Novels by Nemi

CHAPTER EIGHTEENCALISTAThe servants had finally been sent to clean my room, three days after the damage was done and I had been left to remain in the mess. The injured guard was fine according to whispers I heard, and I knew he would think twice before thinking about rough handling a woman ever again.I was sitting on the edge of my bed, watching quietly as two servants swept up the last of the glass, while another one straightened the chair and placed it back against the wall like nothing had ever gone wrong here at all. I almost laughed at that. As if sweeping up broken glass could sweep away everything else that had broken along with it.Then the door swung open without any knock, and without any warning at all."Out!" My mother snapped at the servants, and her voice was so harsh that all three of them scrambled to obey immediately, dropping brooms and clothes where they stood and hurrying past her into the hallway.She pushed the door shut behind them with a loud bang, and I bra

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN RHEYES I stormed back toward the house, trying to force out the sound of my father's dismissal from my head, but it just kept echoing through my skull like a gunshot that wouldn't stop ringing. "Don Rheyes," Antonio called out, jogging a few steps to catch up with me. "Should we finish going over the warehouse plans? I still have the maps if you want to…" "Not now!" I had snapped so hard and cold at him that Antonio paused in his tracks, but I still didn't wait or even slow down to give him an explanation or soften the blow. I just kept walking, leaving him shocked and confused while I prepared to face my own demons inside the house. Everything inside the house seemed to only irritate me more as I entered, and it was all because those brutal words my father had said just kept coming back to haunt me, each one always more painful than the last. *A wrecked room upstairs. Excuses. Nothing to explain.* I didn't even know where I was walking until I nearly

CHAPTER SIXTEENRHEYES"Father."He was just standing where he had been the entire time, watching the small but obvious hostility between me and Giovanni. For some strange reason however, he acted like he hadn't seen any of it."Rheyes," he said without interest. "Is there a problem?""Yes, there's a problem," I replied, and I knew my tone was aggressive, but I just didn't care. “There was an operation today and you didn't inform me. How am I supposed to be ready to look after things when you retire if you're keeping things like this from me?”The calm and neutral look on his face now vanished, replaced by a cold look of anger. "You want to know why you weren't informed?" he said, glaring at me while his voice kept getting more furious. "Because you've been too damned busy chasing after skirts and locking yourself away with problems that have nothing to do with running this family."It was painful...My father coming out so directly and telling me exactly why he had left me and my men

CHAPTER FIFTEENRHEYESA few more days passed without any further incidents, and I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. The entire estate seemed to be more occupied by the preparations for the gala, and my father still hadn't done or said anything about that moment he found Calista in my arms.I finally began to think he'd simply let it slide. If only…On a particularly quiet morning, I was discussing with Antonio, one of my most trusted men near the east gate, going over plans for a small expansion into the warehouse district near the harbor.It was simple work…numbers, territory lines, and calculating which families we needed to negotiate with versus which ones we simply needed to remove entirely from the map altogether."If we push into the second warehouse by next month," Antonio said, tracing his finger along a rough map that we had spread across the hood of my car, "we'll be able to control almost the entire northern strip. That's easily three more buyers added to our b

CHAPTER FOURTEENCALISTAI just stayed up on the edge of my bed for what felt like hours after waking up. Sleep had only come in small patches, and all that occupied my consciousness were the Patriarch's words still echoing through my head like a slow and steady drumbeat. One in particular stood out more than the others, and It frightened me more than anything else I've ever heard before. And trust me…I've heard quite a lot of dangerous things.*I might have no need to use this gun.*I couldn't even decide what frightened me more…the calm way he said it, or the fact that I believed every single word of it. From my time in this house, I had come to learn that he didn't make empty threats. What he made was promises, and he kept those promises in ways that made your blood run cold by just thinking about it.The room around me was still a mess…the broken lamp was untouched, and the overturned chair was still lying on its side where it had fallen during the struggle with the guard. No one

CHAPTER THIRTEENRHEYESI barely had any sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my father's face standing in that doorway, cold and furious, taking in the wreckage and Calista wrapped in my arms like it was the most normal thing in the world.I kept replaying it over and over in my head, trying to guess what he was thinking, trying to figure out what he would do next. My father never showed his move right away, and that was what worried me the most. He liked to let things stay for a while, allowing the people involved to remain uncertain in their own fear before he finally decided the right moment to strike.And that made me very scared for Calista.By the time the sun came up fully, my whole body was feeling heavy with exhaustion and anger. My mind wouldn't stop racing, jumping from the silent threat in my father's eyes, to Calista crying against my chest. What did he tell her after asking me to leave? Did he threaten her life?It was all too much… I needed to clear my