Remi was still laser-focused, but now, it was on his mate’s titties and her pussy; and the only thing his fucking senses were good for, was smelling the scent of her arousal.
And I was sick of it.
Shit was going down the tubes, and it was obvious that he did not care. Things had even changed between us, but that was minor, compared to all the other things he was letting fall to the wayside.
I stood in front of Father’s door and drew in a deep breath.
“Oh Remi...” Sasha’s voice rang through the halls like a fucking dinnertime bell.
The bed creaked and banged against the wall.
“Oh, fuck, Fiore...” my brother grunted out.
That was we he called her. His fucking flower.
I grunted.
She was a flower. She was a rose; a rose with fucking thorns, that pierced my human flesh every time I saw her walking through the mansion. I could not deny that Sasha was a beautiful female, and I could not blame my brother for being smitten by her. But of course, it was more than this. Sasha was Remi’s fated mate, and the minute he’d seen her at Dylan Hamilton’s wedding, he’d coveted her. We were supposed to be kidnapping her and her friend, but behind closed doors, he had been fucking her.
And he was still fucking her. Senseless.
I could hear it.
My jaw clenched and I lifted my fist to knock on Father’s door, but before it landed, he answered. “Come in, Vince.”
Without hesitation, I pushed the door open and took a firm step inside. My eyes took in the master bedroom, which was four times the size of mine or Remi’s.
Anthony Moretti was a man who spared no expense. He believed in buying the finest of everything. The entire room was white: the carpet, the drapes, and the furniture. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and in front of him, stood his woman, Eliza Hamilton – the woman he would, and had, killed for.
She was being outfitted by a team of seamstresses, but there was a distinct grimace on her face. Despite their history, she still had not warmed up to him, and I could not say that I blamed her. Father had been relentless in his pursuit of her. He had concocted a mastermind plot to have her in this very position – standing in his bedroom, although if he could have his way, she would be wearing even less than the thin robe she now donned. Clearly, it would take even more than that to get her into his heart.
But that was his problem. Both him and Remi had problems with females. I thanked the Holy Mother that I would never be concerned with such bullshit.
“Fasten her robe,” Father commanded.
Eliza rolled her eyes and spread her arms. The seamstresses hastily tied the silk belt around her small waist. When they had finished, she marched for the door, but when she reached Father, she leaned close to his face. Her mouth was wrinkled, and her eyes flashed. “Don’t think, for one minute, that this trip to Paris will change anything between us,” she snarled at him.
Father stared into her eyes, seemingly unfazed, but the way the muscle in his jaw twitched would not go unnoticed by me.
“How long will it take, Tesoro?” he whispered, allowing his gaze to soak her in.
My ears pricked.
“Forever,” the belligerent woman snapped in response.
Father observed her. “Then I will wait patiently for that time to arrive.”
Eliza’s mouth trembled, but she jerked the robe closer and stalked out of the room, with three female attendants trailing.
The door slammed closed, and Father pursed his lips. It took him a second to acknowledge my presence. “Vince, what is it?” he asked.
I took another step into the room but did not advance any further. “You need to speak with Remi,” I insisted.
“What is wrong with Remi?”
“Everything is wrong with him,” I complained. “Since that woman has arrived, he has been useless. I fear that his priorities are not in order. He is only with his precious Sasha and fails to attend to his other duties.”
Father raked his hand through his hair, but a smile cracked his lip, making the scar that ran across it appear less dreadful. “Is that all?”
I flinched backward. “What do you mean by this?” I questioned him. “It is not a trivial matter, Father. Since Remi has returned, you have given two assignments. One, I did completely on my own.”
“Your brother is in love, Vince.”
“Yes, and the Moretti legacy is at stake,” I argued.
Father pulled himself from off the bed. He was wearing only the pants of his custom suit, and even at fifty-five, his build could rival mine. He sauntered towards me. The smile had disappeared and was now replaced with a deep scowl.
This was the face to which I was accustomed, the one I could understand.
“Are you suggesting that your brother’s attention to the minute details of which the two of you are exposed, is significant enough to jeopardize decades worth of bloodshed?”
My jaw cinched.
Father tipped his head to the side, which meant that it wasn’t a rhetorical question.
I moistened my lips. “All I am saying is that Remi’s lack of focus has implications for the routine,” I clarified, “the routine which plays an integral role in the way we run things.”
A thick silence fell into the room.
Finally, father chuckled and scrubbed his jaw. “I am not worried about Remi, Vince,” he said turning away from me. He snapped his fingers, and the door opened. Instantly, two tailors rushed into the room, as if they were late for an appointment. In their hands, they carried garment bags. “Your brother, he is in love.”
What does that even fucking mean?
“He has found his mate,” he continued, unaware of my internal dialogue. “It is expected that he will spend time with the woman he fought so hard to secure.”
“Like you?” I asked the question and stared.
Father chortled. “Vince, one day, you will find your female,” he considered, “and then you will understand what is happening to your brother.”
My stomach churned at the thought. “I am quite content to fuck the whores who come to the mansion,” I informed him, as if he did not already know this. “If this is what having a mate means – losing focus, becoming lackadaisical – then I want no parts of it.”
