With that, he turns on his heel and walks toward the back of the store. I stand there and watch him, my heart in my throat. He cuts right and turns into his office, slamming the door. Kace steps behind me, his hands settling on my shoulders.
“There’s nothing you don’t know, Aria. Not where I’m concerned.”
I twist around in his arms and face him, my hand presses to his side. “I know, but I don’t understand what that was with Gio.”
“It wasn’t about me. I made the mistake of hiding something from you once. I won’t do it again and I would have told you everything then. You know things about me now that could destroy me. Use it, if you must, to give him leverage over me.”
“No. He might actually use it.”
“Baby, I’m willing to take the risk.”
“I’m not,” I insist.
“You might change your mind. This is for you, and us, Aria. I need your brother’s trust. Walker needs his trust if they’re going to help us.”
The door behind us opens and Savage walks in. “I waited until he was in his office,” he says. “I didn’t want to scare him off. What do I need to know?”
Kace turns back to me, his hands resting on my shoulders. “I’ll update Savage. Gio’s rattled by the letter, more than he was me, and that says a lot. We need to know what’s going on.” He lowers his voice. “I love you. He’s alive. Go talk to your brother and hug him properly.”
In that moment, I fall more in love with Kace than ever. He knows Gio will try to turn me against him. He knows and he still wants me to go to my brother. I press to my toes and kiss him. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Not a chance in hell. I’ll be right here waiting for you.”
I turn and run toward my brother’s office, suddenly afraid he’ll disappear again.
CHAPTER TWO
I open Gio’s office door to find him standing behind his desk, his hands planted on the top of the wooden surface, his head tucked low, a pulse of agitation radiating from him. He doesn’t look up. I step inside the room and shut the door. Still, he doesn’t look up but then he knows it’s me. “Sofia left the letter for me to find, didn’t she?”
His jaw tics. “Yes, I suspect she did.”
“You have feelings for her,” I say, unable to tame the accusation in my statement.
His eyes cut through me. “Where’s the letter?”
“Who is she?”
He pushes off the desk and runs a rough hand through his hair before his hand settles on his jean-clad hips. He’s in all black and I can’t help but believe that’s because he’s been skulking around places he shouldn’t be. Because he should have been here, damn it. “Her mother worked for Dad,” he says. “She and I had a little thing when we were in high school.”
“And she just rang your number?”
“I was looking for answers, Aria. I know you know that. My questions led me to her.”
“In Italy?”
His lips press together. “Yes. I went to Italy.”
My anger is a hot whip that has me lifting off the door and rounding the desk, where I shove his big ass, which does nothing, so I rest my palm on his chest. “You could have died. You are such an asshole. I didn’t even know you were there. You might not have come back.” I rear back to hit him again and he catches my wrists.
“Pipe down, little sis. I’m here. I was never not going to come back.”
I push against him. “Let go.”
“Are you going to hit me?”
“Yes, and you deserve it. You were begging for the trouble you apparently found. You didn’t even take my calls.”
“I ditched my phone. I didn’t want to be connected to the States or to you.”
“You could have found a way to communicate,” I snap. “For instance, before you left. And you’re holding me. You can let go of me anytime now.”
“Are you going to hit me?” he asks again.
“Yes, again. I just told you, you deserve it.”
He growls and lets me go anyway. I palm him hard in the chest with both hands and then face the desk, leaning on the hard surface. “Damn it, Gio.” I glance over at him. “Who’s her mother?”
“Angelena Bertoni.”
“Angelena?” I push off the desk and turn to him again. “Wasn’t her daughter Sonia, not Sofia?”
“It’s a running joke between us. I forgot her name way back when we first met and called her Sofia. Sofia became our thing.”
“Oh. Well, that’s weird, but whatever. I loved Angelena. So did Mom. She was mom’s assistant in the office, not Dad’s, or that’s how I remember it. I was much younger than you were. Did you talk to Angelena? Does she know anything about the day Dad disappeared?”
“The answer to that question is why I went to Italy. She disappeared about three months after Dad disappeared.”
I blanch and lean on the desk, a twisting feeling in my belly. “That feels wrong.” I glance at Gio. “And connected.”
“Exactly,” he says, leaning on the desk next to me and crossing his booted feet. “That’s why I went to Italy.”
I scowl. “That was not an excuse for what you did, but what happened when you got there?”
“I went to see Sofia.”
“And?”
“And she was just as eager to talk to me as I was her. She’s always thought their disappearances were related. She has a whole room devoted to the mystery of our disappearance, as well as her mother’s. The walls are covered in photos, charts, and names.”
“All of which could have been about us, the Stradivari family, not her mother.”
“Yeah. I know. I felt the same.”
“And yet you didn’t leave?” I hold up a hand. “I know the answer. No. You didn’t. Where’s Sofia’s father? Didn’t he work as a designer for Dad?”
“He did. Pietro is still alive. He claims to be as baffled as anyone as to what happened. He says he lives to find his wife, even now, all these years later.”
My brows shoot up. “Claims?’”
“I believed from the moment I connected with him that he knows more than he’s shared which is why I made a point of getting close to him.”
“You mean you got close to Sofia.”
“To both of them,” he corrects. “As for Sofia, I thought she was as in the dark as we were which is another topic altogether. For now, what matters is that Pietro formed a group called the Blue Owls. They hunt treasures.”
I remotely think of Kayden Wilkens, the treasure hunter Blake has been talking to, but right now, I’m just trying to pull facts from my brother’s head. I don’t want to clutter things up. “Like us?” I ask.
“Not quite. They go to greater lengths than we do to acquire the prize and make the kind of money he needs to continue his search. The kind we needed to stay safe and look for Dad.”