The Choice (House of Sin Book 6)

by Elisabeth Naughton

  My eyes flew wide, and I shot to my feet, sure I’d heard him wrong.

  “Annulment paperwork has already been filed with the bishop and is currently under review,” Luc continued.

  No. Disbelief swirled inside me as whispers echoed through the chamber and my heartbeat turned to a whir in my ears. This had to be some kind of joke. Or a ruse, something Luc was announcing to throw them off.

  “As of this moment,” Luc went on, “she is stripped of the Salvatici name, and is henceforth banished from House Salvatici and all its lands.”

  Masked faces turned my way. My skin grew hot as people stared at me and their whispers grew louder. The room spun around me as I tried to make sense of what was happening.

  I turned to Luc, but he refused to look my way. Didn’t even acknowledge I was there. I glanced over the crowd, searching for Marco, for some indication this was all a lie, but I couldn’t find him. The only face I recognized was Luc’s mother, who was no longer scowling but was now looking down at me with a smug and victorious grin.

  “And my second decree is this,” Luc said loudly, bringing a hush over the room. “Natalie James is protected henceforth. Any member of this House or any House in the Entente who so much as contacts her will be immediately sentenced to death without trial. These are my decrees by my right as the Granduca. These are now law.”

  He nodded toward a masked man standing at the base of the stairs, then began speaking to the room in Italian, repeating, I was sure, what he’d just announced in English. The masked man wove around the edge of the crowd and drew close to me. Heart in my throat, I backed up, but he took hold of my elbow and turned me with ease.

  “No.” I struggled against him, but he was strong, way stronger than me, especially in my injured state. “No!” I screamed. “Luc! Luc, please! Wait!”

  The man moved behind me, wrapped his robed arms around my waist, and lifted me off the floor.

  Up on the dais, Luc’s voice faltered, but he didn’t look my way. I fought and kicked out against the man dragging me toward the door, fighting back tears and a hysteria I couldn’t control. Luc cleared his throat, straightened his spine, and continued speaking as if I wasn’t even there.

  The masked man hauled me out into the dark corridor. The heavy doors snapped closed with a loud clank. I continued to struggle, to fight, to scream for Luc, and then I felt soft fingers against my arm and Felicity’s voice saying, “Natalie. Natalie, focus. I know you don’t understand, but I’ll explain it to you. We’ll explain everything, you just have to calm down.”

  I slowed my fight, zeroing in on Felicity’s familiar face in my blurry line of sight.

  The man at my back pulled off his mask, and then I heard Marco’s voice behind me, saying, “We have to go before they adjourn.”

  “The car’s waiting. This way.”

  Felicity took my hand and tugged me at a hurried place toward the other end of the corridor. I sniffled, swiped at my face, tried to keep up, but my head and heart were in a constant battle, and I had no idea what was happening.

  “Will someone please, please tell me what’s going on? Where’s Luc? Why did he say those things? He’s meeting us, right? Wherever you’re taking me, he’s going to be there, isn’t he?”

  Felicity pushed a heavy door open, and we were suddenly outside in the cool night air, my feet stumbling down a series of steps. A car waited at the end of the short walk.

  Felicity rushed around the vehicle and climbed behind the driver’s seat. Marco opened the back door and pushed me in, then climbed in beside me.

  “Go,” he said. “And drive fast, vita mia.”

  “I don’t understand.” I sucked back air, trying not to panic, trying to convince myself this was all part of some plan. Luc hadn’t divorced me. He couldn’t have. Not like that. “Someone please tell me what just happened in there!”

  “Luc just saved you.” Marco handed me a wad of tissues as Felicity whipped the vehicle down the windy road.

  “What? How? He said I was already safe.”

  “From his father, yes,” Felicity said from the front, glancing at me in the rearview. “But not from the Grande Cavaliere.”

  “But... But why would he want to hurt me? He doesn’t even know me. And Luc made that deal with his House through that awful ritual.”