“Okay, Vince.”
The conversation was over.
My eyes burned.
“I am going to France for the week,” he reminded me. “You and your brother will be responsible for the day-to-day operations.”
I nodded respectfully, but inside, I jerked.
“Things should flow smoothly,” he continued. “I do not expect any trouble, but of course, I never do.”
“Unless, of course, you are the one to start it.”
Father grinned. “Yes.”
Father turned away from me, and the tailors set upon him.
It was time for me to leave.
The conversation had been fruitless, but part of me had not been surprised. Both Remi and Father were in the same fucking boat, and they were going up shit’s creek. These women had debilitated their senses. They had lost their values and good judgment. Father was not taking this seriously, and it angered me that I was more concerned about our family than anyone else.
I bristled.
The minute I left the room, the sounds of raunchy sex flooded my ears.
“Oh, Jesus, Remi!”
Creak, creak, creak, creak...
My mouth wrinkled. It was two o’clock in the fucking afternoon. The house was busier than a goddamn marketplace, yet Remi and his mate were fucking as if they had rented out the whole of Castello Del Nero.
I would put a stop to it, I decided. It did not matter that I had been the one to encourage him to find her, I had not known it would be this way. I had no idea how I would do it, but I would find a way.
Three
Shenique
‘Completion’
“Shenique, are you sure this is what you want to do?”
I rolle
d my eyes at Julian and walked around the other side of the stove. There wasn’t a cauldron sitting on top of it, but the crockpot would have to do.
Besides, I didn’t want to be questioned about my decision-making process. I knew what I was doing, whether Julian believed it or not. I had been making my own decisions from a very young age, not just for me, but for Sasha as well – and we’d turned out hella fine.
Well, at least I had. Sasha, she was a different story.
Sasha had always been flighty and eager to please. She had developed this annoying habit of getting tangled up with controlling assholes and not seeing her true value. The conversation I’d had with her a few weeks ago sailed into my mind:
“Did he call you again?”
“Who?”
“The kidnapper. You told me he called you the other day. Don’t tell me that bastard has been trying to contact you on a regular basis.”
“No, he hasn’t called again.”
“Why the hell would he even be calling you anyway? In the movies, when the kidnapper gets what he wants, he either kills the victim or lets them go.”
“I’m sure there was another way you could have said that.”
“He got what he wanted, didn’t he?”
“Remi wasn’t the one with the demands. It was his boss, Anthony Moretti. Somebody owed him some money and – ”
“I don’t care who placed the order. He’s still a monster, Sash, and there is no way I’m gonna let you downplay what happened. That’s what you do, you know. You have this habit of picking controlling men who don’t see your value, and then you sit around, waiting for them to change, when we all know, a man never changes.”
Clearly, she hadn’t listened. He had called and she’d entertained him. Then, he’d traced her number and found out her location, and because of her lack of self-control, I was having to purchase a one-thousand-dollar plane ticket and fly to a foreign country, just to rescue her ass, the way I’d been doing since we were little girls. Half the shit I’d rescued her from, she didn’t even know about.
I turned back to the bubbling crockpot. In the beginning of the science experiment, the concoction had been black, but now it had congealed into a thick, Barney-purple ooze.
I finally answered Julian’s question. “I’ve never been surer about anything in my entire life,” I snapped, “so you can stop asking because I know what the hell I’m doing.”
He scoffed. “You know what you’re doing, yet I’m the one cooking.”
“Baby Jesus in a manger, Julian. You make it sound like a goddamn crack house or a meth lab. It’s bad enough that I’ve resorted to these black magic tactics - again. Please don’t make it worse than it needs to be.”
Julian rolled his eyes, but I noticed the way his fist tightened around the spoon. “We’re not going to argue,” he warned. “Not right now. The last thing we need is your aura impacting Loveless before it’s ready. Let’s just focus on finishing it so I can give you instructions for how to use it."
For the next five minutes, Julian worked in silence. I watched as he moved a small, wooden spoon around the crockpot. Every now and then, he’d run to a special cupboard and pull out a mysterious jar. Then, he’d pinch foreign substances into the mixture and quickly return to stirring.
I huffed and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “How long does this take?” I murmured. I stole a frustrated glance at my watch. “Please don’t tell me it takes more than twenty-four hours to set. I have to catch my flight to Italy first thing in the morning.”
Julian ignored me.
Unable to take anymore, I snatched the spoon from his hand and swirled the thickening brew around for a few seconds before Julian ripped it away.
“Counterclockwise,” he barked, then sighed. “Shey, I need you to be patient,” he advised. “This is a powerful potion we’re making here. It can’t be done willy-nilly.” He huffed. “You may not believe in this, but there’s a precise method to what I’m doing.”
“Oh my God, Jules, is it really that deep?” I begged, throwing my hands into the air. “Just stir it for crying out loud!”
“For your information, it’s one hundred per cent that deep,” he shot back. “I’ve only made Loveless one other time, and do you want to know why?”
“No.”
“Because it’s so powerful, its effects cannot be undone. But of course, you know that already. If it wasn’t for me making it for you back then, maybe you’d still have a fucking heart.”
