“Booze, coffee, or hot chocolate?”
“All three?” I ask.
His lips curve. “Booze, coffee, and hot chocolate, coming up.”
A short while later, the fireplace is aglow in the corner, and I’m standing in the living room at the window watching snow flutter past the window. I imagine every flake as a page in a story, and I can’t read any of them. “Hot chocolate to soothe the soul,” Kace says, stepping to my side with a steaming cup of hot chocolate in his hand. I accept it, and the heat of the mug is a welcome warmth against my palms when I remain cold inside. I walk to a chair and sit down.
“You heard what I said about Angelena?” I ask. “Her voice clicked in my mind right before Gio showed up.”
Kace perches on the coffee table directly across from me, our knees just barely touching, but I feel every touch we share in every part of me. That’s how connected we are, how hypersensitive to him I am, our connection bittersweet considering the obstacles before us.
“I did,” he says. “I called Blake when I was making the hot chocolate and let him know.”
“Gio told me she disappeared right after Dad, Kace. He told me Sofia was looking for her. And he told me this just yesterday, and yet, she called me today. She’s Sofia’s mother. It’s one big set-up.”
“Maybe. Are we sure Sofia wasn’t looking for her because she thought she had answers, like the journal?”
“I don’t know what to think. Why would my father have her protect it? Why not my mother? Or Gio?”
“Perhaps he felt your mother would protect you at all costs, including the family legacy.”
I take in his suggestion with a blink and a pinch of hope. “Maybe. But what does that say about their relationship?”
“Don’t start doubting what you know about your parents because of a phone call. You don’t know the agendas at play here, baby. And I was around your parents. They adored each other. They were in love.”
His cellphone rings and he shifts, removing it from his pocket to answer. “Yeah, Adrian? All right then,” he says. “That’s unexpected. Right. Thanks.” He disconnects. “Gio is on his way up.”
Emotions ping around inside me and I take a warm, sweet swig of much-needed chocolate. “I’m not sure what to think about that.”
“That makes two of us.”
He starts to get up and I catch his hand. “He’s going to keep insulting you.”
“I know.”
“And yet you invited him into your home.”
“Our home, baby. Our home. I love you, Aria, and he’s your brother. I’m not judging him just yet. I’d expect him to be protective. And we don’t know everything there is to know about Gio right now.”
My heart swells with love for this man. “I love you, too. And thank you.”
He leans in and kisses my cheek. “Thanks is never what I want from you. We’ve talked about this. Ask me what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“You. Just you. In an excessively long and creative list of ways.”
The doorbell rings and he reaches for my cup, taking a long swig of chocolate as if it’s a replacement for the drink he really needs. He hands me my cup back. I set it on the ground by the chair and when he tries to get up, I catch his arm. “He tried to tear us down through me. He failed. I know my brother. Failure is not an option. He’s going to come at you hard, Kace.”
“If he wounds me you can make me feel better when he’s gone.”
“Kace, I’m serious.”
“You didn’t know my father, but I assure you, baby, there is nothing your brother can bring that he didn’t.”
“You’re human, Kace, and we’re still new.”
His fingers splay on my cheek, his thumb stroking my jawline. “You don’t know me, or us, as well as I want you to if you doubt how strong we are. But you will, baby. You will and soon. That’s a promise.” He leans in and kisses me and then stands up, heading toward the door.
Nervous, buzzing with adrenaline, I push to my feet and place the river at my back, steeling myself for what comes next.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Seconds tick by and Kace and Gio do not appear.
I pace back and forth and suddenly I question the idea of having Kace answer the door when Gio might confront him. I’m about to charge my way to the hall when the two of them appear and I swear they’re a sight—two men who could be enemies or friends, riding on the cusp of that discovery. Two men who are powerful, good looking, and confident in their own rights, and so very different on the surface. Gio is a wild card, all about risks and danger, impossible to predict. Kace is calculated, focused, structured. But what they don’t see and I do is they both had the courage to walk away from the family business. My brother never wanted to hold a violin. Kace’s father never wanted him to hold a violin. And they both know what they want, and go for it, at all costs. Kace stops on the opposite side of the couch, but Gio does not. He closes the space between me and him and as I turn to face him, Kace says, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
“No,” I say, angling in his direction. “We need to talk, all three of us.”
“We need a word alone,” Gio counters. “And then I’ll talk to Kace.”
“I’ll grab us all a drink,” Kace offers, and he doesn’t wait for a reply. Class act that he is, he turns away and generously offers Gio his moment alone with me.
My attention is now on my brother, the person that I’ve leaned on and spent a lifetime trusting. He has always been my hero, my best friend, my only remaining family these last few years. Now, I am looking at him with accusation and distrust.
“Why’d do you come?” I demand.
“You’re my damn sister, Aria.”
“And you just remembered this?”
He scrubs the thick dark shadow on his jaw that’s threatening to become a beard. “I fucked up,” he says, his hands settling on his hips, under his thin North Face down jacket. “But I had a deep instinct that we were not going to survive much longer hiding in the shadows. You weren’t going to hear that from me and listen. I didn’t want a problem to come to us. I wanted to head it off. I was trying to shelter you.”
“You wanted out of the shadows, but you knew what you did, you forced me along for the ride. I was the inconvenient sister.”
“That’s not true.”
His reply is rapid, but it’s short and without conviction. “It is,” I say. “You just convinced yourself if I didn’t know what was going on that somehow it wouldn’t affect me at all.”
“I was only gone a month, Aria.”
“More than a month and living this double life a whole lot longer,” I say. “I know, Gio. I know a whole lot more than you think I know.” I don’t give him time to fight back. “Angelena sent me pages from Dad’s journal.”