  “He wants to hurt you because you’re a threat to everything he’s been directing for the last thirty years,” Marco said. “Luc’s father was only one part of the problem. And once Luc’s father marked you for death, the Grande Cavaliere has every right to go after you.”

  “Marked for...” My head spun. “What are you talking about?”

  “The burn on your ribs,” Felicity said, cutting the car to the right and pulling out onto a highway. “It was a death rune. That mark, from the Grand Duke, supersedes any deal Luc made with the Knights.”

  Horror clamped around my neck. “So take it off me. Cut it off, I don’t care.”

  “I can’t,” Felicity answered. “Not until the area heals. And Giovanni saw it. All he has to do is tell one person, and the Grande Cavaliere has legal permission to hunt you. It’s what he’s wanted all along, to get you out of Luc’s life.”

  This couldn’t be real. These people couldn’t be that evil.

  But even as the thoughts circled in my mind, I swallowed hard because I knew these people were that evil.

  Marco’s hand closed over mine on the backseat. “This was the only way, Natalie. Luc can’t issue a decree protecting you so long as you’re his wife.”

  Bile rushed up my throat. I was about to be sick. “But... But what does that mean? Where are you taking me? Luc’s going to join us wherever you’re taking me, right?”

  Marco and Felicity exchanged looks in the rearview mirror, but neither answered my most pressing question. All Felicity said was, “We’re taking you out of Italy. For good.”

  I didn’t know what airstrip we drove to. I only knew that it was close and that within minutes, I was onboard House Merrick’s private jet once more. Only this time, Luc wasn’t with me.

  Dazed, I sank into one of the seats in the main cabin. Marco latched my seat belt and moved to tell the pilots we were ready. Lights rushed past the dark windows as the jet streaked down the runway. Minutes later, we were in the air, climbing, rising in the sky, away from Tuscany, away from Italy, away from Luc.

  “Here, drink this.”

  When Felicity shoved a glass of amber liquid into my hand, I tossed it back without thinking. The whisky burned as it went down, but I didn’t care. I was too numb to feel it, still trying to figure out what Luc really had planned.

  Felicity took the glass from my hand and carefully handed me a stack of papers.

  “I know you’re confused, Natalie, but hopefully this will help.”

  I looked down at the papers as she moved away and turned into the galley with Marco. The top paper was folded in thirds, like a letter, and my fingers shook as I opened it and began reading.

  Angioletto,

  By now you are probably already in the air, hopefully out over the Mediterranean, heading as far from Italy as you can get. I know you are confused. I know you are most likely angry with me. You have every right to be both.

  It’s late, though I feel no exhaustion. I’ve been sitting here beside you for hours, watching you sleep, watching your long lashes brush your soft skin, memorizing the way your sweet lips move ever so gently as you dream, trying to keep from kissing you and waking you and making you mine all over again.

  I told you that you were mine that night in Rome when you let your dress fall to the floor. I was wrong. You were mine the first moment you walked into my office in New York. That day, it was as if you opened my eyes, grabbed hold of my heart, and crawled inside my soul. I came to life that day, and every day since then, I’ve seen the world differently. I’ve seen myself differently, and it’s all because of you.

  There are things I need to do to fix the mess that my father created. And I can’t
do those things with you here. It’s too dangerous. I’ve put you at risk too many times to count, and I won’t do it anymore. You saved me, Natalie. You saved me in every way that matters. Now, it’s my turn to save you.

  I’m sorry for everything I’ve put you through. I’m sorry that this is how it has to end. I know you’ll never be able to forgive me for this, but I hope that someday you can at least understand. And I pray that one day, you remember that everything I’m doing, everything I’ve ever done, has all been for you.

  You are finally and truly safe, angioletto. Giovanni will never touch you. And I promise, if it’s the last thing I do, I will make him pay for what he did to Elena.

  ~Luc

  My vision blurred. I blinked rapidly and read the letter again, gripping the key tightly at my chest. Nowhere in the letter did he say he loved me, but I felt his love in every aching word. And it only forced the tears to fall faster from my eyes.

