Chapter 17
Carmine
“Why are you defending that bastard?” my brother shouts at me. It’s unusual for Alessio to get quite as worked up as he is, and it only made me more infuriated.
“You don’t understand, you don’t know the whole story,” I insist, matching his loud volume and pulling my arm out of his grasp.
Soren has stormed off to God knows where, and my brothers are keeping me from running after him. Though, I don’t even know myself why I want to do so. After all, he did just point a gun to my chest. No, pressed a gun to my chest.
Still, I find myself desperate to talk to him, to know that he’s okay…
Tiberi and Alessio are standing in the office now though and their eyes are glued to me. I’m practically panting for breath with how worked up I am. All I can do to keep myself composed is remember that the angrier I am the harder it’ll be for me to get out of it.
“Explain then, Carmine,” Tiberi orders me. “Explain why we just let Soren Fiorelli walk out of here alive when he was holding a gun to your chest.” His voice is low and much calmer than Alessio’s or my own.
I suck in a breath and squeeze my hands into fists. “I don’t have to explain anything to you,” I remind the both of them.
“No, but if you want your family on your side, you will,” Alessio replies. “What the fuck is going on with you? I know it’s not just grieving our father’s death; we’ve all been doing that.”
I take a step to the side, toward the door, but the two of them move like a brick wall of brothers and keep me from accessing it without having to go through them.
“Why are you so against talking to us?” Tiberi inquires, his voice genuinely frustrated and uncertain.
My jaw tenses. “Right now? Because I don’t know where Soren is going and I need to make sure he’s not going to do something stupid.”
“Fine. Tell us the short version then, anything, Carmine,” Alessio steps closer to me. “Literally anything, and we’ll let you go after him.”
I swallow the irritated lump in my throat. “He’s been protecting me, trailing me…making sure I don’t die,” I tell the two of them, trying to keep my voice even. “But his uncle, Eivor, he wants me dead. He wants all of us dead. He’s trying to use Soren to get that done, the fucker.”
“Are you serious?” Alessio asks. “How do you know Soren isn’t simply part of the plan meant to distract you?”
“I know. I saw the look in his eyes. I heard his voice. I know that he doesn’t want to do it,” I say through grit teeth. “But I also know that his family is what is at stake. If he doesn’t do it, he might be dead himself.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Tiberi says slowly. “If you go after him, he might decide his life is worth more than yours.”
“No. If he was going to do it, he would have. Right now, he’s in danger. Every second that I’m alive, Soren is in danger.” I point toward the door. “He has saved my life multiple times in the last couple months. I owe him the same.”
“Is that all?” Alessio asks me. “I think there’s something else here. I think he’s gotten under your skin.”
“What if he has? It doesn’t change anything,” I hiss and try to push myself through them. “I gave you what you wanted, now let me out!”
They each step to the side reluctantly. I unlock and open the door so fast that I hear it creak on its hinges.
Cassian goes stumbling backwards. He was listening at the door.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” I push past him and he thuds against the wall. “And don’t think I don’t know what you were doing.”
Cassian doesn’t say anything, so I figure he went into the office to talk to Tiberi and Alessio, but as I make my way to the foyer, I hear footsteps behind me.
“Carmine,” Cassian says, voice low, soft.
“Not right now,” I huff. I start pushing on my shoes but don’t grab my coat. I need to get out there and fast. There’s a chance I can catch him. Right?
“Carmine! Please!” he shouts, his voice much louder than normal. He’s usually so soft spoken.
I stop with my fingers on the door handle.
“What?” I snap.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” he asks. “Why won’t you even look at me?”
I don’t reply to that, my heart instead simply sinks down into my stomach.
“Do you really blame me that much for our father’s death?”
I close my eyes. “Now is not the time,” I tell him.
“When is?” I hear him step closer to me.
It’s quiet, and I don’t know what to say. All I want to do is crash through the door and get outside to where Soren left. Instead, I stay standing here like an idiot.
“I tried to save him,” Cassian admits. “If it would have been up to me, I’d have never been in that room with him.” His voice falters on the last words. “I never wanted to be.”
Something feels familiar in his tone of voice, but I don’t think about it. I let it pass me as just a fleeting emotion. Guilt. Pain. It’s so similar to mine, but I can’t focus on it. I can only focus on Soren.
I turn to look at Cassian slowly. “I know it wasn’t your fault,” I tell him, and feel a weight lift off my chest, and see his eyes glittering.
