Family Bonds- Eli and Bella (Amore Island Book 6)

by Natalie Ann

  “Hello,” she said on the first ring.

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “No,” she said. “Just making some breakfast before I go into the office to work on that proposal. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll be up in a minute. I wasn’t sure if you left or not.”

  She laughed. “That’s funny since we know you know where I am at all times.”

  “I’ll see you in a minute.”

  “Your eyes are glowing as you talk to my niece,” Oliver said.

  Griffin started to laugh. “He doesn’t like you to point that out.”

  “Do you have an issue with it?” he asked Oliver.

  “No. If I did, she wouldn’t have ever stepped foot on this island. Or I would have gotten her off of it the minute I knew something was going on with you two. The question is, is it serious or just a fling?”

  “You don’t think I owe you any explanations when you are keeping me in the dark, do you?”

  Oliver grinned. “I suppose not. Now I’d like to see my niece.”

  34

  Pushed Aside

  “Is my uncle here?” she asked when Eli came up to get her and said they were going to the fifth floor.

  She could see him hesitate and finally say, “Yes.”

  “And you’re just telling me now? How long has he been here? You knew last night, didn’t you?”

  “Griffin spotted him checking in under an alias last night. I wanted to see him and talk before you did. I needed to know that any danger or threat was gone.”

  “And is it?”

  “He says it is, but I’ve gotten no more out of him.”

  “I can’t believe he wouldn’t call and tell me he was here. Or that he was coming.”

  She knew her uncle liked to control things, but this went a little far in her eyes even for him. She was sick and tired of everyone keeping her in the dark. Even Eli for not telling her last night!

  “I suppose those are questions for him,” he said sarcastically.

  “You mean you didn’t question him?” she asked, putting her shoes on in jerky motions so she could leave.

  “Of course I did, but he didn’t answer much. He assured Griffin and me the threat is gone. Or that one is.”

  She turned sharply. “What do you mean that one is?” she asked when they were on his private elevator.

  “He’ll explain it all. Or I hope he does since he wasn’t saying too much to me. Griffin is there with him now. Oliver sent his security out.”

  “Griffin didn’t trust him not to leave?” she asked, frowning.

  “No. But he wasn’t letting him either if he had a chance.”

  “Griffin doesn’t like my uncle,” she pointed out. She supposed she couldn’t blame him either since her uncle had Griffin secured in a cell in the basement for a day and guns pointed at him. Which still needed to be explained to her why she was sent here after her uncle’s behavior years ago.

  So many questions she hoped to get answers for but had a feeling that might not come. It might be time for her to show them she wasn’t going to be pushed aside.

  They got off on the fifth floor and went to the room, Eli swiping his master key to get in.

  She saw her uncle stand and look at her, a smile on his face. He looked a little thinner to her, more stressed too. He’d never been a warm and touchy type of person, but in the past year or so they’d gotten closer than before.

  As close as the two of them could get with her uncle not being around much.

  But he’d talked to her more about her life and her goals and dreams when he hadn’t for years.

  She didn’t hesitate to go toward him for a hug. He wrapped his arms around her and held on tight. Again, something he hadn’t done since her parents had died.

  “I’ve missed you, Bella,” Uncle Oliver whispered. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she whispered back. Then she moved out of his arms and wiped at a tear that was forming. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, not just to me but to Eli for putting him out.”

  Eli snorted the same time as her uncle. “I don’t think anyone feels put out,” Uncle Oliver said.

  Griffin laughed. “Maybe me.”

  She looked over at the man she’d come to think of as her friend. How could she not care for the best friend of the man she was in love with?

  Then it all hit her. Now that her uncle was here and safe, she had decisions to make.

  Her time was up to have to stay. It was going to come down to if she wanted to.

  Uncle Oliver looked around the room, then said, “Everyone have a seat. Maybe we could order some breakfast since it’s early? Coffee?”

  She saw Eli narrow his eyes. “When you’re done explaining why you were gone, then we can get into the other issue over food.”

  Uncle Oliver lifted his eyebrow but turned to her and started to talk before she could ask what the other issue was. “In the past year I’ve had another casino in the works. I took on some investors this time.”

  “You never take on investors,” she said, frowning. Her uncle had enough wealth of his own and was proud to say he was the sole owner of everything he did.

  “I had higher expectations. Grand plans. The mother of all casinos you could say. I wanted some other names in on it to achieve that.”

  “Why didn’t I know about this?” she asked. “I know you don’t tell me everything, but I handle a lot of the marketing. I would have thought you’d include me.”

  “Let’s just say because I brought in other investors from out of the country that it was best until I could get a better feel on things.”

  “What country?” Griffin asked.

  “Russia,” Uncle Oliver said. Which explained some to everyone in this room. “Things started to fall apart fast. Nothing was going as planned. We couldn’t agree on anything. I owned sixty percent, but they fought me on everything from the design to the theme. Then we ran into zoning issues. Construction problems. I started to think they were behind accidents happening on the site and delays of shipments.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Intimidation,” Griffin said. “They’d try to get your uncle to listen to them. To be the problem solver though they might be the ones actually causing the issues, right?”