  I folded the letter with shaky hands and told myself he was doing what he had to. He was keeping me safe as he’d said. It wouldn’t be forever. As soon as he did what he needed to do, he’d come for me.

  I glanced through the other papers. And gasped when I realized what they were.

  Legal paperwork. Pages of it. Confirming he’d put everything in my name in carefully hidden accounts: his island in the South Pacific, his business in Tahiti, all his money. He’d given everything to me.

  My heart shattered into a million pieces. Unable to hold back the dam any longer, I let the papers slide to the floor and curled into a ball in my chair as the heartbreak and misery washed over me.

  This really was the end.

  He was never coming back to me.

  11

  Natalie

  Eighteen months later...

  It had been a long day. Longer than I’d planned for. But then, every day was longer down here in the South Pacific, simply because there was more daylight to get everything done.

  Exhaustion pulled at me. I was desperate to get home and kick my feet up, grab a glass of wine, and just chill. But I had a few minutes to kill before Haych, my island groundskeeper, friend, and chauffeur, picked me up with the helicopter. And even though I knew better, I just couldn’t stop myself from looking.

  I fingered the key hanging from the long chain around my neck as I sat at my desk in the offices of Luc’s shipyard—well, my shipyard now. Most of the employees had gone home. The warehouse was quiet.

  I knew to be careful—only search on the dark net, use an onion server, hide my tracks. Just as I knew life would be so much easier if I just wouldn’t look. But no matter how hard I tried to let go of the past, the past didn’t seem to want to let me go.

  Sometimes, I wasn’t sure it ever would.

  I scanned threads, searching for any news Luc might be involved in. And when I found something halfway down one of the pages, I couldn’t help but smile.

  The board was buzzing about an unnamed billionaire who’d purchased all the modeling agencies in New York and fired some of the biggest managers in the industry. I knew immediately it was Luc. I knew he was cleaning house and getting rid of the scum trafficking women to elite men in his shadow world.

  He’d told me that he’d originally planned to change things at Covet before I came into his life and distracted him. He was doing it now but on a much larger scale, purging the beta program his House had been instrumental in for so long.

  I opened another tab and typed Luc’s name in the search bar. Dozens of images of Luc filled the screen, making my stomach warm and toss like a boat on the open ocean.

  He was as sexy as ever—his muscular body filling out the charcoal suit, his thick dark hair barely brushing his collar, a hint of stubble on his square jaw, and his unique and stormy gray eyes as mesmerizing and intimidating as they always were. His skin was golden, as if he’d been out in the sun more than usual, and as I studied him, I could practically smell him through the screen—that intoxicating mixture of jasmine and spice and rum that had the power to ignite a fire deep in my belly.

  There were pictures of him talking with other men in suits, in sunglasses walking down the street, at a fashion show, standing on the sidelines. But the one I clicked on was of him and a blond woman walking out of a swanky restaurant in what I immediately recognized as Venice.

  She was dressed in a little black number and high heels, her straight blond hair falling around her perfect face. I could tell with one look that she was a model—she had that thin, perfect build and long shapely legs. And she was clutching her purse at her front as she stepped onto the sidewalk, looking down so she wouldn’t trip as the paparazzi took her photograph.

  Luc was beside her, looking dapper in his black slacks, a white dress shirt open at the collar, and a fancy black jacket. He was also looking down, but his hand was at her back, directing her, and from the tense line of his shoulders and the flex of his jaw beneath his sexy stubble, I could tell he had no use for the photographers harassing them, and that he only wanted to get somewhere private.

  I sat back in my seat, a mixture of loss and despair washing over me as I studied the images. Memories of the way he’d rescued me from the paparazzi that had swarmed around us outside that fashion show in Rome filled my mind. The way he’d rushed right toward me, pulled me against his strong body, and swept me up into his arms, carrying me into the car where I was safe and protected by him.

