“What happened to being the best?” I demand again, scowling at Savage and Adrian, my fear for Gio driving me and the surge of adrenaline in my body right now. “What happened? I thought no one could get past you?” I press my hands to my face and drop them. “Sorry. Sorry.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “You saved his life, Adrian. I saw you take the gun from Sofia. And you saved me, Savage.” I turn to Kace. “And I’d be alone without you, Kace. I just—I just have a bad feeling about Gio. A really bad feeling.”
Kace’s hands, those warm, strong, talented hands, skilled in a way that made my father call him the one true daisy in the wind, settle on my waist. “You’re underestimating your brother. No one made him disappear. He chose to disappear.”
“Except a gun can turn the invincible dead,” I say. “What about Sofia and Lorenzo?” I ask, and when the plane jumps, Kace pulls me into the lounge and down on a seat across from Adrian, while he settles in beside me across from Savage. “What about—”
“They’re gone,” Adrian states. “All three are gone.”
“How is this possible?” I ask, calmer now, but not by much.
“A blackout for a two-block radius around the club,” Adrian says, “that lasted exactly five minutes to the second. People rushed from the club in a crush and the street cameras were out.”
“In other words,” Savage says, “someone on Sofia’s team has skills. We have no way of knowing if Gio was with Sofia when she disappeared.”
“I want to believe he wasn’t,” I say. “I believe, I really do believe, at the very least, he backed out of whatever plan they had and helped me escape.” I change gears for a moment. “What about Angelena? I know that’s who called me. Maybe she knows where they are.”
Kace’s hand covers mine. “You won’t like this answer.”
I twist to face him. “What does that mean?”
“She was found in a hotel room by the cleaning lady,” he says, “dead from what appears to be an overdose. We’re well-connected with the NYPD and were pinged.”
“Let me guess,” I say, my gaze sweeping the three of them. “The same drug I was drugged with.”
Savage gives a nod. “You guessed it, sister.”
“And the journal?” I ask. “Or copies of the journal at least?”
“Nothing,” Adrian replies, “and she’d only been in the hotel for three days. Blake’s working to track her steps.”
“What else don’t I know?”
Savage takes that prod. “You want to believe Gio is innocent. I don’t. We have every reason to suspect your brother was involved with what happened last night.”
“Except that he saved me,” I snap. “And Adrian saved him. He didn’t need saving because he was on their side.”
“He’s the one who sent you to the bathroom by the stairs,” Kace reminds me. “He’s the one who bought your drink.”
I angle toward him. “But now I remember the look on Sofia’s face when she held that gun on him. She was angry. I really think she would have shot him.”
“I don’t,” Adrian says. “You were drugged and you’re not trained. I was not and I am. She wasn’t aiming at him. She was aiming beyond him. She wanted to make sure that if Kace rounded that corner he’d stay back.”
“I saw the look on her face,” I argue.
“She was pissed at Gio, but she’s not stupid enough to shoot in a public place,” Adrian says. “She wants to leave the country with the formula, not a most wanted poster. She knows a bullet fired doesn’t make that happen. Gio was not in danger.”
“Then why take her gun?” I challenge.
Adrian doesn’t miss a beat. “You never leave an enemy with a weapon, if you can take it.”
“Amen to that,” Savage murmurs.
“She had to have killed her own mother,” I argue. “Angelena was her mother. I don’t believe for a minute she wouldn’t kill my brother.”
“Hard truths, sweetheart,” Savage says. “We don’t know what happened to Angelena but we’re also not telling you Sonia, or Sofia, or whatever the fuck she calls herself, wouldn’t kill Gio. We’re telling you she wouldn’t do it in public.”
“In other words, they could have grabbed him and killed him,” I say, but I don’t wait for a reply. I pull my hand from Kace’s and stand up, walking back toward the area where I woke up, but I don’t sit down. I step into a galley way where there’s a fridge and microwave, and collapse against the wall, out of sight, out of my own mind. Kace steps in front of me, his legs framing my lips, hips molded to mine. “We’ll get through this. We’re doing all the right things.”
“I can’t lose Gio, Kace. I need to know he’s on this earth breathing for me to keep breathing. He doesn’t even know how to find me.”
