My heart is now racing a million miles an hour. The door opens and Kace is greeted by a doorman. “Mr. Bianchini will be so pleased to see you, Mr. August,” the man says.
Kace enters the house and the doorman, who is in a suit, leads him inside, where we don’t have a visual. Kace speaks, but I can’t make it out. I turn to Ella. “Why can’t we understand him?”
“His audio is malfunctioning. It can happen.”
I stand up. “Then how are we supposed to know what’s going on?”
She tugs me back down. “Shhh. Give it a minute and see if it comes back online.”
Someone else speaks, and it’s just as jumbled. I stand up and walk behind my chair, holding onto it. More jumbled speech follows. “I have to go in. Then we can hear with my audio.”
She stands and grabs her phone. “Give me a minute.” Her phone rings in her hand and she answers, listening before she says, “We’ll be right there.” She hangs up. “You’re going in.”
I’m not sure what I feel in that moment. Fear. I feel fear and not for me: for Kace and with good reason. Kayden doesn’t want me to go into the meeting against Kace’s wishes for no reason. He’s worried, too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ella checks my audio, doing a soundcheck, and quickly. I don’t even bother with my coat. I want to get to Kayden now. Rushing to the door, Ella and I exit the house to find another black sedan in the driveway.
“Backseat,” she orders and I do as I’m told, finding Savage in the driver’s seat upon slipping inside. Ella joins me and shuts the door.
“I’ll hit the floorboard when we get to the gate,” she says. “As far as anyone knows, Savage is just your driver.”
Savage backs us up, and glances at me in his rearview mirror. “He’s fine,” Savage assures me. “We’re just a bunch of paranoid bastards.”
“Apparently I am, too,” I say, thankful when we pull to the gate and Ella hits the floor.
Savage rolls down his window and punches the call button. “I have Ms. Aria Alard here for Donelle Bianchini.”
The gate immediately opens and my heart is back to a thundering roar in my ears. We halt at the door. “If we lose audio,” Savage says, “I’m coming in to deliver a message.”
“Good,” I say. “Bring those drugs that saved my life, too, will you?”
“Always,” he promises, and I exit the backseat, and shut the door quickly before Ella is spotted.
Rushing past a sprawling outdoor area, and up a set of stone steps, I reach the porch and the door, to ring the bell. Seconds pass and more seconds and then the door opens. To my shock, Kace is standing there.
His fingers snag mine and he walks me inside the house, shutting the door behind us. “I bet you didn’t expect me to tell you to come join me, now did you?”
I blink. “What? You did? We lost your audio. I couldn’t hear you. We couldn’t hear you.”
“And you were freaking out and insisted on coming in,” he assumes.
“Yes, actually. What is going on?”
“Not what we expected. He’s a friend of your fathers, a real friend, not a dangerous friend.”
“How do you know?”
“The same way you’ll know. Come.” He guides me to the left, under a stone archway, and into a library lined with books, so many books, rows and rows of books. Next to the fireplace, in front of a sitting area, is an old man in a wheelchair, a blanket around his shoulders. Donelle, I assume. There’s also a stoic man in an expensive suite standing next to him, hands folded in front of him. Kace leads me forward and we walk around the couch and a large chair.
The old man tears up. “You look like your father. Oh, Aria. It’s really you, my dear. I thought I was going to die without finding you.”
“I don’t understand,” I glance at Kace. “What is this?”
“He’s been looking for you since you disappeared,” Kace explains.
“Your father,” Donelle explains, “was a close friend. He entrusted me with three messages, one for you, one for Gio, and one for Kace.” His wobbly finger lifts at the man in the suit.
The man introduces himself. “I’m Angelo Russo, Mr. Bianchini’s attorney.” He reaches in his pocket and removes three envelopes. “It’s my honor, Ms. Stradivari, to present you with a message from your father.”
Adrenaline and emotions storm my entire body. With a trembling hand, I reach for the envelope and glance at my name written in my father’s script. I look at Kace and he holds one up as well. “I haven’t opened it.”
“Do that alone, when you can fully digest it,” Donelle says. “We have one for Gio as well. Can you give it to him?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, of course.”
The attorney hands it to me and I accept it.
“There’s a few more things to attend to,” Donelle sates. “You have an inheritance my dear. I was named as executor. I’ve invested your money well, I believe. It’s a substantial amount of money.”
Mr. Russo speak up. “I have the paperwork, but you don’t need to come to my office. I want to keep you safe, after all. We can do everything by phone.” He offers me a card. “I wrote the figure on the back. There’s the same amount is escrow for your brother.”
I turn the card over and gasp. “Oh my God.” I show it to Kace.
His lips turn up, eyes lighting. “Now you can stop worrying about how much money I spend.”
He’s right. I can, but right now. I’m reeling. It’s not real, and even if it is it’s because my father is gone. “I’m speechless,” I confess. “I’m—well my head is spinning right now.”
“Of course it is, dear,” Donelle says. “Mine is a bit as well. I’d given up on finding you before I die. I’d decided that I urgently needed to meet Kace and decide if he could take my role as your executor, your father was quite taken by him, but I didn’t dare trust him until I met him. And then you called and you were with him.”
“Even then,” Mr. Russo states, “we didn’t know it was absolutely you. We needed an in-person meeting to ensure this felt right. Giving Mr. August a letter and asking him, and entrusting him, to take over as your executor are two different things. Mr. Bianchini has taken great pride to being the protector of your father’s messages and your money. We do apologize for being so cryptic about our delivery of all of this.”
My head is spinning all over again. “Thank you, Donelle. I don’t know how to say thank you.”
He begins to cough and cough some more before he says, “I know you’ve been running, Aria. I hope there is something in your father’s words that allows you to stop running. Oh and one more thing. A big thing.” He motions to Mr. Russo.
Mr. Russo walks to the table against a wall just to his right and pulls a cover off a violin case. “The Fetzer.”