“I have a heart, Julian...”
He hummed. “It’s black though.”
“Then it matches my mother’s,” I lobbed at him.
Julian fell silent, and my mouth pinched as very unpleasant memories assailed me. I gritted my teeth and shoved them away.
Julian’s eyes crinkled in the corners, and I could tell he was getting emotional. “I’m real sorry for what happened to you,” he whispered. He swiped at his eye with his free hand, and his fist tightened around the spoon. “I hate what Loveless did to you, but I totally understand why you had to do what you did. And I’d do it all over again, just for you.”
My mouth bunched and I swallowed – not sadness, but rage. Sadness was not one of the emotions I owned. Not anymore. And neither was love. The only emotions I had access to were the ones that facilitated survival. And lust, which I rarely experienced.
“Let’s not talk about it anymore,” Julian suggested, as if I had been the one to introduce the topic.
“Right, let’s not,” I agreed shrugging my shoulder. “Right now, I need you to give me the full scoop on Loveless.”
Julian’s jaw jerked, and he looked up at me. Before then, he had been staring into the brew. His pupils were an unnatural shade of black, thanks to the stupid colored contacts he insisted on wearing. They matched his spiky mohawk, but those things were not what made Jules eccentric. Surely, it was the multiple piercings, including the ones in his ears, which had turned his earlobes into sink holes. The tattoos crawling up his neck were a fraction of the ones which stained his entire body. The other thing which made him a certified freak was his obsession with the other side. Jules wore black. Every day. He was a modern-day goth, but he was the most supportive friend I had. Shit, he was the only friend I had.
I sat on a barstool, waiting. I hated engaging Julian in these kinds of conversations, because they always went into left field, but he was right: I had come to him requesting Loveless, which meant I needed to know the details of its use.
Julian was the only person I knew who was into this kind of shit. He had dibbled and dabbled in it, even when we were in foster care, and he swore down it worked. I believed him, because like he’d said, he’d made it once before.
For me.
I couldn’t vouch for the other crap he tried to sell me on: the spells and chants, the shifters and vampires. It didn’t even matter that the Men in Black had described Remi Moretti as otherworldly. I had never seen any of it with my own eyes, and for me, seeing was believing. But even though I’d never seen those kinds of creatures, I knew, for certain, that Loveless was legit.
Silence.
“What are the particulars?” I asked, looking at my watch again. “This mission to save Sasha is gonna be a hit and run. There’ll be no room for error or surprises. The last thing I’d want to do is make a mistake and end up with a disaster.”
“Loveless is a powerful potion, Shey.”
“This has been established,” I reminded him.
He continued, ignoring my sarcasm. He was in that zone. “Once you pour a very specific portion into any edible, the individuals who consume it will be unable to become emotionally involved with one another. Ever.”
I shrugged again. “Perfect,” I confirmed. “It seems simple enough. I go to Italy, find Sasha and that masked-murderer, pour this shit into her food, and watch the magic happen, literally. He’s infatuated with Sasha, Jules. Freaking obsessed. It’s obvious that very little will keep him away. This is just what we need.
”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” I answered, putting emphasis on the mean, “Remi Moretti kidnapped Sasha once, and she got away; yet that Italian jackass still has the balls to track her down and steal her again. He’s relentless, but Loveless will definitely put an end to his madness. Then, my little sister can get on with her life and not have to worry about his controlling ass ever again.”
Julian frowned and rubbed his nape. He bristled in his seat.
I folded my arms across my chest. “Clearly you have something to say,” I predicted. “So spit it out.”
“I don’t know, I just...” Julian huffed. “Shey, are you sure you’re making the right decision?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” I barked.
“Because honestly, this seems like it might be a little deeper than we think it is.”
“Baby Jesus in a – ”
“What if your sister might not have been kidnapped at all?”
My neck jerked forward. “Why that hell would either of us even entertain the thought?” I demanded. “Of course she was, Julian. There’s no way that her being last seen with this guy is a coincidence.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he agreed. “Maybe it’s not a coincidence.” He lowered his tone. “Maybe it’s boy meets girl, and the two fall in love,” he suggested. His breath caught with excitement. “Or maybe it’s vampire meets girl, and girl is vampire’s fated mate...”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“You said they described him as otherworldly,” he defended his position.
“And the way your eyes were glowing, I’m about to describe you using the same fucking adjective!”
Julian scrutinized the pictures I had provided once again. His expression straightened, as his eyes roamed over Remi Moretti’s image. He shook his head and his eyebrows crowded. “I don’t know, Shey,” he murmured. It was as if he was talking to himself. “Something is definitely up with this guy.” Now he stared at me. “Maybe we should rethink this.”
I sucked my teeth and ripped the picture away from him. “There is no way I’m rethinking my sister’s salvation, Julian,” I snapped. “It doesn’t matter who, or what you think Remi Moretti is. I’m going to Italy, and I’m rescuing my sister, it’s as simple as that. If I don’t do it, who the hell will?”
Loveless: A BWWM Wolf Shifter Romance (The Alpha Series Book 2) Page 2