Chapter Seven
Gabriella
A knock on the door pulls me from sleep.
It’s a dull, persistent thud that echoes in the quiet hotel room, a jarring intrusion to my peaceful nap.
I couldn’t have been asleep for longer than a few minutes, but when I open my eyes and the room swims into focus, the first thing I register is the light—or the lack of it.
When I closed my eyes, the room had a warm, hazy glow.
The heavy drapes, which Nico must have drawn shut before he left, are letting in silvers of orange and red, painting the room in a fiery apocalyptic hue.
It takes a moment for my lagging brain for reality to sink in.
The sun isn’t just bright, it’s setting.
Panic bubbles up in my stomach as I sit up, a cold knot forming in my chest. How long was I out?
Christ, what about the exhibition—and why didn’t Nico wake me?
I shove my hair from my face as I scramble across the bed to the nightstand, tapping my phone frantically.
It’s only when I see the time that I breathe again.
It’s only five thirty. The art exhibition doesn’t begin until seven. I fall back against the pillow with a sigh before the knock comes again, reminding me why I’m awake now. Right.
I wonder if Nico forgot his key as I swing my legs over the side of the bed, the plush carpet cushioning my feet as I stumble to the door. I don’t bother to check the peephole as I open it, so I am genuinely shocked when I find Professor Arturo standing on the other side.
“Sir?” I say, my mind still groggy from sleep. “Uh, is there a problem?”
“I apologize for disturbing you,” the professor says, his eyes dropping to my outfit. I flush when I realize I’m wearing nothing but a sleep shirt. “I just wanted to make sure you were all set for the show and go through a couple of last-minute details with you.”
“Right,” I say, moving aside to let him in. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee, water?”
“No, thank you,” he says, walking in. He stops to glance at the unmade bed, and I flush at the state of it.
Christ, it feels surreal having my professor in my hotel room when it looks like this, but there’s hardly anything I can do to fix it now.
He takes the couch, leaving me to perch on the edge of the bed.
I fold my hands on my lap and turn to him, waiting to hear about the last-minute details, but when he doesn’t immediately speak, I rush to find something to fill the suddenly awkward silence that sets in.
“Dr. Arturo,. I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for encouraging me to enter the contest.”
“You’re a very talented artist, Gabriella. It only made sense that you’d win.”
“Thanks to you, I got to come to Vegas and show my art to so many influential people.”
“I believe you would have achieved that without my help,” he says, leaning back on the couch and settling in. “You’ll have even more opportunities when you finally move to California.”
My brows draw in confusion. “Sir?”
“You mentioned plans of moving to California when we discussed the contest. Did you change your mind already?”
Right.
I vaguely remember casually mentioning it—how I’d love to move to California after graduation, for no particular reason other than it being the furthest state from New York.
At the time, my goal was to get as far away from my family as possible, but things are different now.
Thinking about Nico brings a smile to my face, and I find that I want to stay.
“I think California will have to wait,” I tell him.
“I’ve found a reason to stick around in New York a little longer. ”
“It’s because of him, isn’t it? Your stepbrother?” he says, air-quoting the word stepbrother. There is something harsh about Dr. Arturo’s voice that has my eyes snapping to him.
“Sir?”
“Why would you waste your talent and brilliance on him?”
I blink at my professor, wondering if I heard him right. Surely not. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t understand how that’s any of your concern.”
“It’s my concern when you make decisions that are bound to negatively impact your future,” he retorts, his eyes flashing dangerously.
I feel a shiver move through me. Where is all this coming from?
I’ve never had reason to feel threatened by Dr. Arturo.
In fact, he’s one of my favorite professors, and to see this side of him raises every hair on my neck.
I want him gone. And I want Nico. Where is he? What’s taking him so long?
“Sir…”
“Mark,” he hisses. “I’ve asked you countless times to call me Mark. You are no longer my student, Gabriella.” When he rises, I quickly jump to my feet, taking a step back when he takes one forward. “How long are you going to pretend you don’t see what’s happening between us?”
“W-what’s that?”
Impatience changes his features as he sighs.
“I am deeply in love with you, Gabriella,” he says, and I hear a sharp intake of breath—my own.