  “Exactly,” Uncle Oliver said. “I’m not a fool and knew. I’d had them looked into before this project started. I knew some of their tactics.”

  “Yet you still went into business with them?” she asked. It wasn’t like her uncle to take risks like this at his age. Maybe when he was younger, but not now.

  “A lapse in judgement on my part,” her uncle said. “And I knew you’d react this way which is part of the reason I didn’t say anything.”

  “Your security had no problem with this?” she asked. Tony was as close to her uncle as Griffin was to Eli.

  “We might have butted heads, yes. But he knows his job well.”

  “So what happened?” Eli said. “You suspected foul play. Did they threaten you?”

  “No. Not at first. But I could see where things were heading. I said it was going to take longer than I thought with all these holdups. That I knew we weren’t going to agree. I offered to give them their money back.”

  Griffin laughed. “Just like that? You thought they’d take it and go away?”

  “Of course not. I added five percent for their trouble. It was still a large amount of money. They’d wanted more but the sole investor agreed. However his son wasn’t so happy about that. Let’s say Serge was greedier. I discovered later he was the one that was more interested in this venture than his father. I believe this was his father trying to give him something to do other than whoring and not contributing to the family empire in a productive way.”

  “Is he the one that was causing problems? Serge?” Bella asked. This all seemed so out of place for her uncle.

  “He was. Again. I knew that. His father though wasn’t as bad and was reasonable
if compensated for his troubles. His father also had a good handle on his son.”

  “It doesn’t sound it to me,” Eli said.

  “A miscalculation on my part. The funds were transferred back to Dimitri and I pushed forward with my plans. Serge had other ideas though.”

  “Let me guess,” Griffin said. “You found more accidents at your site and supplies missing?”

  “That was the start of it,” Uncle Oliver said. “I could have handled that, but when more than half my contractors left, saying they were getting threats to their families if they showed up, that was the bottom line for me.”

  “What happened next?” she asked.

  “I called a meeting with Serge myself. Tony and I. I figured I could see what he wanted and leave his father out of it. Man to man.”

  “He wanted control,” Griffin said. “Right? This was about him and not his father?”

  “Exactly. Dimitri wasn’t as interested in this casino as his son was. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gone into the project with them. Dimitri had no problem walking away, but Serge saw this as his alone to make a name for himself. He didn’t like to be told no. I told him to grow up and move on. Let’s say he didn’t appreciate it.”

  “Most Russian oligarchs don’t,” Eli said.

  “No. Things quieted down for a few months. Then I noticed some of Serge’s men around the casino. They were easy to spot.”

  “Were they responsible for some of the problems before I left?” she asked. Rooms were being trashed. Pipes had burst in the basement. Guests had been robbed. Things that never seemed to be caught on camera. Tony had been going crazy trying to figure out a way to stop it.

  “I believe so. I called another meeting with Serge. It was my last appeal before I went to his father.”

  “Which he wouldn’t have liked,” she guessed.

  “He didn’t. He made some rather offhand comments about my niece. He had some picture of you.”

  Her face filled. Eli took a step closer to her uncle. “What kind of pictures?”

  “Surveillance. You coming and going to work and home. Out shopping. Enough to let me know you were being watched.”

  “You’re not going back home,” Eli said firmly.

  “I’ve taken care of it,” Uncle Oliver said.

  “You’re going to tell me how,” Eli demanded.

  “My methods are my own and not to be repeated,” Uncle Oliver said. “Rest assured that Dimitri has handled his son. There will be no more threats to myself or my family in the future.”

  “You want me to believe that?” she asked. The fear she’d felt for her uncle before was nothing to what was going through her mind now. Not only that, but would they come to America and after Eli? After her family here?

  “I would have never come to you if I didn’t feel that way. It’s been a few weeks since it was handled. I was giving it time to assure Dimitri was a man of his word. He may be a lot of things, but when he says something, his word is his bond. If it makes you feel better, the last I heard his son was nowhere to be found.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “I didn’t ask and Dimitri wouldn’t tell. His family doesn’t always inspire loyalty in him. His business has come first and always would. Serge was one of many sons and the troublemaker of the family. He’d been rumored to take care of someone that didn’t conform.”

  “Take care of how?” she asked.

  “I can only assume and would rather not voice those concerns out loud. I knew this beforehand, but again, a miscalculation on my part. This was why I tried to handle it without his father. He wasn’t cooperating.”

  “Bet you won’t be taking on any other investors anytime soon,” Griffin said.

  “No. I’ve learned my lessons there.”

  She had to trust her uncle. He’d always been there for her and this scare and the fear of the past several months were going to take a long time to push aside.

  “Then we are both safe and can move on?” she said. “I just want you happy and healthy.”