“Call him when we land. And even if you can’t reach him, he’ll find you when you tell the world you’re Aria Stradivari.”
***
Kace convinces me to eat what turns out to be an excellent bowl of macaroni and cheese, brought in by a catering service. Afterward, Kace and Adrian end up in a meeting in the lounge and judging from Kace’s intensity, I’m pretty sure it’s about keeping me safe when we arrive in Rome. When I would join them, Savage intervenes and points to a chair. “Sit. I need to check your vitals.”
My gut tells me he’s trying to keep me out of Kace and Adrian’s conversation, but I cave to the demand and plant myself in the chair. “Thank you, Savage,” I say as he slides a blood pressure cuff around my arm.
“Thank me with food,” he says. “Pizza in Rome.”
“Pizza it is. And I still can’t believe you’re a surgeon.”
“When you know how to save a life, you know how to take a life.” My eyes go wide and he meets my stare. “That should be comforting considering I’m protecting you. And you’re checked out and approved. All is well.”
“We just need that bloodwork, right?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t worry much about that.”
I hesitate and then lower my voice. “Would any of the drugs I’ve taken affect me or my baby if I’m pregnant?”
He leans back on his haunches. “You think you’re pregnant?”
“There’s a small chance, very small, but it’s worrying me. And the fact that I’m hyper-focusing on it feels like some gut instinct.”
“One of the two drugs is completely safe. The other, there’s a slight risk of complications to the fetus, but it wouldn’t have been withheld in the ER. You were in a life-threatening situation. I’ll see if I can get a blood pregnancy test done with the sample we’ve already drawn.”
“Thank you. How early would that show results?”
“Have you missed your period?”
“No, but I started on the pill and we didn’t wait the time we were supposed to wait.”
“Then I’m going to tell you it’s too soon for the blood test and you’re probably overreacting.”
“Oh. Okay.” I study him a moment, taken aback by this serious side to Savage. “You’re not the same person when you talk about medical issues.”
“I’m a man of many faces,” he says, “but don’t be fooled. Not all of them are good.”
“Now you sound like Kace.”
“Yes,” he says. “I do. I volunteer for anything he needs for a reason. I get him. I understand him. We are more alike than we appear.”
I tilt my head, reading between the lines. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you are worried about everyone around you, even an unborn child that might not even exist, and I know what headspace that puts you in. You’ve lost people. You’re afraid of losing someone else. So has he. I get it. I fucking get it on every level. My wife could kill a bottle of wine with you just talking about how much, but this isn’t about me. It’s about you and it’s about Kace. So, when you ask yourself if he’s better off without you, the answer is no. No, he is not. Not even a little bit.”
My mind goes to my nights with Kace and how certain I was I should walk away to protect him. Then to the night Alexander showed up in San Francisco when Kace was ready to push me away then. I thought we were beyond that place, but Savage didn’t just say those things to me for no reason. He knows something I don’t know, I think. I just don’t know and that’s the problem.
It’s with that thought that Kace appears in front of me. “I need some shuteye. You in?”
“Believe it or not, after all that sleep I had, I need more.”
He helps me to my feet and finally, I feel steady, as steady as you can be on a plane.
A few minutes later we’re in bed, the light above us turned out, and I’m snuggled under his arm, his heart thundering a bit too loudly beneath my palm. He’s not relaxed at all and I can’t help but connect that to his talk with Adrian that Savage kept me from joining. “What were you and Adrian talking about?”
He’s silent a long moment before he says, “Nancy.”
I sit up and turn on the light. “What about Nancy?”
He inches up on his elbow. “I got a weird vibe from her at the apartment.”
“I did, too,” I admit, “but Gio called and I forgot about it. I trust her, though. I do. I love her.”
“I asked Blake to make sure she hasn’t been corrupted in any way.”
“And?”
“And she deposited ten thousand dollars in her account last week.”
I feel those words like yet another sharp blade cutting me. If this keeps up, I’m going to bleed out, but I just have no energy to react. I don’t say anything. I don’t try to reason away the money. I just can’t. I simply turn off the light and lay back down on Kace’s shoulder.