Page 33 of Brutal Heir

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.