The Ties That Bind
CLEO SCORNAVACCA
Books by Cleo Scornavacca
The Miss Taken Identity Series
Miss Taken
Identity
The Ties That Bind
This Beautiful Escape Volume One
The Anthology for Ataxia Awareness
Coming Summer…. 2016
Anonymous Author
The Anthology for Project Semi-Colon ;
The Wild Roses Series
Within Six Months
Credits
Book Edits by Lindsay T. Errington
LTE Editing
Cover Art by Stephanie Hobbs
Steph’s Cover Design
Beta Reader
Samantha Talarico
Copyright © 2016 by Cleo Scornavacca
Published by Cleo Scornavacca
In accordance with the United States Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, businesses, places, events, incidents, and circumstances are either used in a fictitious manner or are the subjects of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or actual events is purely a coincidence.
Dedication
This book was tough to write at times, but I wouldn't
expect anything less from Dominick & Rain.
So, after I tossed the draft, twice; and changed the
title to The Ties That Bind,
Their story is finally complete.
For waiting so patiently and always having
a kind word when I felt like it would never
come together.
I’m dedicating this one to you…
My readers
Thank you so much,
Love, Cleo xo
Acknowledgements
I need to thank my family for their support during the writing of this novel, when I acted crazy and of course, cooked chicken fingers as our “go to meal,”as usual.
I want to thank my editor Lindsay T. Errington. Your extra little notes and observations made me laugh out loud and really had me look at things differently, including the accident with the Hummer.
To Stephanie Hobbs, my cover artist, you nailed it! Thank you for making me fall in love with Dominick & Rain all over again, because of this amazing cover.
To Samantha Talarico, my beta reader for the book; Thank you for accepting the task with such enthusiasm and attention to detail. You helped me so much.
I need to thank my Facebook groupCleo Scornavacca’s Books, we have become far more than a “street team.” We are family. Thank you for all of your advice and support; your postings of my work, but especially for just being there with me,every single day.
And lastly, but never least…
I must give a special thank you to author & fellow Jersey Girl, Stephanie Evanovich. I’m so grateful to have met you last October. It was my very first book signing and you gave me down-to-earth advice in a sometimes overwhelming career, in the crazy world of books. Thank you so much. I’m honored to call you my friend.
The Prologue
Rain
It was one year ago that Dominick and I met. I should say it was one year ago that he had arranged to have me kidnapped and held prisoner in his home, so that he could put his plan of revenge against my dad into motion and take control of Vincent Kane’s share of Kane and Medici.
Little did my now husband know back then that Vincent Kane wasn’t his biological father. He was also unaware that Elise Kane, Vincent’s wife at the time and the woman who raised Dominick as her own was actually his aunt and the same woman who took him away from his real parents and his twin brother, at the time of their birth.
For most of us, the situations we were exposed to as children were what shaped us as adults today. Dominick Kane wasn’t any different. His past molded how he behaved and related to others in his everyday life.
Even though I fell for Dominick rather quickly in such a bizarre situation, I was completely able to relate to his need for control in most things. That didn’t mean that I agreed with everything he had done, but I got it and I got him.
Now that we were married and we are new parents to our twins, Angel and Joseph, Jr., there was a new set of obstacles that we had to deal with as a couple. I was sure that we would get through it like we always had in the past; except these were more difficult and had Dominick and I at opposite ends of the playing field. And like most couples, we both felt we were right. These issues all stemmed from the investigation that had been taking place to find the red-haired woman who ran down my dad and who had attacked me at our shore house.
Dominick was angry at my need to investigate each crime. He felt I should be the good little wife and let him and my dad handle it. I for one believed it was that bitch, Darian Mann. My dad and Dominick had other ideas and were very secretive about the entire investigation; except when it came to each of them telling me to stay out of it. They were in complete agreement there. Yet, that was something that I wasn’t about to do. My defiance didn’t sit well with the two most important men in my life.
I was of the belief that, whoever ran down my dad with Dominick’s car, did it on purpose. It was personal. They proved it by assaulting me at the beach house several months ago when I was pregnant.
I was left in a coma. Their actions cost me my chance of ever seeing the birth of our twins. They ruined a very important moment in my life. The least I could do would be to ruin the rest of their life permanently; by making sure that they would pay for their crimes.
Both my dad and Dominick were extremely powerful men; yet my continued pursuit to bring my assailant to justice made them realize that the control which my dad had over me when I was young and Dominick had over me as his prisoner, was no longer within their reach.
