I stay still and listen to the eerie, haunting melody. My hand grows clammy around the knife handle. I take a step toward the sound, toward that darkest hall, but I trip over something I swear wasn’t there earlier. Whatever it is, it’s low to the ground and hard. It scrapes against the floor loudly, and the music stops immediately.
My heart is in my throat as I try to stay stock-still. I don’t even breathe sure I’ll be caught. But when all is quiet for the next minute and then another, I turn and quickly run away from that corridor, away from where the music came from and up to my own bedroom.
Once inside, I close the door behind me, leaning my back against it, exhaling in relief. Looking down at the knife in my hand, I smile. I’ll have something to protect myself with, at least. Because I’ve seen the other monster Damian warned me about. And I wonder if there aren’t more.
19
Damian
Cristina is a sneaky little thing.
From my place at the dining table I watch her as she cautiously enters the living room and I remember last night. Remember how she tasted.
I sip my coffee while she looks around her uncertainly, maybe searching for my father. I sent Elise upstairs to fetch her for breakfast, so she knows I’m waiting for her.
Today will be a big day for Cristina.
The instant she sees me, she stops short. Her expression changes, her guard going up. It’s as if she erects a wall to protect herself from me.
She doesn’t yet understand there is no protection from me.
“Good morning,” I say, watching a blush bloom on her cheeks. That and the way she looks just beyond me lets me know she’s remembering last night too.
“Morning,” she mutters.
I watch her cross the living room into the dining room and wonder if she’s stashed the knife she picked up on her nighttime stroll somewhere on her person.
When she reaches the table, I push her chair out with my foot. “Sit.”
She takes in the table set for just the two of us.
“Don’t worry. My father doesn’t leave his rooms during the day.” Like a vampire, he hunts at night.
“I’m not afraid of that old man.” She pulls the chair a little farther from me and sits, still avoiding my gaze.
“You should be.”
I notice the bruising along her jaw. The slightly darker spots where my fingers were last night. I need to take better care with her.
She eyes my plate, which has one lone strip of bacon left.
“Hungry?” I ask.
She nods.
“Look at me.”
Keeping her lashes lowered, she bites her lip, then finally drags her gaze to mine. There’s that blush again.
I call to the girl serving breakfast. “What would you like?” I ask Cristina.
“Um…just some toast is fine.”
“You need a protein.” I turn to the girl. “A plate like mine. And coffee?” I raise my eyebrows to Cristina who nods.
The girl disappears into the kitchen.
“Why bother to ask what I wanted if you were just going to order for me anyway?”
“Just curious what you’d choose. Your health is important to me.”
“Right.” Her gaze moves to my bandaged hand.
“It’s fine, thanks for asking,” I tell her. “Did you enjoy your walk last night?” Her mouth falls open, and before she can deny it, I continue. “I know everything that goes on in this house, Cristina. I have just one rule for you. No locked doors. Those, you leave alone.”
“Why? What are you hiding?”
“I’m not hiding anything. I just want to be sure you don’t walk into your enemy’s lair.”
“Aren’t I already in my enemy’s lair?”
I snort.
My phone buzzes with a message
Tobias: Clementi boys are at the warehouse.
Arthur Clementi’s sons took over the family business not quite a year ago. They’ll be made an example of today.
Me: Wait until my arrival. I want to be sure they see my face.
Tobias: Got it.
Tobias is my right-hand man, a soldier I trust with my life. The only one. He and I grew up together, his father serving my father, his grandfather serving my grandfather. All in the family.
Cristina’s food arrives. She picks up a piece of bacon with her fingers and bites into the crispy strip, then puts a forkful of eggs into her mouth. For a moment, I wonder if she’s forgotten I’m here as she goes about buttering her toast. I’m glad to see she has a good appetite.
I put my phone face-down and turn to Cristina. “Would you like to see your uncle?”
“What?”
“You need to sign some paperwork anyway.”
“What paperwork?”
“Would you like to see him, yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Car leaves in an hour for New York City. Elise is packing your things now.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a nice guy.”
“Yeah right. Why really, Damian?”
“I need your signature. Now that you’re eighteen, the foundation is yours.”
She goes silent, disappearing into her own mind for a long minute, then turns to me. “He said you managed it after my father’s murder. Why would you do that?”
“Do you have any idea what your father did? Where the money for the foundation truly came from?”
“We’ve always had money, enough to give, my family–”
“Do you really think you lived like you did without any actual source of income?” I ask, cocking my head to the side.
“It was old money,” she falters. “My father invested it.”
“Are you this sheltered?”
She puts her coffee down. “What are you talking about?”
“The foundation was a cover. Your uncle must have told you at least a little about it.”
