she doesn’t talk with us.”
“She talks plenty,” Boone protested.
“Does she? What’s going on in her life? Where did she go for her photoshoot? Do you know what she’s planning on doing if she’s going to pull back from modeling? Hell, for all we know, she has a steady boyfriend in Europe—she’s certainly there more than she is here. She has property we didn’t know about. What other things is she interested in? She tried to hide her excitement about spending the day with us at A.T.—she might not have experience enough for teaching classes, but there’s plenty of work on the business side of things she could take on. Hell, I don’t even know if she graduated college. She was taking online classes after she graduated high school since modeling required her to travel so much, but do any of you know what she was majoring in?” I shook my head at the matching blank expressions staring up at me.
“From this moment on, everyone in our family, no matter whether they served, no matter whether or not they have a dick, will be treated equally. The Accardi siblings might stick our noses in each other’s business, but we do it with more than just superior attitude and misplaced intentions.” I thought about my past clusterfuck. Lord knew I had enough experience thinking I knew best, given the hellish road I paved with all my best intentions.
Chapter 13
Alessia
Myfeetweren’tasbad as Brody or the doctor made them out to be, but they would certainly be tender for a few days. They served as a good excuse to forego dinner with Karl—I was afraid I might have hooked him a bit more than I’d intended. The bad thing about the rich, fixation types was that they liked who they liked and ignored the rest. I needed to get into his residence. My original plan to go in covertly to ensure I stayed out of his crosshairs was no longer possible because I couldn’t be sure I could ditch Brody to do what needed to be done. Karl Albrecht had expressed more than a passing interest in me during our previous interactions, and just his gaze on me made me want to scrub myself down with bleach. He wouldn’t be my mark, dammit, but the least I could do was get as much intel as possible to help whoever was chosen for the assignment. He’d popped onto our radar a few months ago when an Italian opera singer had gone missing. She ran in some of the same circles I did, and whispers of unwanted attention from Karl Albrecht, paired with the same people looking at him with fear in their eyes, had put me on his trail. We found seven other missing women over the past ten years—two of which were Americans—and Matteo was still digging. We uncovered more than rumors as well—forensic evidence, police reports, and even a few eyewitnesses who eventually vanished. It all confirmed that Albrecht was too connected and wealthy to be touched by the justice system. When he fixated on a woman, he owned her—he didn’t just keep her for a few days before killing her. He spent weeks or months torturing the women, turning them into something less than human, stripping them of their dignity, hope, and humanity before he discarded them like trash, not even bothering to give them the respect in death that he denied them while they were alive.
Oliver was an annoyance as well, but I hadn’t lied to Brody when I said he wasn’t a danger to me yet. How soon it took him to escalate into more than an irritant, I didn’t know, but I sincerely hoped his family read the writing on the wall before that happened and I had to take care of him. I wouldn’t kill him, but depending on his actions, I couldn’t help if I “accidentally” cut something off that wouldn’t grow back.
I checked in with Matteo by posting a photo of my feet on my private social media. My friends replied with sympathy, and Matteo liked it, letting me know he’d seen it. Brody’s offer to assist me in the tub had certainly gotten my attention, and I wondered if I should play up my feet—indulge my girly side and let him play the hero—or do what I usually did and suck up the pain. A few trash bags, some duct tape, and a shot of whiskey, if I could sneak some, and I would be fine to shower and sleep. Being a damsel in distress wasn’t my style. But the other part of me argued that any chance to get Brody’s hands on me was a good one I shouldn’t waste. Especially if it involved me, a tub, and some bubble bath.
“Done eating?” The man in question brought my attention back. I looked down at the lettuce I was picking at—without dressing. I’d eaten a bite of an apple, a carton of plain yogurt, and the sorry excuse for a salad that day. The two witches in charge of dressing me had made it abundantly clear that they believed I was putting on weight. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to give anyone ammunition by eating something with more substance. Tony knew not to delete the pictures I had him take of my measurements—which were spot-on, thank you very much—and that was my ace up my sleeve if Valencia executives came calling. I was not taking the fall for someone else not doing their job correctly. As it was, I was pretty sure my internal organs were going to bruise from being squeezed into the dress that day, and I warned the two women that they better have the correct dress size for tomorrow’s shoot, or I would be the one causing problems for them. Clothing for shoots was always insanely tight, but squeezing into one a size smaller was even more difficult.
“Yep.” I grimaced. “My brothers always wonder why the first thing I do is stuff myself with red meat.”
He gave me a sympathetic look. “I don’t blame you. How long does the shoot go on tomorrow?”
“Just until around lunchtime, thank goodness. Tony needs the morning light or whatever for the next bunch. Then we’re done.” I hesitated, not sure how much to fill him in on Karl. “If Mr. Albrecht asks me to join him tomorrow afternoon, I won’t say no.” My chin jutted out, and I gave him a challenging look. “I can’t afford to offend him or ignore this opportunity to network. But I won’t let him dismiss you.” He scoffed at that, but the seriousness on my face had him pausing. “I don’t want us separated while I’m in there, even for a minute.”
He straightened. “You’re afraid of him.”
Now it was my turn to scoff. “Not afraid, but I’d be a fool not to be cautious. Karl Albrecht is not a man to take lightly, and while I would benefit from spending the afternoon with him, I’m not about to get into a personal entanglement with him, no matter what I said to you when we discussed it earlier.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
