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“Damn it. I was hopeful.” A devilish smile split his face and he forced his way past me and into my space. “But at least that means we can talk about what the hell just happened out there. A fiancé, Cress. When did that happen?”
Li folded his tall lean frame into the small leather sofa that sat in the corner. After I shut us in, I found my way to the makeup chair that sat before the counter lining the wall opposite him.
“It’s not really something I can discuss.”
“You’re going to have to give me something.”
“It’s family stuff and very complicated.” I jerked my hands through my hair.
“What kind of complicated?” He arched a brow.
“The ‘he’s not my fiancé by choice’ kind of complicated,” I huffed.
Li stared at me for a long moment then leaned forward. “That very sexy, fine man should be everyone’s choice. Hell he’d surely be mine. Those are the types of complications I would gladly embrace.”
Li was bisexual so I wasn’t surprised by his enthusiasm about Elias. I wouldn’t dare say the man wasn’t nice to look at but that was the problem. Everything else about him was the issue. “I can’t really go into detail about my family and their primitive ways but my brother wants me to marry Elias because it’s necessary.”
“Devereaux isn’t Italian and this sounds very gangsterish.”
“Very much gangsterishbut it’s alsoveryreal.”
Li shrugged. “Not all that uncommon. I’m half Asian. My culture practices arranged marriages. It’s typically set up by matchmakers that the families hire but it still exists. It’s also a class thing and rich people do it all the time to keep their old wealth contained.”
“This isn’t about money and are you telling me that you would be okay with your family setting rules about your future, about who you were allowed to love, because I can’t imagine that being the case.”
I delivered a questioning look. Li was not very close to his family. He’d chosen to dance instead of following his family’s plans of him becoming a doctor. He slept with both women and men with no consideration for the so-called embarrassment it brought his parents.
“No, but I might if the person they forced me to love looked like your fiancé.” Her smile only further irked my nerves.
It was deeper than just the marriage. I was expected to forget who he was. Who his family was?
Elias killed my brother.
But my brother had killed his.
I couldn’t truly feel the resentment, which I wanted to embrace about the Omari family, because they suffered a loss just as our family had. This life was what put us at odds and this life was what was forcing an alliance that neither of us wanted.
“You wouldn’t understand.” I slipped from the chair and walked to the door, pulling it open and staring at Li. “I need to prepare for tonight and so do you.”
His frown came as quickly as it went and Li moved to the door but he didn’t leave right away. “We’re going to kill it out there tonight.”
His lean frame bent over me and I was lifted into his embrace. I hugged him back because Li was my friend, a very good friend.
“We are.” I smiled as I untangled myself from him and shut the door after he winked over his shoulder and headed across the hall to his dressing room. I slumped into the spot where he had just been but lifted the cable knitted weighted blanket draped over the back and unfolded it to cover my body. Two things were very certain. I had to mentally prepare for my performance that evening and I had to prepare for dinner with my future husband after my performance because both were happening and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to prevent either of them.
SEVEN
elias
I walkedinto my family home and stopped just beyond the door feeling a sense of dread. I suppressed the pulsing urges to embrace the stifling feelings that closed in on me the second I inhaled my first breath once again inside these walls. I hadn’t been here in four years but everything felt the same. I was different but this place was exactly as the last time I’d been here.
Every inch of this house was a painful memory that I had never been the son my family wanted me to be.
Directly in front of me was a wood landing that matched the surface of dual staircases that started and ended separately. The wall of the foyers were chapel gray, slates of tile and the wood floors were a few shades lighter and textured.
Our father had always been ahead of his time. He liked nice things and loved being at the forefront of elegance. While his peers had homes that had been passed down within their lineages for centuries, he built a fortress that was fit for a modern day king. Voice-command showers. Temperature-controlled floors and wine cellars throughout the property. Twenty-three million dollars was invested in this home which was now valued at twice as much.
Now it belonged to Ez and I. I was surprised to find that he hadn’t cut me out of the will. A copy had been prepared for me, which Ez handed over this morning after he insisted I move into our family home with him and his wife. It was just the two of them. Not that it mattered because there was an East and West wing, separated into three levels. Basement, main level, and upper level.