“Cover for what?” she asks.
“Wealthy donors with whom the upstanding politicians of society could not be publicly associated.”
She studies me, forehead creasing, but then she shakes her head. “The foundation does good work.”
“Among other sorts of work.”
She goes silent. Her uncle has told her. She just hasn’t come to terms with it yet.
“Aren’t you curious what he did for that money?”
“I’m not curious about anything you have to say.”
“I told you last night you’re a bad liar. Remember?”
Her cheeks flush, and her lashes lower.
“Besides, I think you’re very curious.”
She puts her fork down and turns to me. “Fine. Tell me.”
“Your father bought political influence on behalf of some very bad people, Cristina. Not to mention the laundering he did. Although that part hadn’t evolved just yet. I guess he had a lot on his plate.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t believe you.”
“Think about it. Think about the house you lived in. Think about your uncle and your cousins. Think about your clothes and the cars and the schools. How do you think he paid for that?”
The line between her eyebrow deepens as she processes.
“Your father had ties with some less than desirable members of society, and through the generous donations of these patrons, the foundation was able to buy power and influence. Through your father, these men acquired access to organizations they’d never had been allowed to get near. Imagine the kind of influence they could wield politically when their money kept the politicians in their pockets.”
“You’re lying.”
“He’d gotten sloppy, though, your father. Blackmail is a tricky business. Guess he thought he had nothing to left to lose after your mother and brother died.”
She winces like I’ve struck her, and I shift my gaze away.
Low blow, asshole, even for you.
But I continue because the things she said last night, well, they were below the belt too, and I o
we her for those.
“Honestly, if we hadn’t killed him, my guess is he had six months tops before someone else came after him.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Now that you’re eighteen, the foundation is yours. It’ll all be transferred to your name.”
Cristina’s eyes are on me. On my mouth. I smile, then lick my lips.
She clears her throat and shifts her gaze up to mine. “My parents wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.”
“Not your parents. Just your father. I heard they were having trouble for some time before the accident. I wonder if it was because your mother learned the truth.”
She pauses, considers. “My uncle…he was my guardian. He looked after the company until I came of age.”
“Unfortunately, your uncle isn’t half the businessman your father was, and honestly, your father had left him in a very vulnerable position. I took over operations while Uncle Adam looked after you, and I paid him for his time and his silence. Now that you’re eighteen, though, it’s all yours.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“The good, the bad, and the ugly,” I continue as if she hasn’t spoken.
“What does that mean?”
I check the time, push my chair back, and stand. “Ask your uncle when you see him. I’ll make sure he tells you the truth. We leave in forty-five minutes.” I go to walk away, but then pause and turn around to face her. “Unless you want to stay here. I’m sure my father would love the company.”
Her eyes go wide, and she shakes her head.
I nod, walking back toward her. “One thing, though, if you do join me, I expect to finish what we started last night.”
“What?”
“Be downstairs in forty-five minutes, Cristina. You have a big day ahead of you.”
20
Damian
Cristina’s still a little pale when, forty-five minutes later, I open the front doors and escort her out to the waiting SUV.
I watch her as she takes in the surroundings, the dense forest as far as the eye can see, the only breaks in the trees that of the mountain straddling and zig-zagging through the property.
“Is that a guard tower?” she asks as my entourage pulls out. One SUV in front. One behind.
“Yes.”
Her eyes follow it as the driver takes the curve leading onto the mile-long road to the border of the property and twists in her seat to look back at the house.
“How old is it?”
“It was built over four centuries ago. The land has been in my family for longer.”
She looks at me. “Where is this place exactly?”
“Upstate New York. We have property in several cities, but this is where my father wants to be.”
“Where do you want to be?”
Her question catches me off guard. “It doesn’t matter what I want,” is the answer I give her.
The truth? Anywhere my father isn’t.
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” she says flippantly, shifting her gaze back out the window. “Just curious.”
Using my own words against me. I smile. Reaching out, I touch her hair.
She jumps. Spins around to look at me and backs up against the door.
“We’ll get it fixed when we’re in the city.”
She reaches up to touch her hair where I just had. “It’s fine.”
“It’s crooked. You did it yourself?”
“Liam did it.”
“I’m surprised he thought it would work.”
“We were desperate, Damian.”
“He put his own life in danger to help you.”
She studies me like my comment is a strange one. “I’d do the same for him.”
“You’re not even closely related. Just cousins.”
“You don’t have to be related at all to care about someone.”
I’m taken aback by this. I shift my gaze out the window. What happens if even your own family doesn’t care about you? Doesn’t love you? Doesn’t that make you unworthy? Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with you when your own blood won’t love you?
“But I’m sure you don’t know anything about that,” she continues.
