Betrayal Read Online Free Page A

wrinkled, tanned cheeks, painful sobs racking her shoulders.
    Noah felt sick with guilt.
    Maybe the other guys did, too, because without discussion or discord, they put their arms around her, surrounding her with love. Her boys. She called them her boys, and they owed her more than they had given her lately.
    Eli was the oldest, so he said, “Nonna, it’s okay. We’ll get this mess figured out somehow.”
    That didn’t help at all. Instead, she put her head on his chest and cried harder.
    Nonna wasn’t a woman given to outbursts of emotion. She was strong, had been strong all her life. But there had been too much turmoil lately.
    She’d been attacked by a robber in her own home.
    She’d been hospitalized with a concussion and a broken arm.
    She’d come home with Bao, her bodyguard, and Olivia, her nurse, and the three of them had formed a tight and loving circle… or so it had seemed.
    She’d been betrayed. His sweet, loving grandmother had been deceived by someone she trusted.
    In between her sobs, Nonna said, “Poor, stupid, dishonest Olivia. It’s… my fault… she’s dead.”
    “What?” Rafe shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe he’d heard her correctly. “How is it your fault?”
    “I knew it was either Bao or… or Olivia who searched my room. I’m the one who… who set the trap. When she fled…” Nonna took a long, quivering breath. Her crying calmed. She lifted her tearstained face. “In those last minutes of her life, that poor girl must have been so afraid. When I think of her, shot in the back of the head, execution-style.”
    Eli, Rafe, and Noah exchanged glances.
    They should never have told Nonna how she’d been killed. They should have known that knowledge would haunt her.
    “So much trouble has come to Bella Terra. So much pain. So much suffering. So many victims,” Sarahlamented. “And for what? A bottle of wine. A few diamonds. They’re only things .”
    Eli, Rafe, and Noah had come here today to rebuild Sarah’s stairs—but actually, they were here so she wouldn’t be left alone to grieve.
    She had lost a little of the faith and trust that made her who she was. They could not bear that.
    “Nonna, Olivia was in league with thieves and murderers. She drugged you. You could have died.” Eli hugged her more tightly against him.
    “She drugged Bao. You had no protection. My God, you could have been kidnapped. You could have been killed.” Noah’s hand convulsed on Nonna’s shoulder.
    His fault. All of this was his fault.
    Since the year he was nineteen, Noah Di Luca had known he towed death along behind him with an unbreakable chain—and he had forged that chain himself.
    His family called him the carefree one, the one who had escaped unscathed from the angst that drove his brothers through hell. That was fine; he took care to maintain that lighthearted facade.
    Because he wasn’t like his brothers, tortured by an unkind fate. He and he alone had screwed up his life.
    Once he had faced that fact, he made choices. Some had been easy, some difficult.
    He played hard: raced his motorcycle, skied the black slopes, flew a glider.
    He worked hard, maintaining tight control over the family-owned Bella Terra resort, constantly improving the service, the setting, the restaurant.
    He loved deeply. But only his grandmother, his brother even his fickle, thoughtless father.
    Noah’s crime was old, but like Jacob Marley’s chains, he’d dragged it behind him into the present.
    He wanted to say something, do something that would make it all better. But the last time he’d opened his mouth, he’d said too much. For the first time in ten years, a smidgen of the truth had come bursting out of him. If he had told them the entire truth… their deaths would be on his hands. It was too dangerous to confide in his family.
    Now he remained resolutely silent, totally ineffectual, doing nothing more than standing close, with his hand on Nonna’s shoulder.
    She sniffled. “Do any