“I fell for you from the moment I saw you in my first class, but I kept my distance because I didn’t want to risk my career on a relationship with a student.
You have no fucking idea how many times I wanted to reach out to you in class and just kiss you. ”
I gape at him, confused by the words coming out of his mouth. Is this a dream? Am I still napping? Any second now, Nico will shake me awake, and we’ll both laugh at the absurdity of it—my professor confessing his love for me. That’s madness.
But I don’t wake up.
And this nightmare deepens, turning darker, when Dr. Arturo takes yet another step toward me.
“You feel it too, don’t you?” he says, moving closer, and I see his intention to back me against the bed.
Christ, there’s nowhere to go. “No one understands you—understands your art—the way I do. No one ever will.”
I shudder when he reaches out to touch me.
I press my hands against his chest, trying to push him back, but he’s much stronger.
He grabs my wrists and pulls them down. “Please, stay away. My brothers will not spare you.” My skin crawls when he reaches up to trace his fingers over my cheek.
I try to sound calm despite the hammering in my chest, “Nico will kill you.”
“Enough about that bastard,” he growls, lunging forward, but I dodge his kiss and, summoning every bit of strength I have, drive my knee hard into his groin.
He howls, doubling over and grabbing himself, and I make a run for it.
He tries to grab for me, but I scream, dodging his hands as I run to the bathroom, locking the door behind me.
I jump when his full weight crashes against the door.
“Open up, Gabriella. Open this fucking door.” I gasp and move back when he starts twisting the handle, rattling it loud enough to shake the frame. “Open this fucking door, you little bitch!”
I sink into a crouch on the bathroom floor and press my palms over my ears, praying for Nico to get back in time. Nico will take care of it. He’ll…
The lock gives with a sharp crack, then falls away entirely. He kicked it. Oh my God—he kicked it!
When the door swings open, I am face to face with a man I no longer recognize. Sweat beading his brow, eyes watching me the way a predator watched its prey, and something worse than fear moves through me. He’s not going to stop.
“I told you to open the door, Gabriella,” he shouts, stepping into the room. “Since when are you this disobedient?”
“Sir…”
“Don’t fucking call me that!” he roars, charging me.
But a crash from the other room stops him.
He turns to the doorway, and a second later, another man comes barreling in.
It all happens in an instant: One second, Dr. Arturo is on his feet, and the next, he’s airborne, slamming back against the tub.
He groans, trying to rise, but a fist shoots out and connects square with his face, and he stays down.
Nico.
He came.
A whimper slips from my throat as I lift my eyes—and stop.
The face looking back at me is familiar, but it’s not Nico.
And just like that, a fresh wave of fear crashes in.
“Bruno,” I whisper, staring into the eyes of my long-absent stepbrother.
The man who kidnapped Sofia and threatened to kill her.
He’s here. Oh God, is he here to finish what Dr. Arturo started?
“Are you okay?” he asks, brows furrowed with concern that doesn’t fit my memory of him When he reaches out, I whimper, flinching back, but there’s nowhere to go. “Hey now, I’m not going to hurt you.”
I don’t know if I believe that, despite the easy set of his face.
I don’t have many good memories of Bruno.
He and Nico were close when I was younger, but something happened in adulthood that made them grow distant.
I sensed a sadness in him in those later years—a heaviness that I never quite understood and always felt vaguely wary of.
Something about him feels different now, but I’m afraid to trust it when I’ve just been proven how bad a judge of character I am, or else I never would have opened the door to my professor in the first place.
Still, the heaviness I sensed in Bruno before is absent, and when he offers his hand again, I start to reach for it. But before I can decide, the bathroom door flies open once more, and this time, I see Nico’s livid face clear as day.
“You!” he growls, grabbing his brother by the collar and shoving him away from me. He cocks his arm back to swing, but another man steps in, planting himself between the brothers. “Get the fuck out of my way!”
I’ve never seen Nico this furious before, veins standing out, eyes wild with it. He looks close to killing his brother. When his feral eyes cut to the stranger in the patched jacket, I move.
“Nico,” I call out, lunging forward on unsteady legs and grabbing his arm before this goes further.