  “I am both,” her uncle said. “As you seem to be. When you came into my care I had a lot of regrets I wasn’t more of a father to you.”

  “You weren’t my father,” she said. “You were my uncle and a guardian. I didn’t expect you to be a parent. My parents weren’t the best at times.”

  Her uncle reached a hand over and laid it on her leg and patted. “No. They weren’t. My sister had a lot of faults, but she did love you. She’d do anything to keep you safe and I promised to continue with that. She’d want you happy and I knew this might be the way to do it while I kept you safe at the same time.”

  “Sending her to me?” Eli asked, frowning. “You knew I had my eye on her years ago, didn’t you?”

  “A man knows when another man is coveting something he isn’t sure he can have. That alone wouldn’t have pushed me to send Bella here.”

  “It’s because I’ve brought Eli’s name up recently, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “You have?” Eli asked.

  Her uncle grinned. “I knew my niece was taken with you years ago. But it was my job to protect her and I didn’t know enough about you. You didn’t stay long and never returned. We moved on with our lives. All of us.”

  “So you forced this on me?” she asked, her mild temper rising now. The fear was gone and replaced with annoyance that it seemed he was almost matchmaking at the same time he was trying to protect her. “And why here? How did you know Eli would take me in? Or that he was even single if what you are saying is true?”

  She would have never seen this coming and was slightly mortified over it. Not just that her uncle got involved with Russian investors but that he meddled in her life at the same time.

  “Your uncle would have done his research before he did anything,” Eli said. “You know that as well as I do.”

  “I’ll buy that. But you couldn’t have known we would have developed a relationship. I’m sure you know we have,” she said. There was no way her uncle wouldn’t know everything that was going on in her life, even here. She learned those facts a long time ago and though it bothered her and she hated to accept it, she was learning it was hard not to.

  “I didn’t know. What I hoped would happen was that you’d two would spend some time together to figure out if what you saw years ago was still there. I didn’t want you to have regrets. I had to look at my life and the mistakes I’d made. This last one was a big one. I knew I could resolve this issue with Serge, but if by chance something happened to me because of my greed to go where I shouldn’t have, I needed to know you were taken care of. I also knew by coming here, you might want to seek out your American relatives and I couldn’t be around when you did it, but Eli wouldn’t let you go alone.”

  “I don’t need to be taken care of like I was as a teen,” she snapped. “How closely have I been watched?”

  “I’ve had people here on and off for the past few months as guests. You’ve spoken with them and not known.”

  Her jaw opened and closed. She looked at Eli, then Griffin. “Did you two know?”

  “No,” Griffin said, sounding put out. “If you were in contact with someone for a period of time I’d look into them, but the only two I saw that concerned me was the woman you met in the spa and then on the beach later on, and the man hitting on you in the bar.”

  “Were they on your payroll?” she asked her uncle. His reach was long, but this was crazy and for him to pull it off while he was hiding himself to figure things out with Serge.

  “The woman on the beach and spa? Yes. She might have been local, they all were. But you can buy people for the right money to report back without even knowing what they were doing.”

  “And you were trusting complete strangers?” Eli asked, not looking too happy.

  “Please. Everyone would have been vetted. I have contacts. Information, that is all that I was gathering. The man hitting on Bella wasn’t one of mine, but I hope to hell you took care of
it.”

  “I don’t need a man to take care of those things. I handled it just fine on my own,” she said, crossing her arms. That was the absolute last straw for her.

  Her whole life it seemed was being controlled by other people and she was starting to wonder why she allowed it to happen. Why she let herself fall for it when they said they were watching out for her when it might be more like manipulating.

  “Here we go again,” Eli said. “I was asked to do something and I did it.”

  “You were jealous,” she accused him.

  “He was,” Griffin said. “He can deny it, but he was. No reason to argue that point. So let’s continue on. Who else was under my nose I didn’t catch?”

  Griffin seemed the most annoyed. “Not everyone had contact with Bella,” her uncle said. “Some were here as couples on vacation and just in the same areas watching.”

  She remembered the man on the bench a few times that she thought was watching her, but then she’d see him waiting for another woman. She should have paid more attention to her gut.

  “The woman in the elevator recently,” she said. “The one here for work that asked me to dinner that I declined.”

  “You didn’t tell me someone asked you to dinner,” Eli said.

  “Because it was a nice woman who I ran into in the elevator. She knew I was upset and was being nice.”

  “Oh,” he said. She knew he was remembering the reason she’d left. Seeing him with that blonde hitting on him in the casino. Jealousy? She’d been hit with the green-eyed monster hard herself. She was starting to realize that love made people do and say the stupidest things.

  “So it’s safe to go back now? Why not just send word?” she asked. “Why did you have to come here to say all of this? And come in the middle of the night?”

  “Because your grandfather is in Boston and will be on the island today most likely,” Eli said. “And your uncle is fearful of that. Now it’s time for him to tell us what is really going on there so that you can get the answers you deserve.”

  35