Page 91 of The Last Dance You Saved
The only comfort I received from Adam’s disappearance was knowing he wouldn’t be anywhere near Sadie or Fallon. Perhaps we were all safe.
Unless he’d hired someone to come after me.
Which brought me back to Puzo and his thug, Nero. Was that why Adam had been cozied up to Lorenzo? For his connections? For some sort of twisted revenge against the Harringtons? Or had he hoped to get even more money from a deal with Puzo?
All the unknowns meant I was still wound tight and anxious to get back to the two women who held my heart. Every instinct told me I was still missing something, and it frustrated me that I couldn't figure it out.
And that wasn’t the only thing frustrating me. I’d spent half the day harder than a rock whenever I’d thought about Sadie and the way she’d thrown my taunt back at me before swaying out of the vault this morning.
I might not be able to solve the mystery of Adam or Puzo, but I had every intention of easing the tension Sadie had caused.
As soon as I stalked into the marquee, with its abundance of flowers, flickering candles, and elegantly clad guests, my eyes landed on the woman who’d tormented my thoughts all day. She was laughing and spinning around the dance floor with my daughter and Maisey. The way Sadie put her entire body into it, throwing her head back and exposing the long column of her neck, only increased my wild desire to claim her. I wanted to litter kisses along that smooth skin and suck on the pulse beating at the base, just as I had when she’d been tucked into my bed.
Movement on the other side of the dance floor brought Puzo into my line of sight. His focus was completely on Sadie too, and the intensity of his look triggered the savage beast inside me. Instead of stalking over to Sadie and pulling her into my arms as I’d intended, I crossed the floor to him.
“Keep your hands off,” I snarled.
Puzo lifted a brow, and I loathed how I’d repeatedly given him my emotions this week. Worse, knowing how I felt about Sadie gave him one more thing to strike at me with and she could be hurt because of it.
“I’m more than happy to do so, if you’ll tell her to do the same. If we wash our hands of each other, everyone can walk away friends,” Puzo replied.
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“She’s got the jewels, and that will have to be enough. She can’t have any other piece of our pie.”
I despised feeling confused as much as I detested my lack of control, but that was exactly what I was. How did Puzo know about the jewelry? Why did he even care about it? I couldn’t see all the cards on the table in front of me, and rather than pretend I did, I gave him my honesty instead. “I’m not following you.”
“The stolen jewels, Marquess. Keep up. She can keep those as her inheritance, but she won’t get anything else. Carolyn Puzo forfeited it when she walked away from her family.”
The only way he could know about the jewels was if Adam had shared it, or Puzo was watching us closer than I thought. Had Steele scanned the estate for listening devices? Cameras that didn’t belong to us? The knots in my stomach grew more knots on top of them.
Puzo had collected his information on me and mine, piece by piece. He’d pushed a few of the pawns along the game board, just to make sure he had everything right where he wanted. What I didn’t know was why the hell he thought Sadie was after his money.
“I’m afraid the stolen jewels don’t belong to Sadie either. They belong to my family.”
Puzo raised a brow and tugged on his tuxedo sleeve. “Actually, they don’t. They were supposed to come to us as payment for gambling debts.”
My gaze narrowed on him. “How do you figure that?”
“Your great-grandaddy owed the Puzo family thousands. He had two choices. He could either sell the ranch or sell the jewels to pay off his debt. In order to save face, we arranged for the jewelry to be stolen. Harrington worked the deal to loan them to the movie studio while we had fakes made. Carolyn was already working at the studio, so it was a slam dunk for her to swap them out, but then one of them double-crossed us.”
“We’re talking eighty years ago, Puzo. How can you even know all of this?”
“Italian families have long memories and the patience to exact retribution at just the right time. Harrington was supposed to get reimbursed from the insurance company, and our family would sell the jewels to pay off the debt. Any profit, if there was any, would be split between Harrington and my grandfather. No one expected Carolyn to betray her family. No one expected her to fall in love and run off. My grandfather wasn’t even sure if it was Carolyn who’d betrayed him, or if your great-granddaddy double-crossed him, killed her, and dumped the body.
“I don’t believe you,” I hissed.
“Gambling runs in both sides of this family, doesn’t it?” Puzo said, glancing to where Lauren was supervising the cake cutting. “After all, it’s how the Harringtons ended up with this land to begin with, isn’t it? Don’t act like you’re from some noble stock. Your family grabbed what it could, just like mine did.”
The fury I felt at his attack on a family name that I’d long since tossed aside shocked me. And yet, he wasn’t wrong—Alasdair had won the ranch on a gamble. But what he said also didn’t line up with what I’d read in Beatrice’s journal.
According to her, the movie studio hadn’t had insurance, and Alasdair had been out hundreds of thousands of dollars when they’d been taken. There was no way he could have known the movie studio would offer up shares in the company as compensation, so he wouldn’t have had the money to pay off any so-called gambling debts. Beatrice had said Alasdair had been furious about the swapped jewels. Her refusal to see Joe after they’d come back from Hollywood made me suspect this was much more about Joe’s betrayal than my great-grandfather being dirty.
“You’re lying,” I said, turning to glare at him. “It wasn’t my great-grandfather who owed your family money. It was Adam’s. The entire thing was Joe Hurly’s scheme, wasn’t it? It backfired when he tried to pass off the fake gems to my great-grandfather, not realizing Alasdair would have them assessed before they even left the studio lot. Hurly likely thought he’d have days, weeks, maybe even years before anyone realized they’d been replaced.”
Puzo’s face darkened, and I knew I was right.
“But you couldn’t have known Sadie had the jewelry when she showed up. Like you said, maybe Hurly was the one who’d double-crossed your family. So why would you care if the Hatleys claimed to be part of your family? What are you really worried about? Was there a clause in your grandfather’s will that entitled her to a share of the family’s wealth?”