He could probably take them both in the state he’s in, but I’ve seen enough men in similar biker jackets tonight to know they’d never let it go if one of theirs was hurt.
“Stop, please. Bruno was trying to help.”
“Help?” Those wild eyes turn to me before shifting back to his brother. “What do you mean by help?” A groan from the tub pulls everyone’s attention, and when Nico’s gaze lands on Dr. Arturo, I feel him go rigid against me. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
“He’s been following you both since you arrived,” Bruno says, pulling our attention back to him.
“I figured you knew the guy when you had breakfast with him, but I noticed him watching you throughout the day—following you around the casino floor. I could tell he was up to no good when he came up here after you split.”
Long beats of silence follow his words. “You’ve been watching us?” Nico’s voice drops to something dangerously soft.
“You turn up in my city with Gabriella Rossi. Of course, I wanted to know what the fuck you were doing here.” I was right. There is something different about Bruno. He doesn’t carry the anger he wore a year ago. “I saw Luca here a couple of weeks ago, with that Marino girl.”
“He didn’t mention it.”
“That’s because he never saw me. I had no intention of approaching him,” Bruno says. “Or you.”
Tension hangs in the room, thick with everything unspoken.
I press closer to Nico’s arm, more for support than to hold him back from jumping his brother.
Slowly, I feel him let some of it go. “Fair enough,” Nico says, but I read the sadness in his eyes.
“How long have you been with the Steel Sinners?”
“Several months,” Bruno says. “After I left New York, I came west—set on gambling everything I had away then getting drunk enough to find someone willing to kill me, but I picked the wrong guy to fight.” He glances at the man in the patched jacket with a brief grin.
“Pope here punched the sense back into me. Literally and figuratively. Then he gave me a job at his casino as security, and eventually, I was taken in as a prospect.”
“Gotta ban you New Yorkers from coming here,” the Pope guy says good-humoredly, offering his hand to me.
“She’s the youngest Rossi—and only girl in the family,” Bruno adds, and his voice carries a weight that makes Pope nod once. The family would come down hard on anyone who let harm come to her.”
“Well then, they owe you,” Pope says, nodding toward the man stirring at the bottom of the tub, then turning to Nico. “I know the Rossis will want a piece of him, but this happened in my city, which means he’s mine.”
“What will happen to him?” I ask.
“My men will handle it,” Pope says, and something in his eyes makes it very clear that his way of handling it isn’t far removed from how the Rossis would. I watch as two men silently enter the bathroom and lift Dr. Arturo from the tub before carrying him out.
It’s truly a shame that Dr. Arturo had to go and be an asshole. Now he won’t be there for the exhibition and—
“Oh my God,” I breathe, turning to the window and realizing with a lurch that it’s completely dark. “The exhibition. Nico, it’s supposed to start at seven and…”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Nico says, cupping my cheeks and turning my face to his. “You’ll get there in time. Breathe, princess.”
“I can’t be late. I have to… I need—”
“And you won’t be. Shhh, you have time,” he promises, pressing his lips over my temple even as he digs into his pockets for his phone to check the time.
“You have at least fifty minutes to get ready.” He starts to guide me out of the bathroom, but I stop, turning to Bruno, who’s watching us like we’re the most interesting thing he’s seen all day.
“Bruno, you’ll come to the show, right?” I ask. “The tickets tonight are sold out but I can get you one for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Sure,” he nods. “I’ll be there.”
“Okay, thank you for saving me. I’ll tell Matteo about what you did tonight.” Maybe this will help squash the beef Matteo has with him. It’s clear Bruno isn’t the same man who left New York. I nudge Nico with my arm and he nods.
“Thank you, Bruno.”
“My name is Ghost,” Bruno corrects, and there is something deliberate about how quietly he says it—not correcting Nico, exactly, but claiming something. “Bruno Benito died in New York, and the man who was reborn here is Ghost.”
“Vegas suits you,” Nico says, and while there is sadness in his eyes, I also read pride.
For months, Nico has carried something closed off, and I never quite associated it with Bruno.
But when he turns to look at me, there is something different about him, too.
Something that has loosened. A change that makes my heart turn over in my chest. “Let’s get you to that exhibition, baby.
Can’t let your asshole professor ruin your night. ”