Karl stood from his seat and walked over to the bar to pour himself a drink. When he turned around with the glass in his hand, I was struck at how much he reminded me of my father. The few times I’d watched Victor Stone conduct business, he’d had a glass of scotch in his hand each time. That’s what this was to Karl now. Business. But it had a lot of the personal involved too.
He walked back and took a seat in front of me again, the ice cubes in the amber liquid clanking against the side of the glass. “Sometimes there can be no forgiveness, son. Sometimes all you’re left with is hatred as pure as the blood that courses through your veins.”
“So you won’t forgive my father or mother and decided to kill me instead? Seems pretty fucked up. You have nothing left, Karl. Can you possibly hate me so much that you have to kill me? Does the fact that you loved my mother mean nothing now?”
He drank a gulp of scotch and took a deep breath before he exhaled slowly, as if some weight had been removed from him. “If only she’d met me first. You know, I used to wish that you and your brother were my sons. Twins ran in her family, so maybe we could have had twins. I never liked your brother, Tristan. Presumptuous fuck that he was, he thought he was too important to deal with the likes of me, even as a teenager. You were different, though. More like me. He was all books and studying, but not you. I could have liked you. I did like you. You’re a lot like her. I see her in your eyes, even now.”
“You mean the one that’s nearly swollen shut or the other one your men haven’t started on yet?”
“Your one flaw—do you know what that is?”
He took another drink of scotch while I shook my head, not interested in helping him in whatever the fuck this was. “Boyish charm?”
“Smart ass. Your one flaw is that you get attached to things, people. The drugs when you were younger. This girl now. She’s the reason I have to do all this.”
I chafed at his mention of Nina, tugging at the ropes that held my wrists behind me. “Don’t blame Nina for your being crazy, Karl. At least be truthful with yourself. You’re killing me because I found out about Cordovex and how Rider’s drugs were killing people. Nina had nothing to do with that.”
“But that’s not true, Tristan. If only you’d left things well enough alone. You couldn’t, though. That’s your mother in you. You found out about Joseph Edwards and then you saw his daughter. That getting attached thing, remember? Your weakness. All you had to do was throw some money at her. It wouldn’t have taken much. A middle class girl probably would have been happy if you paid off her fucking student loans. But no, you had to ride in on the white horse and save her. You did this.”
“My father had Joseph Edwards killed. Once I was CEO of Stone Worldwide, it was the least I could do to try to make up for that.” Why I felt the need to explain my actions to this psychotic madman was beyond me, but I did.
A laugh exploded from Karl’s face, startling me. “Your father never had a damn soul killed. He couldn’t be bothered. You think he was some kind of shark, but the truth was he was just a workaholic. Nothing more. Well, work and those goddamned secretaries he liked to sleep with. It was the work he loved more than the people around him, though. Hell, he loved work more than he loved Tressa. He made it easy for me to get to her.”
“The least you can do now is tell the truth, Karl. I know my father ordered Nina’s father to be killed. He’d gotten too close to exposing the story of Judge Cashen and his daughter’s deaths and Taylor’s part in that. I know all about the sexual harassment case and the Judge’s part in that.”
Slowly, Karl shook his head. “Right puzzle, wrong pieces, son. It’s true that Taylor got that girl pregnant. That smarmy fuck thought he could do a teenage girl, but he wasn’t smart enough to wear a fucking condom. That he didn’t want her was no surprise. She was a fucking child. A throwaway lay. But your father had nothing to do with her father’s death. That was me. I ordered his death and Edwards’.”
The realization that my family hadn’t directly ruined Nina’s family stunned me for a moment. All this time the guilt I’d shouldered had been wrong. My father hadn’t been a saint, but at least he hadn’t killed Nina’s father. “Why? Was it because Edwards was getting to close to the dirty laundry my father wanted hidden? Did he tell you to get rid of Cashen and Nina’s father?”