I knew that if I continued to ignore their unsolicited advice to stop the investigation that I was pursuing on my own, then this situation would get worse before it would get better. I realized though, that I couldn’t work on this alone. I was aware I needed help. Tommy had agreed a while back to do just that, but his life was turned upside down since he slept with my sister. More than that, Tommy seemed off in general. With everything that had gone on it was understandable, but there was something more than just his affair with Raven.
Hopefully in the next few months I would be able to find out exactly what that something was and help Tommy through it, much in the way he had always helped me.
I also hoped that if we discovered who did this to me and my family, Dominick and I could finally move past it and have some peace. And with that peace would come the ability to finally let go of the past that still appeared to haunt each of us to this day.
Chapter One
The Invitation
Tommy
It was the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend. Rain was married now. She was busy with the twins and Kane’s private birthday celebration. Private, because she and Kane were the only two people on the guest list, other than their newborn babies. After everything that went on with them in the last year; I couldn’t blame Rain for having settled on a low-key holiday weekend at the Jersey Shore with just her husband and children.
In fact, I decided that I would take a cue from Rain and get out of the city as well. I booked a fli
ght to the “Island of the Gods”…Bali. September was the beginning of spring in that part of the world. Although the waves were mid-size, there were still the occasional large swells that Bali was known for. September was also a perfect time to surf both sides of the island due to the light offshore winds. Yeah, this was a great idea and I looked forward to the break, especially after what went down between my brother, Raven and myself.
Mike was definitely wrong for having cheated on Raven, but I was absolutely out of line for sleeping with her and making an already complicated situation only that much worse. I replayed the events that led up to me and Raven being together, over and over again in my head. If I said I came to a conclusion on the subject, I would have been lying. I don’t know why it happened or why we were remotely attracted to each other. We were never each other’s type. I knew overthinking it wouldn’t help, but it wasn’t that I was trying to just make sense of it; I think I was trying to quell the uneasiness of it. I made the reason why it happened too complicated; when maybe all it was-was the simple fact that Raven needed someone and I was that someone in that moment. Or perhaps I was the one that needed someone and Raven was there to fill that void.
I wish it were the simple fact that two people who were familiar and comfortable with each other just came together because of the events that went down in Mike and Raven’s relationship, but there was a part of me deep inside that knew it was something more. Maybe the connection was more for me than for Raven? I couldn't put my finger on it. The “it” was something intangible. Something I hadn’t figured out yet. Or maybe it was something I didn’t want to face. One thing I was sure of was that some of it had nothing to do with Raven at all.
When Rain hooked up with Kane, I had been out of sorts. I never let on to Rain that I wasn’t happy with my life. I, myself, couldn’t pinpoint the reason for it. At first, I thought that I was jealous of Kane, but Rain and I had always promised that we would never let our relationship become a sexual one. We both had feared the love we shared for each other would be at risk if we ever became sexually involved with one another. We had an amazing friendship and as we grew older, our friendship only grew stronger. Our connection was one that was more than most intimate couples experience. Perhaps it was because we didn’t have all of the pressures of an intimate relationship. We both didn’t want to screw that up with the complications that could arise by sleeping with each other and becoming a couple.
There were too many “what ifs.” What if we broke up? What if I disappointed her? What if she disappointed me? We both agreed that we loved and needed each other, but we never wanted the bond that we shared to be broken by having sex. I think deep inside I knew that if Rain and I had become more back then, she may have never been free. Rain and I did everything together, but she would have never tried to go out on her own if we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Deep down inside Rain and I knew that it would have destroyed what we built as friends and that would have been far worse.
Now, I also could have easily blamed my melancholy on Kane. I could have said that by him having kidnapped Rain, he had upset our natural life together; upset our family as we knew it. Yet none of that was true. He did alter Rain’s world and it did indirectly alter mine, but even before Rain moved out I felt lost. Only now without Rain around to distract me, I had to face the loneliness.
I do know one thing for sure. I needed to get out of this funk that I had been in. I needed to get away from the Kanes and the Medicis for a while. I needed to get away from the Contes too. My parents had been on me to talk to Mike about what happened. Unfortunately, Mike and I still weren’t talking. We weren’t fighting any longer, which was a good thing, but we hadn’t spoken to each other since Rain’s wedding day. I hated what happened between us and I knew it would be a long time before he would be able to come to terms with what I did. I told Mike that I took full responsibility for my role in what happened between Raven and me, but I honestly didn’t know if our relationship would ever recover. At this point only time would tell.
