Twisted Bond by SR Jones
Chapter One
Giovanni
She’s gone.
She’s gone.
She’s gone.
The words are a drumbeat thrumming through my veins.
I want to roar my rage and sorrow at the sky.
Why didn’t I open up to her?
How did I fuck this up so badly?
I won’t let this be our end. I will get her back.
The jet is ready and fueled for whenever we wish to leave, and I have a bag packed and waiting. Several of my men will be traveling with me, including Reggie, Piero, and Matteo. They know this may take days or even weeks. I’ll scour every inch of Maine if that’s what it takes to find my beauty. My Amelia.
I don't know where she is for sure, but I'm convinced she’s headed home. I'd like to know for definite, however, so I have Marcello and some men reviewing the security footage from Naples International airport, given to us courtesy of a friend of his. It does come in handy having a brother who was so senior in the local police force. It comes in even more handy having most of the local judges in my pocket.
I had planned to leave tonight no matter what, but Marcello has convinced me to wait until we have more concrete evidence of where Amelia could be headed.
I know my beauty, though, and she won't go anywhere other than home. She's going to run straight into the arms of that God-awful grandmother of hers and put herself directly in danger. I have a good sense of exactly how this is going to play out. If only time wasn’t against us and I’d had a chance to find out the truth of her family secrets. I could have saved her. I failed.
Fuck this.
I don’t know what to do with myself. So much rage, and I can’t express it because to do so will mean I lose my ability to think straight. I’m sitting in my study and avoiding people because right now, I want to rip everyone’s throat out.
We still don’t know how the hell Amelia got out of the grounds, but when I find out who is to blame, their heads will roll.
There is a heavy knock at the door.
“Come in,” I say, expecting Marcello.
Konstantin walks into the room, taking me by surprise.
“Can’t sleep?” I ask him.
“She’s gone?”
I regard him for a long moment before I answer. “Not that it has anything to do with you, but yes, she is.”
“I kept my Cassie close when she first came to me,” he says. “She was very flighty and kept getting all these ideas in her head that she wanted to leave. Of course, she wouldn’t have been safe, and I had my own reasons for wanting her nearby. When she finally did escape, I had to go and rescue my sunshine. I presume you will be doing the same?”
I don’t answer as he watches me, expectantly.
Sighing, he shrugs. “I don’t fully understand how she came to be here, though.”
“Do you share the same views as Andrius about these things?” I ask him.
He gives a short bark of laughter. Standing, he prowls to the other side of the room where there are decanters holding various drinks. He takes the lid off the one with the clear liquid and takes a sniff. Satisfied, he pours himself a drink.
He is one arrogant man. I respect him, though. I also think that he and I are on the same wavelength. Ultimately, he is a businessman, and a ruthless one.
The Russian sits opposite me, settling his heavy frame into the chair, his arms draped casually on the sides as the glass hangs from his fingers. “No, to answer your question,” he says. “I don’t share the same impulse to save every fair maiden that my partner does. I have a lot of respect for Andrius, but in this we are not the same.”
“You don’t care about the morals of the situation?” I ask.
He takes a sip of the liquid, swallows, and gives me a sharp smile. “As long as you’re not doing harm to me or mine, it’s none of my business. I’m curious, though. How did she get to be here? I sense your situation is very similar to the one I had with my sunshine in the early days.”
Not saying anything to that, I glance at his vodka.
Deciding I’d quite like a drink of my own, I push myself from the chair, every muscle screaming and aching as if I’ve run a marathon. Jesus, I’m so stiff, and it’s all from stress.
This is all Amelia’s fault, and she’s going to have hell to pay for it when I get her back. I’ll enjoy meting out her punishment as much as I suspect she’ll enjoy taking it. There’s a dark need in her that I recognize and rejoice in because it fuels and matches my own.
I crack my neck side to side, using my hand to ease the muscles and walk around the room once before pouring myself a large whiskey.
I sip at the drink and walk back to my chair. Collapsing in it with a sigh, I give Konstantin a level look. He meets my gaze with an unwavering one of his own.
Screw it. I decide to tell him pretty much everything. I’m a man who relies on my instincts heavily, and my current instincts say that this man is not on some moral mission and won’t judge me to hell and back for what I’ve done.
