Chapter 16 #2
We also dealt in drugs. It wasn’t something we were overly happy about, but we sold a product that was the lesser of two evils. The Riders cut their coke with whatever shit they could to maximise their product.
“Will do, boss,” Chris nodded. “But there’s something else as well. There was chatter. Some girls have gone missing.”
“What’s new?” Dante scoffed. “Bunnies?”
“We think so. But it happened at the rally.”
My attention sharpened slightly at that, but I didn’t let it show.
“People were talking about how it went down,” he went on. “Who got caught up in what. Who got pulled out before things got messy.”
“Standard,” Dante muttered. “The Riders won’t care about a few bunnies, they care who stayed until the bitter end.”
“Mostly, yeah,” Chris agreed. “But there was a bit more interest in… specific movements.”
Hacksaw glanced at him briefly, then looked back at Dante. “Gabriella came up.”
When her name was mentioned, I didn’t react, not outwardly at least, but something inside my chest tightened all the same, my body going unnaturally still as though even the smallest movement might betray how quickly the conversation had stopped feeling like routine club business and started feeling personal.
“What about her?” Dante asked, his tone neutral.
“From what we were told,” Riley said carefully, “when things started to go south, she was pulled out early. Didn’t stay in the main crowd. Wasn’t anywhere near the worst of it.”
“Smart,” Dante said.
“Or controlled,” Hacksaw countered.
Riley gave a slight shrug. “Depends how you look at it.”
Chris leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “Either way, she didn’t stay out there. She was moved, quick and clean.”
“Why was she there to begin with? What business does an old lady have with the rallies?” I asked, and then cringed as the words old lady spilled from my lips.
“Nico likes her close, I guess,” Hacksaw said. A silence fell over the room, and I saw Dante watching me in my peripheral.
“And after?” I asked before I could stop myself.
All three of them looked at me then, just for a second, but it was enough.
Chris answered anyway. “Spent the rest of the night with Nico, from what we could gather. Kept close. Out of sight.”
No one used the words safe or protected, but they hung there all the same, implied in the way Riley spoke, in the way Chris described her being pulled from the chaos and kept close to Nico for the rest of the evening, as though she had been shielded from the worst of it rather than delivered straight into it.
My jaw tightened—of course she did. Of course she went back to him. Even when a rally was taking place—and I already knew he participated in them, loyalty was not a trait of his—he left to keep her safe.
Or to keep her under lock and key.
The image from last night pushed to the front of my mind without warning—her hand against the glass, her forehead pressed to mine, the way she’d stood there like nothing else in the world existed.
And then—
The curtains. Shutting me out like I were nothing more than a mistake she needed to correct.
A humourless smile tugged at the corner of my mouth as I looked down at the table.
“Sounds like she’s got it all figured out then,” I muttered. “Safe, protected, exactly where she wants to be.”
No one responded straight away.
They didn’t need to.
“Vienna…” Dante began. “She’s his old lady. It makes sense that he wouldn’t want her in the thick of things.”
“Yeah,” I replied with that same humourless laugh. “Because Nico has always been about protection. Just ask his sister.”
Chris and Riley visibly cringed at that, but Dante and Hacksaw remained stony faced.
It was no secret that Nico was rumoured to have raped and murdered his own sister. If he could do that to his own flesh and blood, what chance did Gabriella have?
Although, she too was technically blood. His cousin.
His old lady.
And that’s when the cracks in the story began to form in my mind. I had all the pieces of the puzzle, but nothing seemed to fit perfectly.
A flash of a memory played behind my eyes—of me trying to force Gabriella to leave. Of her screaming and begging to stay.
“Pleaded? That doesn’t sound like a happy woman. That sounds like a trapped woman.” Rachel’s voice whispered around the memory.
Was she happy? Or was I only seeing what she wanted me to see?
She fought me like I was the enemy. Told me I needed to let her go and that she loved him… but what wasn’t she saying? What was hidden beneath the surface of her words?
I had let her go, because as much as I loved Dante, I wouldn’t be him. I wouldn’t kidnap Gabriella and keep her chained at my side.
But there had to be a middle ground. There had to be a way for me to see deeper inside, to get to the truth.
Or maybe I was just fooling myself. Just like I always had.
I scrubbed a hand down my face, exhaling slowly as I leaned back in my chair again.
“She made it clear a long time ago where she stands,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. “Nothing’s changed.”
The room was quiet for a beat.
