Chapter 23 Gaven
Gaven
Iwas used to death. I’d dealt it out enough times in my lifetime that it had ceased to affect me the same way it might an average man.
This was something entirely different. I’d known the victim.
I’d been his friend. His demise meant that the future was changing. All of my plans needed to be adjusted.
His death meant I’d missed something, and I was not a man who missed things.
Raffaello's blood was everywhere. It was soaked into the carpet beneath my feet in a gruesome puddle that had dried overnight. "Sir?" One of the Price guards approached me carefully.
"Have you found her yet?" I demanded as I stared down, unseeing, at the brown dried blood.
"No, sir … there was, um, a note left." My head jerked up and I spun toward the man. “It was by the front door, along with…” He didn’t have to say what it was left next to. He held up a plastic bag with a bloodied knife inside. Fuck.
The man looked decidedly uncomfortable, but I didn't give a shit. I reached for the piece of paper in his hand and snatched it away. I prayed it was an explanation. An excuse for her disappearance wouldn’t mean she wouldn’t be punished, but it might, at the very least, provide some insight into the events that had taken place while I’d been asleep.
It was a short note. Nothing spectacular and nothing with a goddamn explanation. It was four simple words.
I'm sorry, Gaven. — Angel
She was sorry? Fucking sorry? Where the fuck did her ‘sorry’ come into this clusterfuck of a morning? I threw the paper down, cursing as I turned back toward the soiled office.
"Gaven?"
I stiffened at the sound of Jackie's voice. "Not now,” I snapped.
The sound of a feminine inhale reached my ears.
Fuck. I'd nearly forgotten. Raffaello hadn't just left Angel behind when the poor bastard had been murdered sometime in the night, he'd left his other daughter as well, and now, I had no fucking clue what to do.
I was an assassin, not a family man. Angel and Raffaello were both supposed to ease me into the role.
Angel, with her body, to carry my seed and bear my heir.
Raffaello, to guide my hand in their businesses.
Now, here I was, thrown with no remorse from the fucking universe, right into the flames.
"I'm sorry to bother you," Jackie said, her voice quiet but firm, "but I've just been informed that forensics on the weapon came back."
My body jolted and I turned to face her. She looked pointedly at the bag the guard was holding. They’d already taken it to forensics and brought it back? That seemed highly suspicious. I narrowed my eyes on her.
"They came to you?" I demanded. I'd told those bastards that I was the head of the Price Family now. They were meant to come to me, not her.
She nodded. Despite the ordeal of the morning, the death of her father, and the grief I figured she must be feeling, Jacquelina Price remained impassive.
Or professional might have been the better term.
Dressed in a pair of Louboutin heels, a black pencil skirt, and a charcoal blouse—she looked ready to attend an important business meeting and a funeral.
I eyed her and her attire curiously. Was it just because she’d been raised in the Price household, or was there another reason for her composure?
Jackie held out a file for me and without a second thought, I took it, flipped it open, and scanned the documents. My jaw clenched as I read the words. "Tell them to do it again," I snapped, shutting the file. "There's been a mistake."
Jackie's face blanched. It was a practiced move, though, as if she was forcing the show of emotion but didn't want to interrupt the beauty of her looks. "There's been no mistake, Gaven. The blood on the blade is my father's … and my sister's."
"She's not dead," I growled before gesturing to papers I'd thrown to the floor. "She left a note." And there was no body.
For a moment, surprise skittered across Jackie's face.
Then it slowly morphed into careful consideration as she bent down and retrieved the short letter my fucking wife had left me the morning after I'd put a ring on her finger and taken her as mine.
I knew, in that moment, there would be no other like her.
Just as there would be no other man for her.
She had, however, chosen the worst of times to get cold feet and run away.
It was too late. We were married, and I'd meant what I'd said—there was no place she could run that I would not find her. She belonged to me. She was my property. No amount of distance could change that fact.
"Gaven..." Jackie's voice was careful as she held up the note and looked from it back to me. "I'm not saying that she could be dead."
I frowned. "Then I suggest you tell me what it is that you are saying," I bit out. "I am not a patient man." Especially when I had a wife to track down.
Jackie inhaled and lowered the letter to her side.
She stepped up and flicked a finger along the top of the file in my grasp.
"There was blood on the knife—hers and his," she said.
"She left you a note—Gaven, you're a fine man.
Handsome. Skilled. Powerful." As she emphasized that last word, I narrowed my eyes on her.
"My sister never wanted to marry you." I'd known that.
I hadn't cared. "She wanted a normal life …
is it really difficult to understand what happened? "
"Why don't you spell it out for me?" I offered in a cold voice.
Jackie's hand lifted from the file and moved to my chest. I willed myself not to fling her away.
"She must have been quite distraught by the events of last night," Jackie surmised.
"I assume she came in here and found our father.
She might have thought he could do something about . .. well, she might have regretted..."
“Spit. It. Out.” I gritted my own words out.
Jackie tilted her head to the side. “The knife found was yours, Gaven,” she said. “Who else had access to your things?”
I scowled. No one. “If you’re implying that Angel had access to my weapons, you’re mistaken.”
