Chapter 10 – Gabriella #2
My head snapped up, and I sent a look around my surroundings. I didn’t see anyone. Didn’t hear a noise. But I couldn’t shake the strange sensation that crawled down my spine.
It had been the same every night when I walked home.
There was no logical reason to suspect mobsters lurked in the alleys or waited to kill one another in the empty lot. Still, I crossed myself as I passed it.
I hated the Made Men.
That much was firmly settled in my mind. Tonight had been the final straw. The group who had dinner at the restaurant earlier had given me side eyes. They were disgusting.
Replaying the events of the evening so that I didn’t jump at every shadow, I tried to think if I could have done something different.
Dio mio, my sisters were so young! Without me working with them, who was going to protect them?
Papa made it clear that as a mob wife, I wouldn’t be allowed to continue working.
Which meant no more money.
I fisted my hands at my side and crossed the open expanse near the train depot. Too focused on the roiling thoughts in my mind, my toe snagged on a curling iron track. I stumbled, arms flung wide for balance and barely saved myself from a nasty fall.
The wind picked up, sending that frightening sensation rushing through me.
I stopped and looked around. There’s no one here.
It didn’t matter that my senses couldn’t confirm another presence. It was there. It haunted me again. It….
It wanted me to run.
There was something here. Someone. No…a group.
Five men, walking boldly out of the shadows. Their drunken cackles reverberated off the chipped stones laid between the tracks.
“There’s the little bitch.”
“See if she threatens us again.”
“Yeah, we’ll teach her a lesson she’s never going to forget.”
Ice-cold fear washed through me. It was every woman’s worst fear.
While guns were terrible, powerful tools, they also leveled the playing fields in situations like this.
Men were always going to be physically larger than a woman.
While there were exceptions, pound for pound, women were the weaker creation.
But not when we had a sweet little pistol in our hands.
Dio sopra! I craved the feel of the cold metal right now. Of course I wasn’t armed. I didn’t even have a guard to see me home, unlike my sisters.
I looked around for a weapon, found a thick, rusted rail spike, and snatched it up. I wasn’t scared to kill. They would find that out the hard way. My body was used to the rush of adrenaline. I knew better and could temper it.
“What you going to do with that, little girl?” Broken Italian crackled in the air.
Drive it into your stomach.
While the neck would be certain death, it was also a smaller target, and higher to reach. No, I would have better luck showing that I was serious, taking out one of their number, then running for my life. Hopefully, they were too inebriated to follow—plus, they would want to stay with their friend.
Darkness whispered behind me. With such an ally, who needed to be afraid? I mentally reached out to the source, letting it know I was going to be okay.
A voice ripped through the abandoned depot yard. It was violence and fury wrapped in a buttery shell. “What’s going on?”
I sagged with relief. Vincenzo—a force to be reckoned with. My gaze trained to where he jogged from the drive that looped back through the buildings until it reached the road.
“Not a word.” One of the guys pointed a finger at me.
As if I would let him get off that easy. But…I was curious how they would try to spin this.
“Nothing, V! We’re just making sure our little princess gets home safely,” one of the goons called out.
“Yeah! Can’t have anything fucking up the alliance with the Irish,” another laughed.
Vincenzo stopped between us, making a triangle of bodies. “Is that so?” His gaze fell on me. One black brow arched.
“If you believe that, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought,” I chuckled.
He pursed his lips. “I don’t appreciate the barbs, Gabby.”
I shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”
“Well, it fucking doesn’t.” Vincenzo whipped out his pistol. Five rounds popped off into the night. Each was a vicious staccato. I didn’t breathe in those terrible seven seconds. When the air cleared, my ears rang.
He’d saved me.
“What did you do?” I gasped, my chest breaking open from the pressure of the icy fear. “The don will—”
“The don will hear how you were threatened. I have plenty of witnesses from the restaurant. That’s why I’m here,” he added, taking a step forward. “Tommy B called to tell me.”
I flicked a glance to the ground. The moon hadn’t risen, but the lumps lay haphazardly amongst the iron rails. It should’ve sickened me. A normal person would have had a visceral reaction.
I…smiled.
“What are you doing out here? Without a guard?” Vincenzo snapped, taking me out of the victorious moment.
“I always walk this way,” I said with a shrug. “It’s shorter.”
“Let me take you home. The clean team will take care of this.” He kicked his toe against a lump that might have been a leg. Maybe an arm.
The invisible force that I swore was real shivered in the background.
“No, I’m fine,” I insisted. “In fact, can you not make a big deal of this? Please?”
“Gabby….” Vincenzo cleared his throat. “Are you okay?”
“Yep!”
“It’s just….”
“Quit beating around the bush and spit it out. I’d like to get to sleep before two.”
At my bite, he chuckled. “Are you okay with the marriage?”
“I don’t have a choice, so why not?”
“Well, Liam…he’s a friend, of sorts. He’s a good man.”
I wanted to laugh. I’d seen my groom take two lives as if it were nothing. Then again, hadn’t Vincenzo just done the same damn thing?
“Look, I had a crush on you before you went to prison, but I’m not a silly little girl anymore. I know how the world works.” How cruel and manipulative it was. “I’m going to marry for the good of the famiglia, and that will be that.”
I’ll bide my time, and then never look back.
“No, I guess you’re all grown up now,” Vincenzo murmured. “Still—”
It took a bit more back and forth, but when the clean team arrived, I was able to slip away.
Sighing, I hurried forward, much more carefully this time. In a strange way, that feeling of being watched was comforting at this point. Nothing rose to hurt me expect the pain of my situation, the ghosts of my past.
In a week, I would be married. There would be a short time to adjust, and then I would double down. Find a way to escape. The underworld wasn’t going to control my future. It wouldn’t rob me of the small life I created—and was fighting to reclaim.