Chapter17
Harrison
Iwatched Gigi as she worked the party the next night. Most of the guests wore expensive suits and dresses. I could tell they were all high-profile. All but the Italian man named Nicodemo, who stood away from everyone else, a drink in his hand, just like me. Or maybe the crowd was giving him space. He had a dangerous vibe about him that was clear. He didn’t seem all that approachable.
I’d asked Gigi who he was the night before. A bodyguard? “No,” she’d said. “A friend of my family.”
He raised his glass to me. I raised mine in return.
My eyes went back to the woman who stole my attention in a gold dress. The dress was tight. Her soft black hair was pulled up, her slim neck on display, and she was laughing at something another woman had said to her. She was the actress tonight. The vision of everyone else’s expectations of her.
She’d been distant after last night. Quiet. Almost reflective. For whatever reason, I got the feeling she was dreading something.
Maybe I was, too.
My eyes constantly scanned the crowd, looking for a familiar face.
Mari.
If she saw me with Gigi, and something registered, like jealousy, I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about it. The entire purpose of this agreement between me and Gigi was to feel Mari out. To see if she’d react. But that was before. Before everything got tangled. Back when my feelings were clear to me.
Nothing was fucking clear anymore.
I always thought Keely would set fire to my list, but it was Gigi who made me forget it. All those years of planning, and in a week, she unraveled them. She cut strings I never thought anyone could, and she set me free.
She got underneath my skin, and I liked the way she felt there.
The anger I used to feel at the entire world was redirected. I was angry at the assholes who’d hurt the woman in front of me. Yeah, her eyes were sharp, but there was a sweet vulnerability in her smile that did wicked things to my heart. There was a lot more to her than I thought anyone gave her credit for. And I knew I’d only touched the surface.
I almost dropped the glass in my hand when the thought struck me.I don’t want Mari to come through that door.
If Gigi’s idea worked—it was for nothing. My feelings were not in line with what I’d always believed them to be. I was totally off base. I’d never loved Mari in the way I always thought I had. My job as the oldest was to protect my siblings, and somehow along the way, strings got tangled and I’d confused what I’d felt for her.
Then again, I wanted to see Mari. I wanted to confront everything I’d once believed and compare it to where I was. Because I knew it would be monumental. Like the epiphany I was having.
Maybe I’d even wish Mari well with her new husband. Her new start in life had set me on a new path in mine.
The old man, Nonno, came to mind.
“If you had a week to live, what would you do with it?”
I wanted to tell him my answer had changed. I would want to spend it with her. The woman who lived every day like it might be her last. She made me feel alive.
Which made the dread that I felt from her even more out of place. I wondered if it was coming from the same place as mine. I didn’t want to walk away from her after tonight. Did she think I would turn my back on her after seeing Mari? She kept putting distance between us. And acting the same way she did at the wedding. She wanted all eyes on her. These people seemed to only encourage her.
That was the part I couldn’t quite grasp.
When she made me feel alive, it was because she truly felt it. She didn’t have to be speeding, but just looking at something she admired or found interesting. At this party, her laughter rang out, but her eyes were almost dead. It was the same look in her eyes when she held a gun to Miles’s head. There was no doubt in my mind that she was going to take the shot if the two giants hadn’t stopped.
It went past anger or protectiveness. It was detachment from everything and anything. That worried me.
What the fuck had happened to her? Was it those two assholes? Did it go further back than that? Was it Mac? Mari’s husband? What wasn’t she telling me? I felt like there was a gap between me, her, and the truth—and I was standing in the middle of it.
My phone went off in my pocket. When it did, Gigi looked at me but then turned back to whoever she was talking to. I needed a breather from all the people anyway, so I took the call as I walked to the other side of the pool. I looked out over Costa Smeralda. The sea spread in the distance, lights all around it, as my sister’s voice came through the other end of the line.
“You sound better,” she said.
I grinned. “I only said hello.”