I shove my thoughts aside. “About what?” I ask, looking back at her.
“Love.” Her expression changes when she says the word.
“Love,” I repeat, wanting to feel it on my tongue. “No, I guess I don’t.”
I feel her staring at me as I continue to scroll on my phone. I’m not reading, though. Her observation has thrown me off-kilter.
“Do you remember it?” she asks after a long minute of silence.
“Remember what?” I shift my gaze back to her.
“The accident.”
I nod.
“I think I only remember because I keep dreaming it.”
“Tell me the dream.”
Her eyes search mine before she shifts her gaze out the window. “My parents are arguing. No, fighting, really fighting. Screaming at each other. Scott reaches over to squeeze my hand, and I drop what I’m holding. That’s why he isn’t wearing his seat belt. He’s going to get it for me.”
I wait when she goes silent, shifts her gaze down to her hands in her lap where she’s worrying a cuticle.
“I keep seeing his face right as it happened. Maybe right before. Like he knows what’s coming. And that it’s bad. That part’s real, I think. And I will never forget how he looked at me.”
She turns to me, eyelashes damp. “I never found it anyway.”
“The thing you dropped?”
She nods.
“What was it?”
“A rock.”
I must look confused.
“He died for a rock. For my stupid rock.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
She snorts, attention back on her hands. Once she’s got herself under control, she turns back to me. “No, it was my dad’s fault. Isn’t that what you said? Why you killed him?”
“He was driving drunk.”
She doesn’t defend him.
“I remember when they lifted you out of the car. You were crying, but I didn’t get the impression it was from pain.”
“You saw me?”
“Just for a minute. Before the explosion. The fire.”
“God.”
I look down at my hand, knowing that I was the lucky one.
“I saw armed guards outside the house the other night. Armed with automatic rifles,” she says.
I glance her way again, grateful for the change of subject. “And?”
“You need that kind of protection? In that fortress?”
“My line of work is dangerous.”
“Imports and exports are only dangerous if they’re illegal.”
“Are you an expert?”
She doesn’t answer me and is quiet long enough that I’m about to turn back to my reading when she speaks again. “Is it true what your father said? About how he killed my father?”
“He was trying to upset you. Don’t let him.”
“But was it true? Did he do all those things? Play with him like that? Scare him like that in the last few minutes of his life?”
“Everyone’s afraid of death in the end, Cristina, no matter who they are or how powerful they are. Your father was no exception.”
“Did you see him die? Do you know—”
“What will it do for you to know how he died? To know his final moments?”
She doesn’t reply.
“Nothing. It will change nothing,” I tell her. “Let it go.”
“I was scared, you know.”
“You were a child, and you heard and saw strange men in your house. What else would you be but scared?”
“I mean that I knew what was happening was bad, but I was too scared to do anything to help him.”
“What would you have done? You were ten years old an
d there was an army of men in that study.”
“Is that why you took me back upstairs?”
“I wouldn’t let them hurt a child.”
“But you’ll hurt me now.”
I don’t reply, and when her violet eyes fill with tears, they lighten like the blue of a sunrise kissed by pink.
Something about seeing her like this upsets me. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s a physical sensation that goes hand in hand with it. And I don’t like it.
“I never told anyone either,” she adds.
“Cristina, there’s nothing you could have done to change your father’s fate. Just take comfort now in the fact that he loved you very much.”
“Why do you say that?” she snaps. “How do you even know that?”
I’m surprised at her tone.
“Do you know what I think?” She wipes away a tear with a swift flick of her wrist like she’s angry with those tears. “That he wished Scott had survived instead of me.”
My jaw clenches. Maybe her father and my father are more alike than either of us knows. “You don’t know that.”
“He hardly could stand to look at me after the accident.” She gives a strange, almost ugly laugh. “Tell me again how much he loved me.”
“Sometimes people do stupid things especially when they’re drunk, and I believe your father was drunk a lot of the time.”
“Don’t make excuses. He didn’t love me, Damian. Not like he loved his son.”
“In the end he gave up his life to save yours. He made the deal to buy those eight years. That’s something, Cristina. Hold on to that. Because I can tell you one thing. My father wouldn’t do that for me.”
Although she remains silently watching out the window for the most part, I see her steal glances my way.
I’m curious about what she just said about her brother. Or more accurately, how she said it. Do we have that in common too? The sibling who isn’t good enough?
Once we get to the building that houses our penthouse, the SUVs come to a stop.
The doorman, Harry, who is as old as the building, steps out to greet us.
I climb out, then offer to help Cristina, but she refuses my hand. She slides out of the SUV herself.
I shake Harry’s hand in greeting and ask about his family before introducing Cristina.
Unholy Union Page 15