Chapter 29 – Liam
The cops crawled over the street. They swarmed the construction site, and I had to send most of the crew home.
A whole bleeding day lost. The project was already behind schedule—because projects of this magnitude never ran how they were supposed to.
But it was a day wasted because one of my guys, one who was part of the underworld life, was stupid enough to touch my wife.
If only necromancers existed, or I had the power of the saints, I would raise Billy’s corpse to kill him again. Slowly. Excruciatingly. Creatively. But the bastard took several bullets, and it was a quick lights-out for him.
Which raised the next question….
Who the fuck was shooting at my soldier in broad daylight?
Or were they shooting at Gabriella?
Thick, toxic tar bubbled in my chest. I’d heard the warnings. Dominico Grimaldi was convinced there was threat to me. I believed him, but now it was concrete.
Standing near my mobile office, I waited for the lead detective to wrap up. If it wasn’t for the top brass lawyer, these fuckers were bold enough to suggest that my operations be shut down for a week.
Amanda held her ground, glaring down at the detective and his cronies even though they were all bigger than her. “Like I said, we’ll cooperate with the investigation. But work resumes tomorrow.”
“We can’t have anyone tampering with the crime scene,” Detective Hensley said.
“No one will be in that area. Post guards.” Amanda planted a hand on her hip, tablet dangling from the other. “You have ample space to work. Furthermore, you have the next eight hours. If you really want to sweep the area, I suggest you do it now.”
Hensley bristled. “Listen lady, you obviously don’t have much experience with criminal investigations—”
Amanda scoffed.
“But we don’t have unlimited resources. We have to wait until the forensic unit is available to come out here,” the detective insisted.
“And by then, the traffic on the streets will have contaminated the area. So, we have no reason not to continue working,” Amanda said with a smile.
Thatta girl. She’d flipped his argument onto itself.
My phone rang, and when I pulled it out, one letter from the bottom of the alphabet glared on the screen.
V.
Swiping the green button to the side, I held it to my ear. “She’s just fine; she wasn’t anywhere near the gunfight.”
Menace crackled through the phone. “Let me talk to her.”
Who was I to deny the vicious bastard? I stepped forward, extending the phone to my lawyer. Amanda shook herself, clearly coming back to reality from whatever legal high she was riding, looked at the phone, and excused herself.
“Calm him down,” I hissed, walking behind her and heading into the portable.
Betty stirred a stainless-steel cup of tea, perched on her desk. But it was the beauty tucked on the secretary’s chair, staring absently into her own cup that consumed my attention.
“Time for a smoke, I think,” Betty cackled. She hopped nimbly to the floor and scooted outside, pipe dangling between her fingers.
The moment the door fell shut, Gabriella shivered.
“Here.” I shrugged out of my suit jacket and went toward her. When she pulled away from the seat, I draped it around her shoulders. “Better?”
Gabriella murmured an assent.
I squatted carefully in front of her. She was clearly scared of me. I searched for those warm whiskey eyes, but she wouldn’t lift them. She wouldn’t look at me!
The anger bubbled in a caustic vat in my chest.
“Why were you walking with Billy?” I demanded, unable to keep the questions back any longer.
Her lip fucking trembled. She pulled it between her teeth, biting it as she took a deep breath. I wanted to tug that lip free. Sink my teeth into it.
“I wasn’t!” she finally fumed.
Wrath shot white hot through my veins. “He was harassing you, then?”
Gabriella nodded and fidgeted with her untouched tea.
“Did you recognize the shooter?” I hated to bring it up. But I needed to fish for the truth. Now. While it was still fresh. If I didn’t, this cunning little creature might come up with some kind of lie.
“No,” she whispered. “Whoever it was, they had a helmet. They were there and gone in a flash.”
The detective was going to want a statement from her. Amanda was able to delay that since the key witness was under duress.
But I had no such compunction. I needed to know this wasn’t a setup.
“Was it one of your father’s men?”
I was good at poker. The key was to play the man, not the game. In this case, the woman.
Gabriella’s face went blank. She forced her muscles still. That, in itself, was a tell. But the sharp way she caught her breath, turned the breathing from natural to a forced tempo, that was the winning combination.
I slid my hands onto her knees. Squeezing hard, I forced her to focus on my next words. “You’ll never belong to another man. Not while I breathe.”
Gabriella swallowed hard and looked up.
Fucking finally.
The amber tones of her irises were cold. Crystalized like honey in the winter snow.
“I didn’t seek that workman out!” she protested. “I slapped him when he wouldn’t take a hint and go.”
“I’m not talking about him.” Connor had mentioned the slap. I hoped it hurt like hell. It was too easy a price for his sin, however. “I’m talking about your father. Whatever game he’s playing at, he’ll lose. You’re already mine.”
“But….” Gabriella licked her lips. “What makes you think it was him?”
How much did I want to tell her? That I had the sixth sense that he wasn’t happy with the marriage?
Deluca never congratulated me. He never embraced me as a son-in-law.
That was what made the Morelli men so bold, at our engagement, at our wedding.
They wouldn’t have acted like impervious little pricks if their leader had backed this arrangement with his full weight.
Plus, when Conner wasn’t spying on my wife, he watched her father. My best friend hadn’t found anything damning yet, but Deluca was one shady piece of shite.
“You didn’t deny it,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but what would my father gain from killing you?” she countered.
I shrugged. “A wealthy widow for a daughter, who could move back home.”