I lay it all out for him. The way Amelia’s father betrayed me and squirmed out of our deal. I explain why that mattered so much to my reputation here amongst the various clans. I tell him that I let it be known through my board that I would be taking my revenge on Charles. I tell him how I knew that the Spaniard would spread the information far and wide. I also tell him, because why the hell not, how much Amelia has come to mean to me.
I don’t use the word love, but I let him know that she matters to me. I also tell him what Damen divulged in regard to the danger from her grandmother.
Cold and calculating blue eyes watch me while he sips at his drink as I finish my tale of woe.
“You took the daughter as a payment for the sins of the father. And you did so to cement your reputation here and make you even more untouchable to those who run the clans.”
None of what he says is addressed as a question, and he is correct in his summation.
“Pretty much,” I say.
“It seems to me there are two issues that need resolving,” he says. “Firstly, of course, you need to get your own personal sunshine back. She is not safe out there, and I imagine she’s even more in danger now that she’s been seen so many times with you. When a certain kind of man, a weak man, sees something that a great man has, he covets it. Amelia is simply roaming around out there in the line of those who might decide she’s easy prey.”
He’s hit the nail firmly on the head. Maybe I should’ve made this fact clear to Amelia, but then she may have been terrified to even go out. She would have been safe while under my protection anywhere she ventured in Italy. Now, in her homeland, she’s anything but.
Konstantin isn’t finished dispensing his wisdom. “The second issue that needs to be resolved is that you need to claim Charles’ debt in another way. This will send a message to the clans that you have still taken the debt you were due, but it will, maybe, make your woman view you in a more, shall we say, understanding light.”
“How can I settle the debt now that Charles is dead?”
“Take the house,” he replies simply. “Something you ought to have done right from the start. Listen, we’re both men who have been in similar situations. We convinced ourselves that we had to do things a certain way, but really, we wanted a woman, and we went about it in a convoluted manner. Now, how you two began doesn’t matter, but how you end depends on you. Take the house and tell Amelia her debt is paid. Set her free and then lay your heart on the line. I had to metaphorically rip my bleeding heart out of my chest to make my sunshine stay. That, and get her a puppy.”
I stare at him, and then I begin to smile. It’s quite beautiful in its simplicity.
“Hell.” He shrugs. “Take the house and give it back to Amelia with any debts against the property cleared and no strings attached whatsoever.”
I take a long drink and enjoy the burn in my stomach.
There is a danger in what he says, for me. A catch. If I give Amelia her house with no debts, then there is no reason for her to stay with me.
As if he’s a damn mind reader, Konstantin speaks again. “It took me a long time to realize that the only way to keep my sunshine was to give her the chance to be free.”
“What if Amelia decides that she does want to be free? Your proposal is risky.”
“Then you have a decision to make, and one that I personally did not have to consider.”
Curious, I ask him. “What would you have done if Cassie had chosen freedom?”
“I truly don’t know. I’d like to think that I would’ve let her go. However, I’m not a man who is guided by the better angels of my nature. Far too often I give in to the devil on my shoulder. So, who knows?”
Who knows, indeed. My gut tells me that this man would not have let his sunshine, as he calls her, go no matter what. It’s probably a good thing for both of them that Cassie chose him.
I like his idea, though. Take the house. Not only could I let all the clans know that I’ve laid claim to the house, and therefore collected from Charles in double, but it would wrestle the home out of the control of the grandmother completely. I could then give it back to Amelia with no strings attached, and as Konstantin suggested, all debts paid.
“Or,” he says as he takes one last drink, emptying the glass. “You could take the house and use it as a weapon against Amelia to make her yours. I mean, if you own her home, where will she go? Where will she live?”
He taps the desk a couple of times with his fingers. “I’ll leave it to you to decide whether you will listen to the angel or the devil, but either way, you have a plan of action now.”
I do indeed.
“One other thing...” He pauses by the door. “You relay any of this conversation to Andrius, and I’ll completely deny it. He’s a good man, and he’s my partner, but he gets himself in something of a state about… How do I say, the women he thinks need saving. I don’t need the hassle.”
“I won’t say a word; trust me. The man scares me to be quite honest, and very few people do.”
He laughs. “Andrius scares everyone.”
He closes the door quietly behind him, and I listen to his footsteps recede as I ponder on everything he said.