Page 48 of Blood Ties

Though Alessio and I were given a second chance, I was still a little miffed that he hadn’t told me he’d been hired to kill me. It ticked me off that he thought I wouldn’t have listened to him. Part of the reason I’d been so devastated is because I’d been left feeling like he had lied to me and was toying with me. After I’d had time to think about it, I’d realized he had been nothing but good to me and my overactive imagination had run away with me.

Then again, my emotions were understandably frazzled at that time.

Finished with my welder and set it to the side, then I flipped up my helmet. With a critical eye, I surveyed my work. A knock on the had me pulling it off.

“I’ve got it,” Alessio called out as he came out of his office. Already, he knew not to come in when I was welding or risk getting flash burn, and to listen for it to be shut off first.

My handsome boyfriend had opened up one of the corner rooms in his condo for me to do my smaller projects on the days I stayed with him. The fact that he hired a crew to come in to do a rush job on a room so it had the appropriate safety measures for me to work had made me cry. He admitted he was prepared to do whatever it took to kiss my ass for not telling me the truth right away.

I might’ve milked that a bit for the first few days.

The sound of men’s voices carried through the massive condo, but I couldn’t tell who it was. When Alessio knocked on the doorframe, I glanced over my shoulder at him.

“Everything okay?” I asked because his face looked pale and a little shell-shocked.

“I… uh… there’s someone here to see you. But I think you better be prepared for this shit.”

I jerked my chin back as I warily stared at him. “Who is it?”

“You should probably just come out,” he replied.

Curious, I pulled off my gloves and dropped them on my work bench as I followed him to the living room.

When we got there, a blond man sat on the couch with his back to us. At the sound of our approaching footsteps, he stood up and slowly turned.

My heart stopped and I gasped before my hands flew over my mouth. Then I dropped them and with a stuttered inhale, I approached the man.

“Justin?” I breathed, barely able to form words. My eyes darted over his features, not believing what I was seeing.

The look of apology and sorrow in his blue eyes hit me straight in the guts.

“I don’t understand,” I murmured before I threw my arms around him and hugged him tightly. Tears welled, then rolled down my cheeks. He returned my affection with a strong, warm embrace of his own.

Then he proceeded to explain that he had a psychic reading and the medium told him she saw him die—specifically that someone was trying to kill him. He had been consulting this psychic his entire adult life because she had given him valuable advice on numerous occasions, to the point where he credited her for the majority of his fortune he had amassed.

“She also told me about you, but we always assumed you were a future child, not that you were already alive. At least, not until you found me. After that happened, we were both shocked. Then again, she always said she wasn’t shown everything, just what I needed to know at the time.” He shrugged, but it had me wondering what my life could’ve been like if we’d known sooner.

Then I decided that if things hadn’t happened the way they did, I might have never met Alessio.

Justin ended up working with local Chicago police initially, then the FBI stepped in. They had decided to fake his death after overhearing a suspicious conversation between his wife and his assistant.

“So you caught Carl opening the safe in your home office and helping himself to some of your cash?” I asked, astonished at the little man’s audacity.

“I did. He claimed Jade had sent him after it, but that didn’t make sense, because Jade would’ve asked me. Then I heard them arguing about it that night when they didn’t realize I had come home early from my business meeting.” Justin palmed his face a moment before dropping his arms to the dining room table. “The FBI found out that he’d been pawning my things even back then. What bothered me was that I would’ve given him money if he needed it. It was simply envy and greed.”

“He must’ve been insane,” I gasped.

“I think he was—at least very sociopathic. But sweetheart, I had no idea Carl would go after you. He always seemed to be fond of you.”

“I guess he had everyone fooled,” Alessio chimed in as he shook his head in disbelief.

“That he did—until he didn’t. I ended up telling Jade that my psychic told me I was going to die and it scared me. I led her to believe I decided to prepare for my death on the off-chance. I went and had that paperwork added to my instructions upon death. But I had Carl witness everything at my attorney’s office, then told him and Jade that I filed the paperwork and all the information was in the safe as to the funeral home, etc. Jade and Carl then decided it was the perfect time to kill me.” The betrayal of the two people he trusted more than anything was visible in the lines that bracketed his mouth and eyes.

“So after what you had heard them saying, you believed they were not only stealing from you but plotting to kill you?” Alessio asked.

Justin nodded. “I had an actual reading after the events that transpired and she really did confirm that someone was trying to kill me—after all that, I believed that it was Carl and Jade. We suspected because of several odd searches Carl had made on my computer. My psychic told me not to eat or drink anything prepared at the house. I told the FBI I had seen and overheard suspicious things that made me fear they were trying to kill me.”

“Justin, I’m so sorry. I wish you could’ve just come to my place and hide out for a while!” I told him.

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