Chapter Five
Now
Heather was exhausted from crying. It had been a devastating night. Losing Giuseppe had been inevitable, but she hadn’t really been prepared for it. How could you prepare to lose a parent? She had now done it in two very different ways. Sudden and expected. She couldn’t recommend either one.
The funeral had been planned and coordinated, and executed within a day. She and Romeo hadn’t had to do anything.
Nothing but try to figure out how to go on with the pain of losing their father.
Whatever Romeo thought of her, of her mother, it didn’t matter. Giuseppe was her father in every way that mattered. Losing him left a void she didn’t think could ever be filled.
Losing him was losing her last connection to the Accardi name. To the illusion she’d ever been part of the family. For her it wasn’t about assets.
She wasn’t even sure when the will reading was happening and the specter of it was filling her with anxiety every time she took a breath. Giuseppe had said she got half the estate. Romeo wouldn’t be happy. An understatement, and who knew what other surprises the will would have?
In the meantime, Heather had been fielding phone calls, managing things that she would have expected Romeo to do, but he was remote and even more unfriendly than ever.
She couldn’t wait to be rid of him.
Dealing with him was the bane of her existence. The scourge of her life.
Every embarrassing, humiliating, terrible thing that had happened to her had him tangled up in it. She just…despised him.
Complicating her grief and turning it into an endless tangle of anger on top of everything else.
Things had changed in the years since that last, explosive confrontation between the two of them.
They had changed the way they dealt with each other.
She had gone back to university after that failed, utterly ill-advised seduction attempt, and thrown herself into her studies.
She had changed the sort of people she hung around with.
Had switched her major from hospitality to English, and begun pushing toward a career in teaching, which had then shifted to publishing.
And which was currently freelance, which gave her an ample amount of freedom, freedom that she knew had only come from the relative privilege she had started out with.
She was the daughter of a cleaner. And the world had opened up to her when her mother had married a wealthy man.
She had gotten lost in private school games for a while.
She liked to think that she had found a piece of herself from before, and done good work integrating it with the woman that she had become, discarding some parts, clinging to others.
She liked to think that she had become a better person.
Though whenever she was around Romeo she didn’t feel like a better person.
And currently, she didn’t feel better at all.
The doorbell rang, and she went to answer it, not waiting for a member of staff.
She knew the man at the door. Gray haired and serious, it was Marcus Santos, Giuseppe’s attorney.
It was time. The clock was ticking. The will.
“Hello, Mr. Santos.”
“I’m very sorry to hear about your father.”
Heather nodded. “Me too.”
“I’ve come to read the will. He left me strict instructions to do it as quickly as possible because he was worried that things would become acrimonious between yourself and…
” His sentence trailed off, his eyes traveling to a place behind Heather.
And she knew why. She felt Romeo’s presence without having to turn around.
“My father’s will?”
“Yes,” Marcus said.
“He was afraid that there would be an uprising if it wasn’t read immediately?”
“Yes, Mr. Accardi,” Marcus said, never looking away from Romeo. “He was.”
Normally, Heather would’ve enjoyed watching somebody stand up to Romeo, but her chest still felt like a hollow cavity. Enjoyment was a distant thought.
They went with the attorney into the dining room. They sat at the table, and he read out very plainly the terms of the will. Romeo’s mother was to get a stipend, relatively limited, but certainly enough. And the rest was to be split evenly between Romeo and herself. Including Accardi Industries.
“That’s outrageous,” Romeo said. “Heather is not part of the day-to-day running of the company.”
“This is not up for debate.”
“She was an English major,” Romeo said, with the same disdainful tone he might have used if he’d called her a garbage collector.
“These are the terms of the will,” the lawyer said.
“You got your way,” Romeo said.
“I don’t want it,” Heather said, seeing it as simply another chain tying her to him.
“Will you sign it over to me?”
“Yes,” she said. “For the monetary value.”
“Then it will be done.”
It was a double-edged sword. Trading the Accardi legacy for money meant severing ties she valued but…
She wanted to be free of him. She needed to be free of him.
