Chapter 9
SEBASTIAN
Icould still taste her reluctant kiss.
Her futile struggles against my embrace had been a turn-on.
My palm itched with the anticipation of holding her down by her wrists while I…
“So was Plan B a success?” Rafaello entered our Parisian home carrying a case of wine, breaking into my illicit thoughts.
At my questioning look, he shifted his arm to show the name on the box, Cavalieri. “Enzo sent a case of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano d'Abruzzo dei Cavalieri as a thank you for taking care of that bullshit business with the Columbians. He said the last body was fished out just yesterday.”
A note was taped to the top. After tearing open the envelope, I read it out loud. “No Italian should endure the indignity of drinking French wine.” I tossed the note aside. “Funny. Did you want that or a spritz?”
After placing the box down, he wiped the cardboard dust off his hands. “Spritz. I’ll save the wine for dinner.”
I surveyed the bar ingredients lined up on the sideboard by our staff. “Venetian or Tarocco?”
Although the Rue de Lille apartment belonged to the family, I hated everything about it. Cold, sterile, and soulless. All white walls, brutalist cement, strange metal sculptures, and oversized glass.
It reeked of my mother’s post-modernist rebellion phase.
My brother settled onto an ugly mustard-yellow leather sofa, the only splash of color in the room. “Tarocco. What are you doing here? I thought you were going to stay at the Shangri-La.”
After adding the gin and Cappelletti over ice, I pulled the crystal stopper off the carafe of blood-orange juice and poured a healthy splash before finishing it with some lemon juice and a dash of vanilla syrup.
Capping the cocktail shaker, I raised my arm and shook it over my shoulder as I answered. “I am. I’m just here for apertivos.”
Rafaello stretched out his arm and selected an artichoke and fried pancetta crostini from the selection of snacks prepared by our Italian chef.
Our Italian animosity toward all things French ran deep.
So deep, we always brought our own staff when we traveled to Paris for the shows, preferring home food to the rich French cuisine.
Before taking a bite, he asked, “Not staying for dinner?”
“I have other plans.”
A smirk played on his lips as he wagged his eyebrows. “Would this be Plan B? Should I be worried there is a female tied spread-eagle on the marble slab down in the hammam?”
My cock lengthened at the thought of Sabrina stretched naked over the Turkish bath marble bed down in the basement.
To conceal my erection, I stalled while opening the prosecco to refill Rafaello's drink.
Dammit.
Being this attracted to Sabrina wasn’t part of the plan.
I’d sworn not to touch her.
Using the judge's innocent daughter as a pawn in our twisted game might make me a monster, but I'd resolved not to be a heartless one.
Then I'd kissed her.
It had taken all my restraint not to shove her against a wall and fuck her there and then.
Her purity and innocence were remarkable. It tempted a man to corrupt her. To possess her. An uncut diamond in the rough.
I wanted to be the man to fashion and mold her, to bring out her beautiful facets until she shone so brightly that anyone who beheld her would go mad with envy.
It was a dangerous thought.
Going forward, I would have to be more cautious with her.
With my reaction to Sabrina under control, I brought Rafaello his drink, just as Arabella breezed in. Several staff members flanked her, their arms filled with shopping bags.
“Ciao, dear brothers.”
Rafaello sat forward to set his drink down. “Where have you been? I’ve been texting you.”
As she flung herself onto the sofa, she rolled her eyes in exasperation.
Then, after giving Rafaello a kiss on the cheek, she pulled off her heels and curled her legs under her. “I had to turn my phone off. Mother wouldn’t stop calling. She’s pissed as hell we didn’t hold the corporate jet for her.”
Unconcerned, I shrugged. “I warned her that Rafaello had an early morning meeting with that Geneva auction house over their latest diamond acquisition.”
Propped up on her knees to rest her arms on the back of the sofa, Arabella gazed at me. “Did you tell them my suggestion to cut it into an oval brilliant with the sixty-six facets like the Koh-i-noor, or are they still determined to cut it into an oval cushion like the Star of the South?”
