Arabella’s POV
When I woke up, I was tied to a chair. The last moments of the fight came to me. How I had fought to the butter end. How someone had jabbed me with a needle. And how it had all gotten dark. Yes, I could remember now. What I couldn’t do for the life of me was tell you where exactly I was.
I looked around. I was in a basement. It smelt familiar and come to think of it, the painting of the room looked familiar.
Someone entered the room. It was Luciano’s uncle. I couldn’t believe it.
I thought he was sick so what had happened? After Luciano had told him about us, had this been his reaction?
I thought about the timeline. It hadn’t been an hour after Luciano left when those men came. There was only one explanation. He had planned it all. Removed Luciano from the equation so that I would be defenceless.
Goddess, I didn’t know for sure what was going on but I intended to find out.
“Arabella Bianchi.” He spat my name out like it was a curse. Maybe it was for him.
“You kidnapped me. If you hate me so much, why not just kill me?”
His lined face scrunched up as he twisted his face in anger at what I had just said. He came closer and leaned in, his dark eyes searching for and cataloguing all my flaws and mistakes.
“You think because of the mate bond between you and Luciano you can act cocky, Luciano is strong. The probability that he will survive the severing of this bond is very high so keep talking and see where it gets you.”
My mouth fell open in shock. “You know that we are mates?”
The timeline didn’t tally. The attack had come too soon. There was no way Luciano could have told him in time for the attack. Which beggared the question how could he have found out?
He looked at me mockingly.
“There is a lot that you are unaware of that I know. The most important things to me are my boy Luciano and to teach both your father and the entire Stonecold pack a lesson for killing my brother and his mate.”
“As for you Arabella, in an ideal world, Luciano would have killed you immediately he saw you. In an ideal world, he would have made this decision so that he would lead a normal life. The kind he was living before you showed up. Now I will correct that mistake.”
A chill swept across my skin, leaving goosebumps in its path. Did he mean what I thought that he did? Goddess, was this going to be it for me?
“What is your deal with me? I know you hate my father but it doesn’t mean that you have to hurt me. Even I have problems with him. I have never done anything to you personally so why would you want to hurt me?”
Luciano’s uncle looked like he wanted to slam my head against the wall. Repeatedly.
“No problems with me personally?” He laughed darkly. “You took Luciano from me, warped his mind and now you are asking me what you did wrong? No matter. I intend to correct that mistake by using you. Did you know that Luciano refused to kill your father, the man he’s wanted revenge on for over a decade? And I know you are behind that.”
I inhaled sharply. Luciano had kept his promise to me though it only served to cement the feeling in his uncle’s mind that he was being manipulated by me.
“What are you going to do to me?”
I had a philosophy of life that I just broke. Never ask questions that you aren’t sure you want to know the answer to.
He smiled and I knew it wasn’t going to be good.
*************
Alpha Luciano’s POV
Uncle Tommaso knew.
He had known she was awake. I wondered for how long. That was why he had been acting so weird. Telling me about the past. About how much he loved me and everything he did was for me.
I pushed down the myriad of emotions that threatened to send me falling apart. Betrayal, hurt and disbelief topping the charts. I couldn’t believe it. My uncle had double-crossed me.
He had double-crossed me, abducted Arabella, killed security personnel for the house, kidnapped Emery and left her on her deathbed. I was unsure if Emery would make it but I had left her in Cecile’s capable hands. I had bigger fish to fry as it was. I needed to track down Arabella, the only problem was that every time I tried to use the mate bond to zero in on her, it went murky.
It could have been because I had no idea how exactly to use the bond to track her but I suspected my uncle had something to do with it.
Uncle Tommaso always had a hand in every pie. Especially when it came to tracking. It had been one of his duties as Beta of the pack. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that he had found a way to obscure the effects of the bond the way he was doing for himself on the pack link.
I could sense he was there but I couldn’t see him much less send him a message or track him.
So I raced back to his house like a man who had lost his mind. It wasn’t too far off. I had lost my mate. My goddess’s given mate. And the man that I saw as a father was behind it. If this wasn’t the time to lose my mind, I didn’t know what time was.
I reached his house. It was empty. I ransacked the place searching for anywhere he could have hidden her. Uncle Tommaso only had one property on pack lands. And this was it.
When I reached the basement, I caught a whiff of Arabella’s scent. I broke down the door and entered. All I found was a chair with a rope around it. I picked up the rope and scented it. It smelt like Arabella and blood.
Fury flooded me and I found myself vibrating with anger, if he had harmed a single hair on her head, so help me God, I would kill him. Uncle or not.
I tried tracking his scent from his house but upon reaching the forest line, it disappeared without a trace.
I nearly lost my mind, my head, everything. I was angry, I was in pain, and I wanted to find my uncle and hurt him for daring to betray me yet all I wanted was my mate back. I remembered my uncle telling me that love made people weak.
This must have been what he was referring to because, without Arabella with me, I felt lost and without purpose.
I pulled myself together refusing to wallow in self-pity. My mate was in danger. I had to find her. I would call in all my men, and raze Italy to the ground if that was what it would take to find her.
I walked to the pack house while mind-linking Cross to come to my office. I needed to make some calls to my men placed at strategic locations to find her.
Upon opening my office door, I saw my uncle sitting behind my desk as though nothing was wrong. Temper flaring, I crossed the distance between us and lifted him right out of the chair, my fingers squeezing his neck.
“Where is Arabella?”
He smiled lightly as though he were not hovering some inches above the ground with my hands a second away from strangling the life out of him.
“You are too late, Luciano.”