CHAPTER ONE
Once you experience loss, the kind that turns your heart to glass and then shatters it to a million pieces, a loss that keeps cutting you and making you bleed, you are left with a fear you will lose someone else you love. For me, with my mom and dad gone, my fear of losing Gio has always been a living, breathing thing—a knife-wielding monster stalking me, about to cut open my heart and watch me bleed. And now, now that Gio is standing here in front of me, the only thing I’m bleeding is joy.
I fling myself forward and wrap my arms around him, but my joy is not his joy. His hands come down on my arms. “Move, Aria,” he says, and when my chin tilts up to study him I find more than his dark, Italian good looks and a three-day stubble—he’s glaring over my head at Kace. “What the fuck are you doing with my sister, Kace?” He tries to set me aside.
My leg steps wide, in front of his, hands pushing against his steel wall of a chest. “What are you doing?” I demand, holding onto him with all that I am. “Stop.”
His jaw tics and his eyes lance mine. “What is he doing here, Aria?”
“I invited him.”
“He’s Kace fucking August, Aria. I don’t even want to know how that happened and I don’t care. Step aside and let me deal with him.”
There’s a tiny pinch in my chest at the familiar way Gio references Kace. I mean they’ve met years before and Kace is famous, but this reads like more. “He’s an old friend of Dad’s. You know that.”
“Which is exactly my problem,” he says. “You really think him being here is innocent?”
“Don’t go down that rabbit hole with him, Aria,” Kace warns, his voice ticking with agitation. “Don’t do that to me or us.”
Gio’s gaze jerks toward Kace. “Us? There is no fucking ‘us’ for you with my sister, Kace. I’m here now. I can tell her how it is.”
There’s a shift of energy behind me and I know Kace has lost patience. He’s moving toward us and I rotate just in time to press my hands on the chests of both men. “Kace,” I plead, my eyes meeting his. “Don’t. He’s just trying to protect me.”
“And who protects you from him?” Kace demands.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Gio snaps. “She doesn’t need protection from me.”
“Really?” Kace challenges. “You’re the one who knocked on doors and brought trouble to her.”
“Like you?” Gio challenges.
“I’m not trouble for Aria. I might be for you.”
“Kace,” I warn, balling my hand around his T-shirt, and when he looks at me, I remind him of what matters. “He’s my brother.”
“There is nothing you don’t know,” he says. “Your brother’s just freaking the fuck out.”
“Yeah, I’ll show you freaking the fuck out,” Gio snaps. “He knows who we are, Aria. I’m about two seconds from snapping, August. How are you with my sister? And it seems you’re fucking her, too, to top it all off.”
I hit Gio in the chest. “Stop talking like that. Stop it now. Both of you, back off now.” They don’t move. “Now!”
Both men grimace, staring each other down, but a heavy moment passes and there seems to be some general, unspoken agreement between them. In unison, they both take two steps back. I do the same to allow myself to get a good view and read of the two people I both love and want to throttle right now.
“I didn’t find Aria,” Kace says. “She found me. And I love her, man. I am not here to hurt her or you. I don’t want anything that’s yours.”
“You love her?” Gio challenges. “Bullshit.”
“You left, Gio,” I say. “I found my own way.”
He flicks me a frustrated look. “You’re too naive. Mom made you that way. You found a path he wanted you to find.” He glares an accusation in Kace’s direction. “I should beat your ass.”
“I’m not going to fight you,” Kace says. “That’s not good for Aria. That gets us nowhere.”
“Because you know I’ll break every bone in your hand and make sure you never play again.”
I step in front of Gio and shove him. “Stop. You will not touch his hand. Dad once called him the one true daisy in the wind. That might not mean anything to you, but it does to me and it did to Dad. The one person he felt worthy of playing a Stradivarius.”
“And now, maybe he feels he’s the one person worthy of the secret of its creation.”
“No,” Kace says. “Absolutely not. That’s you and Aria.”
“But if you’re fucking her, you have access.”
“No,” Kace says. “That is not what this is.”
“And yet here you are, and the only good thing about that is I now have access to your ass to beat.”
“If you touch him,” I say softly, “we’re done, Gio. Done. I am all but done right now.”
His gaze jerks to mine. “You’d shut me out for him?”
“I love him. He has done nothing wrong.”
Gio’s eyes meet mine, a brutal anger in his, scolding like lava from a volcano about to erupt, but like Kace, he’s a man of control and I watch him wrangle with his emotions, watch him restrain himself. His attention jerks to Kace’s. “Leave. Now.”
“He owns the building, Gio,” I say, losing my patience with my brother. “He is not leaving.”
“I don’t own the building,” Kace counters. “You and Gio own the building.”
“The deed is on your desk, Gio,” I say. “He paid it off for us.”
“Because he wants something,” Gio bites out. “Why don’t you see that? You of all people should see that.”
“If you have a reason not to trust Kace,” I say, “speak it now.”
“He’s Kace-fucking-August. He spent weeks with Dad. It’s not an accident that he’s here. He didn’t just innocently show back up in our lives.”
“You’re right,” I say. “Sofia made that happen.”
His eyes sharpen, his stare cutting to me from Kace. “What does that mean?”
“The letter from Sofia I found on your desk told me there was an auction at Riptide for a Stradivarius. It also declared that auction was the answer to finding our family secret. I went there looking for you. I found Kace. He was bidding on the Stradivarius, as you would expect of the greatest violinist on planet Earth. I found him, Gio, not the other way around.”
Gio captures my shoulders and pulls me to stand in front of him. “What letter from Sofia?”
A chill races down my spine with the confirmation of what I already knew. “You didn’t leave it, did you?”
“No. I didn’t fucking leave it.” He draws in a deep breath, the lines of his handsome face drawn tight. His lashes lower and he abruptly sets me away from him, his gaze pinning Kace’s. “We are not done.”