Chuckling, Karl lifted his glass and swallowed the last gulp of alcohol. “You have a misguided view of who Victor Stone was. A semi-talented businessman, his real skill was as a worker. He knew more about business than most men because he spent hours learning about it, but he would never have a threat eliminated. He preferred to fight it out. The competition is what he liked.”
As he stood to refill his glass, I asked, “Then why were they killed if my father wasn’t worried about losing the case or what Nina’s father had?”
With his back to me, he answered. “Rider Pharmaceutical.”
“What?”
He turned around and smiled, repeating his answer. “Rider Pharmaceutical. The success of Cordovex wasn’t going to be ruined by some nosy journalist or your father’s inability to keep his dick in his pants. So they had to go.
“All of this over Rider and Cordovex?”
“That competitive streak in your father extended to your mother too. When he found out, he gave me that tiny, pissant company named for her maiden name. I knew what that meant. That was his way of saying I couldn’t have the woman I loved but I could have some useless company to remind me every day that he’d won. Over the years, I’d been able to make it into something and then Cordovex came. We got it through the FDA with an acceptable level of problems, but no amount of hope changed the fact that it wasn’t what we wished it would be. Your father found out and fired me. He was nice enough to give me some time to come up with a way to save face when I left Stone. That’s where his mistake was.”
I wracked my brain to remember any evidence of Karl ever being fired, but if there had been any proof, I’d never seen or heard about it. Whatever he was going on about was fiction to feed his demented ego. “My father never fired you. This is all just to make you feel like you weren’t some low level operative in a company run by a bigger man.”
“So I found a way to make sure I didn’t have to leave. I couldn’t be forced out if the man doing it wasn’t around anymore.”
Karl’s words slowly sunk into my brain and I suddenly realized I wasn’t breathing. It couldn’t be true. He must have been lying.
“I see by the look on your face you don’t believe what I said. Believe it. I needed to find a way to get rid of your father and Taylor, since he’d take over the minute your father was gone. That your mother would have to suffer for staying with him was poetic justice, but I knew I’d have to find some way to get rid of you too. I figured I could deal with that later. Tressa had secretly told me that Victor planned to fire me over the Cordovex thing your girlfriend’s father had found out about and thought convincing him to take a few days off would give me the chance to leave the company quietly. She told me you didn’t want to go. Something about some party you didn’t want to miss.”
As he spoke, I remembered that time like it was yesterday. I’d told my mother I had no interest in going away with them but at the last minute, I’d given in to her constant asking me to change my mind, thinking a few days in the islands would at least offer a chance to party there with much better drugs. My mother had been so happy when I finally relented.
Rage coursed through my veins as the truth became clear. Karl had killed my family over his petty ambitions and now planned to kill me and Nina because he was a megalomaniacal fuck. “You bastard! You killed them over a fucking job?”
“I deserved that job! I made Rider Pharmaceutical a company worthy of respect and he wanted to shut me out of everything! I deserved everything he was taking away.”
“You killed my entire family over some bullshit company the Feds would have ruined anyway. Cordovex would have been the end of Rider,” I said quietly, still unable to process the actions of the monster in front of me.
“Not true. Rider only had to pull the drug voluntarily. The FDA is nice like that. Then it was just a matter of playing the waiting game for a few years and reintroducing it onto the market. I just had to make sure that reporter was handled. But then you didn’t die in the crash.”
A look of disappointment crossed his face and he shrugged nonchalantly. My living through the plane crash had put a damper on his big plans. At least I could know that even though I didn’t know about it at the time, I’d been a thorn in this fucker’s side.
“But then you disappeared a few months ago and all my plans could be set in motion once again. It was like God was smiling down on me from Heaven. So Cardiell was born, and I had it all, but once again, one of you fucking Stones ruined it.”
Karl’s face turned bright red, and he jumped up from his chair to begin pacing as he rambled on about how he’d been treated unfairly, first by my father and then by me. With every word, he sounded more and more like a madman out of his mind.