Gabriella shuddered. “I’m never going back there.”
I stilled.
At the same time, she seemed to catch herself, opening and closing her mouth, horror washing over her face.
My voice dropped to a scary volume. “And why’s that, little bird?”
She was a quick thinker, I’d give her that.
“Too many sisters.” She laughed. It was a hollow, broken sound. “They steal my clothes, use all the hot water, and there’s never enough space to do my hair in the mirror.”
That stank of bull shite. Gabriella wore her hair down or in a simple ponytail, like right now. Her face had minimal paint, which meant she wasn’t fussy enough to spend hours in front of the mirror.
There’s something else.
I was missing something. Whatever it was, the puzzle piece was huge.
“Come on, I’ll take you home.” I rose and held out my hand.
Gabriella looked at it, then lifted her gaze to mine. My heart did a clumsy, tiny flip.
“Are you sticking around?” she asked.
“You want me to?” I held my breath.
She shrugged. “It just seems that they could use you here. I’m just going to be sitting and reading all afternoon.”
The exhale was laced with pain. Little shards cut my throat. “Then I’ll be home for supper.”
She didn’t brighten. She didn’t fucking smile.
“Okay, I’ll fix us something.” She pushed to her feet, avoiding my touch.
I had to dig my blunt nails into my palm to keep from punching the wall as we exited the portable.
In less than a month, Gabriella had turned my house into a home.
Her hands served by cooking meals. She made the rooms feel cozy.
There was always something to munch on. Tonight, she’d even asked if I had taken lunch to work.
When I said no, she seemed sad. I pressed the issue, and she admitted she would have made me a lunch box.
That was now the plan.
My lunch waited for me in the fridge.
More than that, she gave me her body. The little villain was hungry for me, eagerly taking my cock however I gave it to her.
But she wasn’t mine. Not in her mind. It didn’t matter how many times I said it. If it was while I washed the dishes, if it was while I pounded into her from behind.
Gabriella was keeping secrets.
She thought that she could bewitch me. That I would lower my guard. But I knew better. While she offered me her body, she wouldn’t trust me with her mind. I wanted that. Fucking craved it. More than my next breath.
Turning on the light in the library, I sat on the sofa. Before I opened the journal, I leaned over. A deep gulp of air filled my lungs. I swore I could smell her on the pillow. Maybe I was daft.
Or maybe the scent of peaches lingered.
There was a new journal entry. They were much better than the bleeding garbage I’d scoured before we were married. Gabriella poured herself into the pages. She used prompts she found on the internet, but she expanded on them in a way that only she could.
Today, she’d recounted the attack.
I gritted my teeth and read.
The minute details were spectacular. The hitman wore a red-black helmet. The visor was down. The weapon was a semi-automatic rifle. Gabriella guessed it was .223. From the shells I’d seen at the construction site, my little wife knew her guns.
I laughed, a rough, barking sound.
The last paragraphs of the entry were about my line of questioning, and Gabriella’s own speculation over who wanted her dead.
That has to be why Papa gave me the tracker.
He wants me dead, while pretending it’s Liam he’s after.
Regardless, I won’t let Papa hurt Liam. He’s been good to me.
Better than I deserve. Maybe Papa knows that I’ll never let Luca go.
He wants the stain from his precious family gone, once and for all. He doesn’t have to worry.
I’ll be done the moment I can escape with my boy.
My gaze raked over the name.
The unknown enemy—there. He was real.
I threw the journal across the room. That was it! Finite proof that Gabriella had a secret lover. She didn’t hide the information in the random spaces of the journal entries anymore. She spoke openly about a boy, one for whom her heart bled.
Dropping my head into my hands, I scored my scalp with my nails. I was going to find him. This fucker. And I was going to tear him limb from limb. He would suffer for years.
Gabriella was mine.
But even as I plotted this unknown enemy’s destruction, a darker thought seeded in my mind. Just because the bastard died, didn’t mean she would be mine.
Her attention would always be elsewhere. She was never going to be as obsessed with me as she was with him.
And the knowledge of her emotional infidelity didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the truth that she was always going to look at me as a demon, one who’d brought her into a living nightmare.
Eventually, I roused myself. The other piece of information from that passage pulsed in my mind.
Deluca gave his daughter a tracker. He said it was for me, but it was Gabriella who was shot at.
It was quite possible that my father-in-law had been offered to assassinate me.
The Grimaldis had been. But it was equally reasonable that he wanted his daughter dead and a turf war on his hands in the name of vengeance.
Whatever the reason, I found the threat. It was something tangible that I could act on. It was an outlet for my depraved mind to fixate on, while my heart bled all over the fecking place. How dare the bastard use his daughter and coerce her into helping?
I’ll save her.
Even if she hadn’t written the truth in those pages, I would have suspected Gabriella of being innocent.
My gut told me she was innocent. She might long for another, but the way she gave herself to me said that she didn’t wish me harm.
I forgave her keeping the secret since she was a victim in this nightmare.
But her lack of hatred toward me wasn’t enough.
I wanted to be the one she dreamed of a future with.
Not the dead-man-breathing named Luca.
Picking up the journal, I was glad I hadn’t damaged the bleeding thing.
Going to the shelf nearest the bay window, I replaced it in its hiding place.
Then I pulled the piece of hair, that one long strand of nut-brown silk, and pulled it in front of the books that hid her journal.
She would only keep writing her innermost thoughts if she didn’t know I read them.
I’m never letting her find out.