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So we’d gone home as I tried to think about the slowest way of murdering Nick Rossi. I was vaguely aware that Liam was following us in his car and that, weirdly, Carmen had gotten in the car with him.
So that was something I hadn’t accounted for.
Any echoes of the raucous party had long since faded into a brooding silence that now hung over the Callahan estate like a heavy shroud. I was pacing the length of the opulent drawing room, my footsteps muffled by the thick Turkish rug beneath my boots. Each turn I made felt like a twist of a knife in my gut, the fury and confusion boiling inside me demanding an outlet.
I didn’t even care that Carmen was here.
“What the hell is going on? Where’s Adriana?” My hands were clenched so tightly that my knuckles whitened, a physical manifestation of the anger roiling within me.
Liam leaned against the mahogany bar, his usual carefree demeanor replaced by a shadow of concern. His eyes followed me as I turned to Kieran, who stood by the fireplace, his dark hair a stark contrast against the pale stone.
“Tristan,” Kieran began, his voice measured but laced with a strain that betrayed his calm exterior. He was sitting on the couch next to Carmen, rubbing his bruised face. “After brunch, Silvio—he took me aside.” He paused, searching for the right words as he avoided my gaze, choosing instead to fix his attention on the intricate carvings of the mantelpiece.
“Go on,” I urged, coming to a halt and crossing my arms over my chest. The tightness in my chest eased slightly with the hope of finally getting some answers.
“He asked about what happened at the Rossi place—the night Adriana was taken...and when Dad...when we lost him.” Kieran swallowed hard, the pain of our father’s death still raw for both of us.
“I mean, what did he need to know?” I asked him. “Dad died. It was fucking rough. What else is there to say?”
“I told him everything,” Kieran replied. “I told him that Adriana had been unharmed. Well, physically unharmed.”
“Okay…”
Kieran shifted his weight. “Silvio, I don’t know, he looked shocked, Tristan. Then he told me, in private, that it’s why he’s been trying to make a deal with Nick Rossi.”
I stared at him, trying to process his words. The room suddenly felt smaller, the walls inching closer as if to suffocate the life out of me. “A deal? With that snake Nick Rossi?” The thought alone made my blood boil, a hot surge of betrayal seeping into every pore. “After he kidnapped Adriana?”
“Yeah, the–”
“And you hadn’t told me?”
“Tristan, I–”
“Save it. Just... save it.” My mind raced, piecing together fragments of information, trying to weave them into something coherent, something that made sense. But all I came up with were more questions, each one a heavier burden than the last. “Adriana’s been kidnapped by Silvio,” I said, though saying it aloud felt like admitting a defeat I wasn’t ready to accept. “And we’re standing here playing guessing games while she’s out there... alone. Because you decided not to fucking tell me anything. How do you think that shakes out, huh?”
My knuckles whitened as my grip on the phone turned into a vice. The air seemed to thicken, heavy with the unsaid and the unknown, suffocating me inch by inch. I could almost feel Adriana’s absence, like a void in the room, a shadow where light should have been.
“You’re right,” Kieran said. Next to him, Carmen pretended to play with her phone. “You’re right, I fucked up. So let me tell you everything now.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Fucking spit it out.”
“Now, remember, this is all information I heard secondhand. All things he told me,” Kieran started, tapping his foot rhythmically on the rug. “After you called Silvio and Dad to tell them that Adriana had been kidnapped, he offered Nick Rossi a quarter of the Orsini business. All so that Nick Rossi wouldn’t lay a finger on Adriana, and at the time he didn’t know this, but obviously the twins.”
“Jesus Christ.” I ran a hand through my hair, the threads of control slipping between my fingers. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Kieran looked at me, his dark eyes a mirror of my own turmoil. “I wanted to, but there was never the right moment. With everything going on...”
“Right moment?” My laugh was bitter, hollow. “Since when do we wait for the right moment in this family? We take the moments we get.”
“I know, I—“ He started, but Carmen cleared her throat to interrupt him. She looked messy–we probably all did. The purple gown she’d worn to the party was wrinkled and her red hair cascaded around her face in a way that looked like it was very much not on purpose.
“Guys,” she started, her voice a little shaky. “You need to understand—“
“Understand what?” I demanded, my patience frayed to its breaking point. “That your father made a deal with the devil himself to protect Adriana?”
“More than that,” Carmen said, her eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that demanded attention. “Silvio himself didn’t tell you because he couldn’t afford to show weakness, not even to family.”
“Family,” I scoffed, the word tasting like ash. “I’m not family. And you…and my girlfriend…We’re all just pawns to him, aren’t we?”