It didn’t matter, though. None of his men had returned to report their success in finding Nina and Varo, which meant they’d found a way to escape. As long as she was safe, I could handle anything Karl did.
As long as I believed I’d protected her, I could die with some sense of peace.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nina
No matter how hard I tugged my arm, I couldn’t break Varo’s hold on me. I had no idea where he was taking me, and with each step away from Tristan, I feared I’d never see the man I loved again. I tried once more unsuccessfully to yank my arm free from his hand around my wrist, but he pulled me harder down walkway, hurrying me to some unknown place.
“Varo, you’re hurting me! Let me go! We need to go back to help Tristan.”
“We’re going to the plane. He’ll meet us there,” he said coldly.
I stopped walking, forcing him to drag me. “No! I won’t go without Tristan.”
For the first time since we left Accademia Bridge, Varo stopped walking and turned to face me. “Nina, I gave him my word that I’d keep you safe. That’s what I’m doing.”
“I don’t care what he made you sign when he hired you. That means nothing to me. We need to go back to help him.”
“I can’t let you do that. This has nothing to do with anything I signed for a job. He asked me before you left to come here to promise that I’d protect you if he couldn’t. I made that promise, Nina. You just have to trust that he’ll be okay.”
I hung my head in frustration. “He’s not going to be okay. Karl’s going to kill him. Why don’t you see that?”
“I can’t help that. I have a job to do, so let’s go.”
There had to be a way to get through to him. I knew he wasn’t the heartless bastard he seemed to be at that moment. That sweet guy who’d helped me when I didn’t think I could pretend to move on had to be in there somewhere.
“Gage, I know this is more than a job to you. You’re a good guy. I believe that in my heart. Please help me save Tristan. He needs us.”
“Nina, I can’t. Tristan needed to be sure you’d be safe. Just trust that he’ll be okay.”
I couldn’t fight him like this. “Do you understand what it’s like to be so in love with someone that you don’t feel like you can go on without them?”
He looked away and said in a low voice, “Don’t.”
“It’s like if they’re not in the world anymore, you don’t want to be either. Like if you lose that part of you, you’ll never be whole again.”
I saw by the look in those dark blue eyes that I was getting to him. He knew what it felt like to lose someone from when he lost Angela. It was a shitty thing to do, but I needed to manipulate that soft spot in his heart if I ever expected to get him to help me.
“Tell me you wouldn’t have given anything to save Angela if someone was trying to kill her. I know you would.”
“Nina, it’s not the same thing.”
“Yes, it is! You loved her, and if she was ever in danger, you would have given your life to save hers. How is that different from this? I’m not asking you to sacrifice yourself, but don’t tell me it’s wrong for me to do. I love Tristan more than I ever thought I could love anyone. Just help me find him. Please.”
He let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “I can’t let you get hurt, and I have no idea how we can help him. I don’t even know where they took him.”
The thought of Tristan already dead and floating face down in a side canal somewhere made my chest hurt. He might be dead already, but I had to try to find him. I had to save him, if I could. “There has to be a way for us to find him, Gage. He needs us. Please. There’s got to be a way.”
Gage was silent for a long time before he shook his head once again. “I can’t think of anything, Nina. They could be anywhere in Venice.”
His grip loosened, and I tore my arm from his hold. “I can’t give up on him. He needs me now, and I won’t just leave him. Don’t worry. Your conscience is clear. You did what you could, but I won’t go with you.”
Turning, I set off running toward the bridge, unsure of where to find Tristan but sure I’d never give up until I did. I heard Gage yell my name and then I felt his hand on my arm again. “No! Let me go!”
“I remembered something, Nina. There might be a way to find out where he is. Just stop so we can check.”
He held me tightly, giving me little chance to run, so I stopped trying to escape. “Tell me what it is and how we do it.”