“Star of the South.”
Her lower lip protruded. “Che noia! So wrong. I wish you had let me go to the meeting.”
I kissed her on the top of her head. “Not a chance. I needed you to represent the House of Diamanti at the Yves Saint Laurent show.”
The diamond business was a brutal game of power and greed.
My father, clinging to outdated ideas about business being a man's world, kept Arabella from participating.
My motives were different.
My brothers, Rafaello and Arcangelo, and I were fiercely protective of our little sister.
We didn’t want her exposed to the more unsavory, and frankly criminal, elements of the family business.
Unfortunately, that decision did not sit well with her.
It might be time to find her a husband. It was past time she focused on marriage and children.
Shifting the conversation, I asked her, “Did you want a spritz?”
She turned her back on me with a long, dramatic sigh. “I’ll take a Nero Chinato.”
I scanned the contents of the bar cabinet. “I don’t have any blackberries. How about a Bicicletta?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Fine.”
After exchanging a knowing look with my brother, I grabbed the Campari and prepared her drink.
With her arms stretched up behind her, she twisted her hair into a messy bun. “Since you are both being boorish, now I don’t feel so bad letting you know Mother is ordering her own private plane now, just to spite you.”
Rafaello threw his head back and stared at the ceiling as he groaned. “Father will have a fit.”
After handing Arabella her drink, I joined them in the lounge area with my simple Negroni. “Relax, I put a flag on her corporate card. No purchases over a hundred thousand euros without my permission.”
Arabella picked the anchovy off an arugula and mozzarella crostini and handed it to me before popping the rest in her mouth.
The salty fish complemented the bitterness of my Negroni.
After chewing, she said, “She’s only doing it because she’s pissed that Father took his latest mistress to La Pergola. He knows that’s her favorite restaurant.”
Rafaello nodded. “I’ve had to add two bodyguards to each of their security details purely for fucking crowd control.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose to stave off a headache. “I don't want another public fight between them; the last thing I need is another PR disaster.”
My parents’ fights were legendary around Rome.
Their arrival at the same restaurant prompted staff to clear away all the glassware and knives.
I’d lost track of how many payoffs I’d made for broken china and smashed wine bottles over the years.
“They should just divorce and get it over with.”
Rafaello selected another crostini. “Mother, give up the Diamanti name? She’d kill the bastard first.”
My parents’ disastrous marriage was one reason my plan for Sabrina was not as ill-advised as it seemed.
It would be devoid of love and emotion. It would be a business transaction to protect the Diamanti legacy, and no more.
A simple arrangement.
And after I eliminated her father’s threat, I’d settle a generous yearly allowance on her and allow her to return to New York.
I had it figured out.
Not wishing to discuss our warring parents any further, I asked Arabella, “How was the Yves Saint Laurent show? Did they approve of our jewelry selections for their collection?”
She waved her hand in the air. “Of course! But you put me in an awful spot. I had a terrible time calming down the lead designer when he learned you appeared at that awful édouard Sauvage-Lafleur’s show instead of his.”
I furrowed my brow as I watched the ice in my glass melt. “How did they find out?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding me? It’s all anyone can talk about. The gossip was all over Paris the second you entered the Louvre.”
I swallowed a low curse as I tilted my glass back and finished my drink, now wanting something stronger.
Crossing to the bar cabinet, I dismissed the whole thing. “It wasn’t planned.”
Rafaello patted her leg. “It was Plan B after Sabrina Dolce Badalamenti turned him down flat.”
“She did not turn me— You know what? Fuck you.”
Arabella took the glass from Rafaello’s hand and stole a sip before handing it back with a grimace. “Yuck. I hate Taroccos. Too much gin.”
“That’s why it’s my drink and not yours,” he teased as he pulled on one of her curls, a habit from our childhood days.
She gestured with her chin. “Is it true he let her wear the Yellow Persian?”