  My gaze dropped to the article below the picture, and even though I knew better, I couldn’t keep from reading it.

  Marriage rumors swirl around billionaire playboy Luciano Salvatici and supermodel Mila Diedrich. The two were spotted for the fourth time together at the exclusive Acquerello on San Clemente Island.

  I looked back at the picture and focused on his left hand, hanging at his side. No wedding band. No sign of the tattoo that used to hide beneath.

  I’d known neither would still be there—we were divorced, our marriage had even been annulled—but a hole opened up inside me just the same. I looked back at the woman he was intimately touching at his side, and my stomach pitched with the thought of him in Venice with someone else. Even though I knew it would only torment me more, I couldn’t stop from wondering if he’d taken her to the Gritti Palace. To the hotel where he’d taken me. To the place where I’d first realized I’d fallen in love with him.

  The door at my side opened, and I flinched. Reaching for my laptop, I quickly closed the lid and swiveled toward my mother, standing in the doorway.

  “Hi, Mom.” I plastered on a fake smile I hoped she couldn’t see through. “I thought you’d left already.”

  “Not yet. I was finishing the payroll.” She eyed me warily, then came in and sat in the chair across from my desk without an invitation.

  I drew a calming breath and met her gaze. In her early fifties, my mother was just as beautiful as she’d ever been, with very few lines on her face that showed her age. After I’d arrived in the South Pacific, I’d learned that my step-father had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer while Luc and I had been in Italy. He’d hung on for a couple of months but was gone by Christmas. My mother had stayed on the ranch in Montana until March, then finally caved and sold the property, taking a leap of faith to join me in the islands.

  She refused to live with me—said a woman my age needed my space—but I knew the real reason was because she wanted her space. She was single for the first time in her life. She’d bought a gorgeous house on the beach in Papeete and had made numerous friends. And even though she’d never admit it to me, I knew she was happy down here in the sun, away from all the old stereotypes and expectations of what a rancher’s wife should be.

  In that way, we were alike. Both free. The only difference was, I still didn’t feel free. My fingers toyed with the thick band still on my left hand. I felt as if I were in limbo, waiting. For what, though, I didn’t know.

  My mother tipped her head, her soft brown curls falling to her shoulders, and pinned me with blue eyes that were exac
tly like mine. “Any new news?”

  I pursed my lips, hating that she knew I’d been searching for news about Luc. I’d told her about him—I’d had to, considering he’d left me the villa and the island and the business—but I’d kept everything about the Entente secret. I didn’t want to put her in danger by revealing too much. Life was easier to handle if you didn’t know the world’s sinister secrets—I’d learned that the hard way.

  “No.” I reached for the computer bag at my feet and slid my laptop into the pouch. “Do you want to come out to the island for dinner? I think Sela was making lasagna tonight.”

  “No, thank you. I’ve got plans.”

  “With who?” I stood and set my bag on the desk, grabbing the reports I needed to review tonight and sliding those into my bag as well.

  “Sexy American retiree I met at the marina.”

  I glanced up at her.

  She grinned and crossed one leg over the other as she sat back and swung her foot. “His yacht is huge, and he has an extensive wine collection on his boat.”

  I rolled my eyes and went back to grabbing my things. My mother was clearly not going to stay single for long. “And just how did he make his millions? Drugs?”

  My mother scoffed. “You and your pessimism. Yes, drugs, but the legal kind. He was in pharmaceuticals.”

  I was sure he had to be dirty, but I kept my opinion to myself. “Well, if you change your mind, you’re always welcome.”

  “I won’t, but thanks.”

  As I turned to grab my purse from the cabinet behind me, my mother’s voice softened.

  “You really need to start dating, honey. It’s been a year and a half. This work, home, no-social-life thing you’ve got going isn’t healthy. It’s time you moved on.”

  A familiar resentment churned inside me. My mother had been telling me to get out there and date for years—long before I’d met Luc—and while I’d put up with it before, I was tired of it now. I had no desire to date anyone.