She wanted to have no association with him whatsoever, and being part owner in a company with him was not the way to do that.
But she could feel his rage. She knew where it came from.
It was because his father had seen them as equal.
Because he had given her exactly what he had given to Romeo, and Romeo felt entitled to more. To everything.
“All of the assets are to be divided evenly.”
“Good,” said Romeo. “We will liquidate it all. Everything other than the company, and we will split it. You see to that. I don’t want to see her again. Not after today.”
“You think I want to see you?”
“It’s hard to tell with you.”
“Then let me make it explicit,” she said, holding up her middle finger.
“Do I need to send a police escort to get one of you away from the property?” Marcus asked.
“No,” Romeo said. “Leave us.”
“Yes,” Heather agreed, her pulse pounding. “Leave us.”
Marcus did, even if grudgingly. He kept looking back like he might have to suddenly intervene in a fistfight.
Romeo moved to the double doors of the dining room and closed them in a fluid motion.
“It is settled,” he said. “I’ll buy you out. We liquidate everything. We are not family. The Accardi empire is mine. The Accardi name is mine. It isn’t yours, and it never has been. My father is nothing more than a deluded, sentimental old man who believed that a gold digger—”
“My mother was not a gold digger, and you know it. Your mother is a gold digger, one who is being taken care of, even after your father’s death.
You could be angry that they had an affair.
I can understand that, but the love story, in the end, was your father and my mother, and that is not ambiguous.
Your mother is a selfish, awful woman who has spent years making sure that you don’t get to enjoy your life because you have to do her bidding.
” She’d seen the way he acted whenever Carla called or texted.
The way he responded to her marching orders, abandoned holidays and family dinners and meetings to go to her.
His eyes were like black holes, filled with fire and loathing. “How dare you! How dare you speak to me like this! Of such things, when you came in here with nothing and are leaving with everything all because your mother was a homewrecker.”
“The home was already wrecked, Romeo, be realistic. My mother was not responsible for the state of your parents’ marriage.”
“It is a good thing I am no longer responsible for you.”
“You never were. You’ve never been responsible for me. What you have been is a vengeful, diabolical, seething…” She realized then that she was moving closer to him, and he to her.
“And you are nothing but a brat. The moment that you had access to money and to wealth, what did you become? No better than me, so you cannot claim a high road where we are concerned. You are a grasping, manipulative…”
And then, suddenly they were so close they were sharing the same air.
“I hate you,” she said.
“No more than I hate you.” Then he wrapped his arm around her waist and brought her body up against his. “And we never have to see each other again. Not after today.”
Adrenaline coursed through her, excitement lighting her up. She could feel a pulse beginning to beat between her legs.
It reminded her of that night in the hallway when he had grabbed her throat. Of the night before that when she had climbed into his bed and he had come out of the shower naked.
But this time there would be no consequences. No consequences because they never had to see each other again. There would be no holidays. No family summers, no more dinners.
She would be free of him once and for all. He lifted his hand and traced her cheek with his knuckles. “I can think of no more fitting goodbye,” he said, his voice low.
“Yes,” she said, her body feeling like a stranger’s now. She was driven. A need, and not a lovely, romantic desire, but this toxic, utterly forbidden desire she had always felt for her stepbrother.
Part of being free of him would be to have this.
She knew it. She had always known it. Even though her attempt at seducing him had been half thought out, and all the way stupid all those years ago, it had come from a place of realizing that a powder keg packed this tightly would always be a risk. It had to explode.
It had to.
With them, it might be murder, or it would have to be sex.
She would take the sex.
He reached his hand back, and grabbed a fistful of her hair, drawing her head back, exposing her neck, and then he lowered his head and kissed her.
Right there, where her pulse was beating at the base of her throat.
She let out a raw, completely unhinged cry of pleasure.
She had expected that the first thing he would do was kiss her mouth, but no, he trailed hot, violent kisses up her neck until he reached her lips, and then he consumed her.
His mouth bruising, his tongue taking no prisoners as he plunged deep into her mouth.
She began to tear at his clothes, his tie, as he began to remove her clothes from her body.