Jackie sighed, her chest rising and falling with the exaggerated movement. “Angel was trapped,” she said. “Trapped women do awful things when they feel pinned down. Even if she loved our father, maybe she loved the idea of being free more."
It suddenly hit me what she was saying. I glanced back at the carpet in the office as two men began to cut the edges of the room and roll up the space where Raffaello had bled out and died, removing the stain of his life as if it had never been there.
"You think your sister did this?" I asked, stunned. She couldn’t be serious. It just wasn’t possible. “You think she killed Raff?”
Jackie's lips turned down. "I don't want to. Whatever you may think of me, Gaven, I don't like thinking of my sister as a killer, but … people do insane things when they feel like they've been backed into a corner. Did she tell you she wanted to go to college?"
"She couldn't very well go if she's on the run for murder," I snapped, stepping away from her. "Angel would never have harmed your father. She wasn't capable of it. I know her."
Jackie lifted her chin and met my gaze—something few men could even do, especially when I was this close to rage. "You met and married my sister in less than a month, Gaven," she stated plainly. "You didn't know her at all. She was a tool for you to use in order to join our family."
"She was not a killer," I repeated. No, not a killer, but she was a liar, I thought.
She'd lied to me. Perhaps she hadn't meant to, but that pathetic excuse for an apology written on the note she’d left behind was just another one of her lies.
She ran for a reason, but I doubted very much that it had anything to do with fear or cold feet.
"My sister was a woman trapped," Jackie continued.
The sound of her voice was quickly becoming one of the most unpleasant things I'd ever encountered.
And as a man who'd been held in a Beijing prison for a few months, there were quite a number of unpleasant things I'd been introduced to in my life.
"Trapped women will do what they must if it means their freedom. "
Freedom? I thought. No. Evangeline Price had no more freedom. Evangeline Price was my fucking wife. I owned her. Body and soul.
But to remind her of that, I would need to track her down.
Carefully, to not confuse Jackie, I lifted the file she'd handed me, and then, meeting her gaze, I ripped it down the middle. "I will get to the bottom of this," I told her. "When I find Angel—and make no mistake, Jackie, I will find my wife—I'll know if she murdered Raffaello and why."
A smirk appeared on the corner of Jackie's lips.
Finally, an actual emotion from this woman who called herself a Price.
"I think you'll find, Mr. Belmonte, that my sister—though seemingly sweet—can be just as conniving as any woman.
I don't believe it will be easy to track her down. I've already got men on it."
"My men," I reminded her. "I'm the new head of this empire."
Jackie's smirk turned into a full grin. "No," she said.
"Mine. My father meant to induct you into the family officially today.
Alas," she paused and waved her hand towards the office, "now that he's dead, he can no longer sign over the Price properties.
With Angel missing, I'm the last Price Heir. The Price Empire is mine."
My jaw loosened. There were very few instances in my life I'd been taken by surprise. Now was one of them. She was right. Raffaello and I had meant to sign the papers today, before Angel and I left for our honeymoon. Few people had known that, but she was one of them. Suspicion burned through me. I’d met many conniving women in my life, but I must have been an idiot not to have noticed the one before me until now.
"Now," Jackie continued, "I'm going to ask my men to escort you off the premises, Mr. Belmonte.” Belmonte, not Price. “If I find out any information regarding my sister, I'll inform you." Her eyes met mine as two men appeared and moved toward me. "I hope you'll do the same."
Angel, I realized as the two guards Jackie had apparently called stopped on either side of me, wasn't the only liar in this family. I found myself leaning back on my heels as I tilted my head to the side and examined this new foe before me.
Tall. Elegant. Manipulative. Jacquelina Price was a careful person.
Feminine but dangerous. Like a beautiful serpent.
I felt the mask that had fallen away in the last few weeks with Angel settle back into place.
It was one that I knew well. The mask of a killer, of a criminal, and whether she knew it or not, Jacquelina Price was now on my list. Whether she was a client or a target had yet to be determined.
"Of course," I replied, my tone even. It was a practiced sound. One that gently put clients at ease and achieved the opposite of my targets. "Please let me know if you hear anything. I want her found as much as you do."
"Oh, I highly doubt that, Mr. Belmonte," Jackie said. "I have something at stake here. My father was brutally murdered, and now the whole of his life, his empire, falls upon me. I want to know where my sister is more than anyone. I want her to pay for what she's done."
There was no doubt in my mind that Jacquelina knew more than she was letting on, and the first thing I would have to do if I was going to find out what had happened between them was to find my wife. That was where we agreed but also where our alignment on the situation ended.
Jackie lived up to her conniving and ruthless reputation, which was no different, but I needed to know the truth of what happened, and I didn’t trust her story for a second. When I found out why Raff had been murdered and by whom, then I would deal with her. For now, I had only one focus.
My wife.
Angel would pay.
She would pay for lying to me, for betraying me, and most of all, for thinking she could run from me instead of trusting me.
“I wish you all the best, Mr. Belmonte.” Jackie’s words echoed as they followed me down the hall as I headed for the exit.
The best, I thought absently. That’s what I was, and yet I’d been so wholly and utterly deceived by nothing more than a small, fragile-looking woman with a beautiful face.
Oh, yes, Evangeline had much to pay for.