Chapter 48 Chiara
Chiara
“No bullshit tonight, Chiara,” Angelo warns as our driver approaches the venue. Kane has gone ahead to check the security or whatever. I didn’t ask.
“I’ll be on my best behavior.” He doesn’t look convinced by my sweet smile, but thanks to the high-strength painkillers I popped before we left, I’m high as a kite and chill as fuck.
Not even Angelo can piss me off, although I expect that to change once the pills wear off.
“You better be,” he mutters before the car glides to a halt outside some fancy building.
Once inside, Angelo drags me around the room as he greets people he knows. It isn’t until we stop for a breather while my husband orders a drink for himself that I spot Vivian.
The man she’s with has his back to us, but I assume it’s her new husband. The third one, by my calculations. I wonder if this dude knows his days are numbered given husbands one and two died prematurely.
It’s not until the man turns that I recognize him.
A minute later, my stepmother and her husband are heading our way. I take in her couture gown and obscenely expensive jewelry and realize she’s enjoyed a significant upgrade. The bitch.
“Di Rossi.”
“Remington,” Angelo replies through gritted teeth. “Vivian.”
“Is this husband number three?” My delightful ho-bag stepmother glares at me before good manners prevail.
“Tim is my husband now, yes. We’re deliriously happy.” To reinforce the point, she wraps her hand around his arm and simpers. Tim’s expression remains blank, so I assume the honeymoon period is over for him. If there ever was one.
Christ, fucking Vivian must be akin to sticking one’s dick in an embalmed corpse.
“Congratulations,” Angelo says politely.
“Hope you have good life insurance,” I quip. Angelo digs his fingers into my wrist, but I ignore the silent warning.
To my surprise, Tim chuckles. “I’m not planning on dying just yet, my dear.”
“My father didn’t expect to die so soon after his marriage either.” I smile serenely, but from the way Vivian’s left eye twitches, she's unhappy about my insinuation.
Angelo clears his throat and moves the conversation on to business matters while I listen, bored out of my skull.
But the more I observe Remington and my stepmother, the more something niggles at me.
I don’t recall seeing him before the charity ball when Angelo first introduced me, but I swear I’ve heard his voice before.
I listen until my eyes glaze over, and then it hits me. He was at our house in the weeks before my father passed away. I remember overhearing Vivian and a strange man talking outside as I sat in my bedroom with the window open.
The scales had fallen from my eyes that night when I realized she was having an affair. Dad was away, and because it was so late, she’d probably assumed I was asleep.
I normally would have been, but a migraine had woken me, and because it was a warm evening, I’d left the window open for some fresh air.
At first, I assumed my stepmother was talking on her cell, but when I looked, I spotted two shadowy figures under the gazebo. It wasn’t long before talking turned to sex noises.
I’d tried telling Dad about it, of course, but he hadn’t believed me.
Vivian marrying the man she’d been having an affair with cements my belief that Dad’s death wasn’t an accident.
I can’t prove it, but I know in my bones she killed him.
Maybe not directly, but he died at her hands.
And if this Remington guy is the sort of man I think he is, I strongly suspect he played a part in Dad’s death too.
Naturally, she didn’t immediately rush out and marry him. Oh no. She played the long game, the role of the grieving wife left to care for her poor, orphaned stepdaughter. That served her well while she depleted what remained of my father’s estate and left me penniless.
Marrying me off to Angelo was probably part of her big plan.
She’d have known that the moment I became Angelo’s wife that there was nothing I could do to challenge her.
Even if Angelo believed me when I accused her of killing Dad, the Di Rossi family wouldn’t want the publicity of a murder case linked to them.
“Everything okay?” Angelo’s surprisingly solicitous question jolts me out of my trip down memory lane.
“No,” I admit, honest for once. He takes my elbow and steers me into a side room, where it’s quieter.
“Tell me.” I open my mouth and it all tumbles out: my suspicions about Vivian’s motive for marrying my father, her abysmal treatment of me, and my belief Remington is the one she was having an affair with.
“I’m sorry,” Angelo says when I finally fall silent.
“It is what it is.” Dad’s dead, and nothing will bring him back now.
“Remington is a nasty piece of work, and if it makes you feel better, Vivian has met her match there.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t seem like an upstanding citizen.”
“He’s not. He masquerades as a financier, but his businesses are corrupt as hell.”
“I guess it takes a criminal to know one.” I chuckle softly, and Angelo smiles.
“One more hour and then we can leave.”
I hope he means it because I’m all out of smiles and small talk.
Forty-five minutes later, and I’ve lost the will to live. Turns out I have a very low tolerance for socializing when I can’t drink, and sadly for me, alcohol is off the table tonight. Even I’m not stupid enough to mix booze and painkillers.
Angelo is talking to a pair of suits about business shit, so I zone out.
A hand brushes my hip, making me jump. I nearly end up tossing my sparkling water all over a woman standing nearby looking almost as catatonic as me.
“Having fun?” Kane stands close enough to whisper in my ear but not close enough to trigger gossip.
“No.” His low laugh sends tingles down my spine. I haven’t forgotten the way he made me come the other night.
“I’d much rather be at home, drinking wine and watching Netflix.”
“Not long now, kitten.” His fingers brush mine before he steps back and gestures across the room. “Luka’s here.”
“He is?” Angelo never mentioned Luka would be at this event. I already knew Fina wasn’t coming, something about a schedule clash, but it never occurred to me Luka might be here. It doesn’t seem like something he’d attend. Most of the guests are older corporate types with their vacuous wives.
I peer around Kane and scan the crowd, which has thinned out a bit since we’ve been stuck in this corner.
It takes me a hot minute, and then I spot him. He's penned in by a group of women, most of them older. In their late-thirties and forties at a guess. Cougars and desperadoes, every last one of them.
My hackles rise and I take a step forward. Angelo hasn’t noticed my mood change, but Kane grabs my wrist and hisses in my ear.
“Don’t make a scene!”