Page 28 of Bound Enemies
Because if Umberto had wanted Calixto once, they were certain that he would want it again when it was worth even more.
They’d been right about that.
It had taken over a decade, but they had finally taken the old man out at the knees in a boardroom in Madrid, where Umberto had believed that he and the supposedly ultra-virtuous Pau were signing a deal that would deeply enrich Umberto’s coffers. The old man had expected the deal to keep him sitting pretty into his dotage.
Instead, Giaco had stepped in, revealing himself as a secret partner in the business all along, and cutting Umberto out in a way that would not render the man destitute—that was simply a pipe dream, given his wealth—but had humbled him. Embarrassed him. And had significantly decreased his net worth.
The good news was, they did not have to bankrupt Umberto to hurt him. He was too used to his billions. Having onlymillionsmade him desperate.
It would be pathetic if it wasn’t so well-deserved.
And all of that, Pau understood as he looked at his best friend’s face, was nothing to Giaco in this moment. Because on the other side of the plated glass doors sat Giaco’s sister. Who should never have become involved in any of this. Who was in no way Giaco’s detested father.
Who Pau should certainly never, ever have touched. Much less with the express intention of using her as a weapon in this long war of theirs.
He’d known this all along. He’d also known that this reckoning could not be avoided. Not forever.
“I cannot defend myself,” Pau told his friend as evenly as he could. “But I will explain.”
“I do not need your explanations,” Giaco threw back at him. “It’s obvious to me what you’re doing at a glance. We’ve lived on revenge for more than ten years, Pau. I recognize it when I see it. What I cannot understand is why you did it behind my back.”
“Because I knew that you would not permit it to happen if I told you that I was doing it,” Pau retorted. Starkly. “And yet it is something that needed to happen, I am afraid.”
“Itneeded to happen?” Giaco echoed him, then shook his head. “You needed to lure my sister from the only home she has ever known, transport her across borders, and install her in your creepy little convent—”
“The house was, in fact, a monastery.”
Giaco shook his head, though his dark gaze remained hard. “My sister is truly the only innocent I believe I have ever met,” he bit out. “Certainly the only one in the Tavian family. And you know that very well, old friend. You know it as well as I do. One can only assume that this was the point.”
“Your father did not simply destroy my family business,” Pau threw back at his friend, his voice something less than even as it shook with the force of that dark and vicious emotion he held for the man he had long considered his enemy. His nemesis. “That was bad enough. The legacy of my family wasthis closeto being wiped from the earth, and for what? One old, rich, morally destitute man’s ego?”
“So you chose to morally bankrupt yourself in response, and at my sister’s expense?” Giaco looked at him with an astonishment that Pau did not think was remotely feigned. “This from a manheraldedacross Europe for his virtuous center that defines every choice he makes?”
“I am as much a saint as you are a devil,” Pau growled. “We have both used these reputations to our advantage, have we not?”
“I don’t recall prancing into your family in all my state and systematically dismantling your siblings, and not only because you don’t have any.” Giaco’s mouth thinned. “You, on the other hand, did that and more. A wolf in the manger, when the manger was already heaving with wolves aplenty. Quite an accomplishment, Pau, to out-wolf the kind of people who were at my wedding, where I assume you met her. A thieves’ gallery of the world’s worst, and yet you’ve given them all a run for their money.”
That was a blow, and Pau didn’t pretend it didn’t land. But he pushed on anyway.
“I will tell you this,” he managed to say with some remnant of his usual equanimity. “I would lose every single vine that was planted by the hard labor of my ancestors if it meant my father was still here. He’s not like your father, Giaco. Or like me. He truly was a good man. An honorable man. He lived by his own moral code and held himself to high standards expected from everyone around him, including me.” He forced himself to breathe, and not to look away, because he felt perilously close to the emotions he had been trained out of expressing as a child, and he could not see how they would help here. “And your father deliberately and systematically stripped him of everything that was meaningful to him. His legacy. His honor. And yes, eventually, his life.”
Not to mention any chance Pau might have had to understand his father better. Or get to know him when he was older and, perhaps, a bit softer.
He tried to shove such unruly notions aside.
“I know all this,” Giaco threw back at him. “What I don’t know is how you decided that you should makemy sisterpay for my father’s sins. I thought that you and I had taken on that challenge. What did Leontina ever do to you?”
That, it turned out, was a far more loaded question than it should have been. But this was not the time or place to discuss the great many things Leontina had done to him, and all of them incapacitating in ways that Pau was not at all certain he was likely to recover from.
“She is my wife,” he said quietly. Intently. “And come the winter, she will be the mother of my son. These are the only facts that matter.”
Pau watched that go through Giaco like an electric current, confirming to him that Giaco did not know about the pregnancy. That he was here because he knew his sister had come here. This meant that he might not know that they were married, either.
He watched his friend go incandescent, and he could feel the violence of it, though Giaco did not in fact lunge across the room the way Pau half thought—and half hoped, perhaps—he would. Pau thought he could see the exact moment that Giaco counted the correct number of months, and came to the inevitable conclusion.
He’d already understood that Leontina and Pau hadmetat his wedding. Now he knew what else had gone on.
Giaco looked murderous.