“But you have to learn, Cassian, sometimes it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. Some things fall on the shoulders of those who are the least prepared.
I don’t—I don’t care that you failed to save our father, Cassian, but what are you going to do about it? ”
Cassian stares back at me, and the tears grow heavier in his eyes. My own stomach aches and eyes sting.
“You failed too,” he tells me. “We all did, not just me.”
I take a slow breath and close my eyes. “Father was a bastard,” I tell him. “He was… He wasn’t a good man, Cassian, but it’s complicated. He failed and we all failed, I guess.”
“What does that mean?” Cassian asks. “What are we supposed to do about it?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I open my eyes and turn toward the door. “Right now, I need to make sure Soren isn’t getting himself killed.”
It’s quiet as I open the door and feel the cold air rush in to greet my face.
“Hey Car,” Cassian says softly from behind me.
I sigh. “Yeah Cas?”
“Do you love him?” he asks me.
I blink. I’m not sure how he even got the idea to ask just from listening through the door.
Something tells me he knows more than I realize.
That he’s been far more of a fly on the wall than I’ve noticed.
I’ve spent so much time trying to ignore him after all…
Maybe I literally didn’t notice him at times.
I lick my lips. His question hangs in the air and makes my chest tight and uncomfortable.
“I think so,” I reply.
Then I step out and let the door close behind me.
The cold penetrates down into my skin and muscle as I rush down the driveway. I still see Soren’s car in the distance.
Immediately a red alarm goes off in my head. His car shouldn’t still be here.
I’m not wearing a coat, hat, or gloves, and every second I’m outside my skin gets redder, but I don’t care. All I care about is getting to Soren’s car and finding out if he’s okay. Maybe he’s just sitting in there, having been waiting for me to come to him. Perhaps he knew that I would.
Every part of me is alive with anxiety as I stop short of his car because there’s something on the ground.
Soren’s phone.
Or one of them at least. It doesn’t look like a burner phone, it’s too expensive for that. I pick it up off the ground and find that it still works.
“Son of a bitch,” I growl as I swipe at the screen trying to unlock it somehow. Then, I notice the emergency option. I click it just in case.
“Yes!” Soren has several numbers set as emergency, so I can choose one. One of Rosalie. His sister.
I press the button and put the phone to my ear as I’m making my way back up the driveway toward the garage so I can get my own car.
“Soren?!” Rosalie picks up within the first two rings and her voice is racked with concern. “Where are you? You need t—”
“This is Carmine,” I tell her. “Soren’s phone was lying on the ground. His car is still here, I believe he’s in danger.”
I don’t know how much she even knows about the whole situation—or if she is on his side or not—but considering they’re siblings, she must know something.
“Oh God,” she gasps. “He didn’t kill you. Eivor was right.”
“No, still ticking, sweetheart, now tell me where Soren would go.”
“You have to find him. My uncle…Eivor, he sent—oh God. I tried to stop him. I tried to tell him to give it time, but he said that we’d already lost Soren, that there was no point,” she explains.
I growl under my breath as I stomp through the garage to my car and unlock it with a click. I get in, turn the engine on, and make my way out as quickly as possible.
“That son of a bitch,” I huff. “I don’t know where he is. But I might know where he would be. Is there someplace significant to your parents?”
“What?” Rosalie asks. “I’m trying to get out of here. Eivor locked me in his study on the second floor. The windows don’t even open! Fuck!”
“You can’t do anything, I can,” I remind her. “Now calm down and think.” I have her on speaker phone now as I drive.
“Uh…ah…okay, there’s safe house about twenty minutes from the coast. It used to be where our parents went for vacation. We were taken there once or twice. I don’t know why he’d go there; Eivor would be checking all of the safe houses for him,” she explains.
I shake my head. “He didn’t go there, Rosalie. They took him,” I tell her. “If Eivor is as fucked up as I think he is, he’d want Soren taken to someplace important to him. Text me the address now.”
“Okay, okay. There.” Rosalie’s breath is muffled on the phone.
I glance at the text and realize I’m going the wrong fucking direction.
“Shit,” I mumble. The tires squeal underneath me as I do a u-turn in the middle of the road and then speed forward toward the address. Passing by the driveway to the Dresvanni estate once more.
“Got it, I’m headed there now,” I tell her.
I’m about to hang up but Rosalie says one last thing.
“Carmine?” she says slowly. “Don’t let him die.”
I grip the steering wheel harder.
“I won’t.”