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“Sort it out,” Carmen said firmly, her green eyes flickering between us with concern etched into her freckled face.
“I don’t know where your sister is,” I said to her, and if I hadn’t been raised never to hit a woman, she would have gotten the worst of it right then.
“So find her!” Carmen practically screamed. “Talk to your brother and find her!”
Kieran and I exchanged a long, hard look before we wordlessly agreed to move away from prying eyes.
“What are you all looking at?” Liam started, turning to the crowd who had gathered to look at us. They started to dissolve through Carmen and Liam telling them to go back to the party.
I was barely paying attention. My heartbeat was hammering, and I felt sick to my stomach.
Kieran and I ended up inside the closed restaurant attached to the venue, the dim lighting casting shadows across the empty tables. It was empty and I supposed Kieran gave the host some cash to keep people away from now.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked, plopping myself on an empty chair.
Kieran ran a hand through his dark hair, looking every bit the enigmatic figure he always was, but bloodied. “There’s more going on here than you know, Tristan,” he began, his voice low. “It’s not just about Nick Rossi.”
“Talk then,” I demanded, rubbing the soreness from my jaw, my tone brokering no argument.
“I don’t know if I can make you understand,” he said. “It’s hard to explain.”
I leaned against a table, crossing my arms over my chest. “Oh, I’m sure you can make me understand, brother.” My voice was tight with a mix of pain and impatience. “Because right now, I’m in the dark and I hate it.”
“Believe me, I know how you feel about being left out of the loop,” he said, meeting my gaze squarely. “But this is bigger than any of us realized. I kept thinking about how to tell you about this and I’ve been having a hard time.”
“Why did you stop me from killing Nick Rossi?”
Kieran looked up, his gaze darting around toward the cameras in the restaurant. “I know you have a reputation, but you want to keep some plausible deniability,” he replied. “And like I said, there’s more to this than you know.”
“So what don’t I know?”
“Nick Rossi is a snake, but he’s not your problem, Tristan,” Kieran said, his eyes steady on mine. I could see something in them, a warning that this conversation was about to turn my world upside down.
“Then who? Spit it out.” I leaned forward, my hands flat against the cool surface of the table between us.
“It’s Silvio Orsini,” he stated, cold and hard as the marble beneath my palms. “Adriana’s father.”
“Yeah, I know who he is,” I said, because I thought the name would feel heavy on my tongue, a weight that sunk deep into my stomach. “What the hell does he have to do with this?”
“Everything,” Kieran replied, his gaze shifting toward the shadows of the closed restaurant.
Carmen stepped forward, Liam trailing behind her, his expression grim. “Okay,” she said. “Yeah, sorry, I’ve been eavesdropping. This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“What the fuck are you both talking about?” I asked. “You better tell me quickly because my patience is wearing very thin right now.”
Carmen rubbed her temple. “I think,” she said softly. “I think Adriana might be in danger.”
Chapter Sixteen: Adriana
The wind from the sea howled, battering against the fragile windows of the beach house perched on stilts above the angry waves.
My head pounded.
I was only vaguely aware that I was, in fact, somewhere I’d never been before. I didn’t know how I had gotten there. I had no idea how I had gotten to this bed, which smelled of fresh lavender soap.
The room itself was gorgeous and clean, but the fact that I had gotten here at aIl made my stomach twist in knots.
I had never seen this place before, another hidden property of my father’s empire, yet there I was, waking up alone in its unfamiliar confines. The madness of the ocean mirrored my own disorientation, the frothy whitecaps a chaotic dance to the rhythm of my racing thoughts.