I also had to get away from Rain’s incessant matchmaking strategies, especially with Maggie, Victor’s assistant at the firm. In the end, she just wasn’t my type at all. I knew Rain would say that I didn’t give her a chance, but nothing clicked. Besides, she seemed so distracted on the few occasions I did take her out. It wasn't worth my time to pursue someone who was clearly not interested in me. I had the feeling she had someone else on her mind and there was no way I would get myself into another situation like that again.
Yeah, the best I could do was hit the waves at Bali and leave all of this self-inflicted tension behind. It may only be for a short period, but at least if I were alone I could clear my head and get refocused for when I returned. I told Rain that I would be gone for about two weeks and that when I got back we could get started on the book.
I knew Rain would never let me hear the end of it if I stayed any longer than that. She had been cooking up a scheme to find out who ran her dad down with Kane’s car. She believed it was Darian Mann. I wasn’t sure if that were true or not. What I did know was that Rain would never let this rest and she needed someone to keep an eye on her. Kane and her dad would both be enraged if they knew what Rain was up to. From what Rain told me, they had an inkling, but I wasn’t sure that they knew how far she was willing to go with this.
If they found out I had agreed to help Rain, all hell’s fury would fall down on me. I couldn’t think about that. It had always been second nature for me to protect Rain since we were kids. I wasn’t about to stop now. The bottom line was that no one would be able to halt Rain in her pursuit of answers in this situation, so it was better to be the watchful eye than have her sneak around and possibly get herself into serious trouble.
All of the shit that Rain’s mother piled on her when she was young made her act this way. Her confinement was bad enough, but her mother’s manipulation and lies were an entirely different matter. I can’t fault Dominick or Victor for being worried about Rain, but she was a grown woman and I truly can’t believe what drives her is something any of us can stop All we could do was support her and jump in if she decided to take this too far; which might be a possibility, knowing her as I did. One possibility that I had hoped didn’t come to fruition.
Just as I was about to get up and stop all of this reflection in self-pity, my phone buzzed. My day was finally about to improve.
“Hey, Baby, I thought you were MIA for the weekend?” The woman on the other end of the line had always brought a smile to my face. It was Rain.
“Not exactly, Dominick had some work to catch up on, so he thought it would be best to bring it down here where he wouldn’t be interrupted. Although he is supposed to be enjoying the weekend without any evidence of the firm, I can’t fault him for wanting to get ahead a bit. Besides, this gives me a chance to call you about the investigation.” Rain revealed.
“Any news?” I asked.
“Nothing new, but I bet if we could get more info on Darian and her whereabouts on the day the accident happened the case would be solved sooner rather than later.”
I shook my head and grinned. She wasn’t about to let this go, in the least. “So, I take it the ‘we’ in your statement means you and me?”
I questioned her, but I already knew the answer.
“Of course it does. I thought you already knew that. Who else would I trust to help me with this?” Rain asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, your new husband, perhaps?” I teased. I knew full well she would never tell Kane.
“C’mon, Tommy, try to be serious. He won’t even tell me what exactly went on in the boardroom that day I found him with Darian. He gave me some bits and pieces of Darian and the lawyer from the firm and then Darian and Mike, but that was basically it. When I try to press him for more, all he ever says is that he and my dad have everything under control. I’m so sick of that excuse.”
“Rain, he may be right this time. It may not be an excuse. Maybe you should let them handle it.
You were just released from the hospital. Your body has been through a great deal over the past year. Plus, you have the twins to take care of. You have a lot on your plate right now. It may not be a good time for you to get involved.” I tried to put everything into perspective for Rain, but she wasn't having any of it.
“Listen, Tommy, I know that you want the best for me, but I won’t just sit back and wait for something else to happen to my family. First, my dad was hurt. Actually, he could have been killed and whoever it was used Dominick’s car to do it. Then, I was assaulted, and the person who did that took away my only chance to see my babies being born. I can’t get back that once in a lifetime experience. Now are you going to help me or not?”
There was no talking Rain out of this. I felt it was my duty as her friend to make sure she stayed out of trouble, so I agreed. “I’m in.”
“Good, so why don’t you come down here after you get back from Bali and we can go over the different aspects of the case and see if we missed something.”
The Ties That Bind (Miss Taken Identity #3) Page 1