Then Chris shifted slightly in his seat. “Not everything,” he said, almost absently.
Dante’s gaze flicked to him. “What do you mean?”
Chris hesitated, like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “Just… something else that came up,” he said with a shrug. “Not really our business.”
“Say it anyway,” Dante replied, a sharpness to his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Chris rubbed the back of his neck. “Her mum.”
My head snapped up before I could stop it.
“What about her?” Dante asked, his voice still even, but there was something sharper beneath it now.
Chris frowned slightly, like he was trying to piece together something he didn’t fully understand himself. “She hasn’t been seen around much lately,” he said. “And when she has been… people noticed.”
“Noticed what?” I asked, my voice coming out lower than I intended.
Chris glanced between us before answering. “Bruises,” he said simply. “Looked rough. Like she’d taken a beating or two.”
Something cold slid down my spine.
For a second, no one spoke.
The room seemed to still, the air thickening in a way that had nothing to do with the size of the space. Dante leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on the table now, his gaze fixed somewhere distant.
“Say that again,” he said quietly.
Chris shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know anything concrete,” he added quickly. “Just what people were saying. Could be nothing. Could be—”
“It’s not nothing,” Dante cut in. “Because I’ve had my own old lady lecturing me about bruises she’s seen with her own eyes. On Gabriella,” he said, turning to me and meeting my eyes as he finished speaking.
Silence fell again.
And this time, it stayed.
Because now it wasn’t just about what we’d heard.
It was about what we already knew.
What we’d seen.
The bruises.
The tension.
The way things had never quite added up where Gabriella was concerned.
My mind went straight back to last night.
To the way she’d looked at me.
To the way she’d touched the glass.
To the way she’d… stepped back. But as I replayed it, I could see how it pained her. I saw the dampness of her lashes. The way her shoulders hunched.
And for the first time since the night before, since her hand had pressed so softly against the glass and her forehead had rested against mine before she pulled away and shut me out, I found myself wondering whether I had been wrong to call it rejection at all, whether what I had seen in her eyes had not been distance or regret, but fear.
I pushed the thought away before it could fully form, my jaw clenching as something sharp and dangerous began to build beneath my ribs.
“No one mentioned anything about her mother before?” I asked, my voice tight.
“Not like this,” Riley said. “And not enough to make it worth bringing back. It’s all… surface-level stuff. Easy to explain away if you’re not looking for it.”
“But now we are,” Dante said.
His gaze shifted to me then, steady, assessing.
I held it for a second, then looked away, my fingers curling slightly against the arm of the chair.
Because now nothing made sense.
She’d gone back to Nico.
Stayed with him.
Chosen him.
That was the truth I’d been working with for years.
The only version that didn’t tear me apart every time I thought about it.
But now I was plagued with “ifs”.
If there was something else going on.
If she wasn’t choosing him.
Then what the fuck had I been doing all this time?
Letting her stay there.
Walking away.
Respecting a choice that might never have been hers to make.
A harsh breath left me as I pushed to my feet, the chair scraping loudly against the floor behind me.
Dante’s head snapped up slightly. “Sit down.”
I didn’t.
“Vienna—”
“I’m fine,” I cut him off, even though we both knew that was a lie.
My hands flexed at my sides, my mind racing, trying to piece together something that refused to settle into anything solid.
“She told me she loved him,” I said, more to the room than anyone in it. “She fought me to go back to him.”
“And you believed that,” Dante replied evenly. “We all did.”
I laughed, short and sharp. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“Look a little closer,” he said. “Stop looking through hurt, and start looking a little closer.”
I turned on him then. “I did look. I looked right at her while she told me to let her go.”
“And now?” he asked quietly. “What are you seeing now?”
The question hung between us.
I thought about the glass. Her hand pressed against it, resting over mine. The hesitation. The fear flickering across her face.
My jaw tightened.
“I don’t know,” I admitted finally, the words tasting like ash on my tongue.
And that was the problem.
Not knowing.
Because I could deal with her choosing him. I’d been dealing with it for years.
But this—this grey area where nothing made sense—this was worse. So much worse.
Dante watched me for a second longer, then leaned back slightly, his expression unreadable.
“We don’t move on this yet,” he said, his tone firm. “Not until we know what we’re dealing with.”
I didn’t respond. Because knowing or not knowing didn’t change one thing. I couldn’t leave it alone now. Not after this.
Not after last night.
Not after the possibility—however small—that I’d got it wrong.