As Rafaello nodded, I snapped from over at the bar, “He is in the room, you know.”
Rafaello’s laugh rattled the ice in his drink. “And he is in a shit mood.”
“Shouldn't you be on your way back to Rome by now?”
Rafaello tossed a roasted olive in the air and caught it in his mouth. “And miss all the fun?”
Arabella joined me at the bar cabinet. She placed her hand on my back as she tilted her head to stare up at me. “I thought we talked about you giving up this silly plan?”
“No. You talked. I listened.”
Her lips bowed into a frown. “Apparently you didn’t listen. Do you have any idea how over-the-top Machiavellian this all is? Do you feel nothing for that poor girl? No compassion?”
After that kiss, compassion wasn’t the word I’d use.
“This is business, Arabella. Stay out of it.”
She thumped her fist against the center of her chest. “This is Diamanti business, and last time I checked, I’m a Diamanti, too!”
“She will marry into one of the richest families in the world. Can we not dramatize this as some tragic opera?”
Arabella folded her arms over her chest as she squared off against me, one eyebrow raised. “I could always just warn Sabrina.”
My glass met the table with such force that the crystal cracked.
I curled my hands into fists at my sides and turned my full wrath on her.
Taking several steps backward, she stumbled in her haste to escape me.
“Try it, dear sister, and I’ll have you married and shipped off to our Lac de Gras mines so fast your pretty little head will spin.”
Our Lac de Gras diamond mines were in a subarctic region of Northern Canada so remote it was only reachable by air or a seasonal ice road. My sister, who thought a chipped manicure or a cold espresso was cause for tears, would not thrive under such isolated conditions.
It was not an idle threat.
And she knew it.
“You’re no better than Father!”
She spun on her heel but paused in the doorway, adding, “And you never will be.”
With my eyes closed, I absorbed the well-deserved but despised comment.
Rafaello released a long breath. “She didn’t mean it.”
I ran my hand through my hair then turned back to the bar to pour myself a straight scotch. “Yes, she did.”
My father was an absolute piece-of-shit human being.
The truth was, he wasn’t much better than Sabrina’s father, Judge Delluci. They were cut from the same fetid cloth.
There was no bar too low for my father. People were a disposable means to an end, his family included.
I couldn’t recall being anything but a prop to my father.
The dutiful son.
The heir to his diamond dynasty.
As long as I played by his twisted set of rules.
Rules I had tried to reject…until now.
Until Sabrina.
Who the fuck was I kidding, believing that, somehow, I'd survive this mess with my soul still intact.
Rafaello put his hand on my shoulder. “Whatever you are doing, it’s for the family. The family must always come first.”
I held up my glass in a mock toast. “To the family,” I said, before draining its contents.
I checked my watch. Sabrina should have arrived by now.
Just then, my driver entered the room. “Your pardon, Dottore Diamanti.”
The space between my shoulder blades tightened as I took in the driver’s strained expression. A sinking weight settled in my gut when I realized Sabrina was not with him.
Had someone gotten to her first? The unknown man lurking under the awning earlier? Benedict’s text warning me of the judge’s men in Paris came back to haunt me.
The glass trembled in my hand. “Where is she?”
Rafaello squeezed my shoulder, already sensing trouble. For once, no longer finding humor in the situation.
“Easy, Sebastian. I’m sure there is an explanation.” He looked at the driver. “Right?”
The driver’s knuckles turned white as he worried the brim of his chauffeur hat. “She wasn’t there. I waited and waited. She never showed.”
Rafaello grabbed my upper arm when I turned to leave. “Sebastian. What are you going to do?”
I shook him off. “I’m taking your suggestion.”
His eyebrows rose as he pointed to the center of his chest. “My suggestion. And what suggestion was that?”
I buckled my gun harness over my shoulders before shrugging into the coat a staff member held out for me, then I stormed toward the door.
Rafaello called after me, “Not the kidnapping one, right?”
“What do you think?”