Chapter 31
Gabriella
Now
I should have turned back three streets ago.
The thought had followed me the entire way here, dogging every step I took through the darkness, growing louder each time I ignored it.
It had been there when I climbed over the wall at the edge of the compound, when I kept low beneath the trees, when I crossed into Devil territory with my heart pounding so hard I was convinced the sound of it alone would give me away.
Every instinct I had spent years honing had screamed at me to stop, to think, to turn around before I did something I couldn’t take back.
But instinct had long since become a complicated thing inside me, tangled up with fear and grief and memory until I no longer knew whether it was trying to protect me or simply keep me trapped.
Because something had been building in me for weeks now. A restlessness I could no longer smother beneath obedience, a raw and ugly frustration that had started as a flicker and slowly grown into something far more dangerous.
It lived in me each time Nico touched me, each time he looked at me like I was an object he had earned, each time he reminded me—without ever needing to say the words aloud—what my life had become.
It grew each time I was forced to stand still and watch while another girl’s spirit was chipped away piece by piece, each time I swallowed my own horror because I knew intervention would only end in more blood, more pain, more punishment.
And somewhere amongst all of that, another ache had taken root too. One I hated. One I had tried very hard not to name.
Vienna.
Maybe that was the real crack in the dam. Because Vienna looked at me like I still belonged to myself, and after so many years of being owned in one way or another, that alone was enough to feel like a threat.
He looked at me like I was still worth something.
Like I was still the same girl who had once laughed with him beneath moonlight and texted him under school benches and looked at him like he was more than what the world had decided he should be.
He looked at me as though she still lived somewhere inside me, and every time he did, something in my chest twisted painfully, because I didn’t know whether to be comforted by that or destroyed by it.
So I had done the one thing I knew I shouldn’t.
I had left.
The Devil’s compound was quieter than I remembered, though perhaps that was because memory had a habit of dressing things in a softer light than they deserved.
I hated how natural it felt to retrace those old steps.
Hated that no matter how much life had changed, some part of me had never forgotten how to find him.
When I slipped into his room and closed the door behind me, I had to pause for a second because the air itself felt like a blow to the chest. It still smelled like him.
Leather and smoke and something clean beneath it all, something undeniably male and deeply familiar that no amount of years or distance had managed to erase from my memory.
I stood there in the dimness, breathing it in, and for one foolish, dangerous moment I let myself imagine that I had come home instead of trespassing into enemy territory.
This room shouldn’t have felt like safety.
And yet somehow, impossibly, it did.
I crossed to the bed first, my fingertips brushing the blankets, the sheets, the pillow, and I had to swallow down the sudden rush of emotion that came with it.
There had once been a version of me that had imagined a life like this for real.
A life where I could lie in this bed openly, where I could wake up beside him without the threat of consequences hanging over my head, where being in his room wouldn’t feel like an act of rebellion so much as a simple fact of belonging.
That girl had been na?ve enough to think love might one day be enough to bridge the distance between our worlds.
She had not yet learned what those worlds were capable of doing when crossed.
That life was gone.
I knew that. I had known it for years.
But tonight wasn’t about pretending I could have it back.
Tonight was about taking one thing for myself before the world closed in around me again.
My gaze landed on the leather jacket hanging over the back of the chair near his desk, and my pulse stuttered hard enough to make me still.
I moved toward it slowly, my fingers trembling slightly as I lifted it from the wood.
It was heavier than I remembered, worn in all the right places, carrying his scent more strongly than anything else in the room.
The Devils patch stretched broad and proud across the back, impossible to ignore, impossible to mistake for anything other than what it was.
No old lady should wear a biker’s jacket.
Not unless it belonged to the man himself. Not unless she wanted to make a statement so bold and so deliberate that it couldn’t be walked back afterwards. Not unless she was prepared for what it meant.
Which was exactly why I put it on.
Because Vienna would understand the significance instantly.
He would see me in this and know that I hadn’t wandered here on a whim, hadn’t come to him out of panic or desperation or some fleeting bout of weakness.
He would know I had chosen this. That I had thought about it.
That I understood exactly what I was doing when I wrapped myself in his leather and sat waiting for him in it.
He would know that this was not an accident.
I slipped everything else off before lowering myself onto the chair, the leather swallowing my body whole.
The hem only just covered what it needed to, and even then, only if I stayed perfectly still.
My bare legs pressed against the cool wood.
My fingers gripped the back of the chair until my knuckles ached.
And then I waited.
Every second stretched too long, every distant sound setting my nerves on edge.
At least five times, I considered leaving.
At least five times, I nearly stood up, nearly reached for my clothes, nearly told myself that coming here had been a moment of madness I needed to correct before it was too late.
But each time that instinct rose, something stronger held me in place. Stubbornness. Need. Grief. Want.
I didn’t know which one was winning, only that I remained exactly where I was, my pulse climbing higher with every passing minute.
When the door finally opened, my heart slammed so hard against my ribs it physically hurt.
He stepped inside like any other night, and then he looked up.
And stopped.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. For one suspended, breathless second, all he did was stare.
His eyes moved over me slowly, first catching on the jacket, then on the bare skin of my thighs, then climbing back to my face.
And the expression that settled over him was far more dangerous than shock.
It wasn’t softness either. It wasn’t even relief.
It was something darker than all of those things.
Something possessive. Something that looked almost painful in its intensity.
I tilted my head, forcing myself to hold his gaze even though my pulse was thundering in my throat. “Good evening, Mr Vice President.”
His jaw clenched. I saw the pulse jump in his throat, saw the way his fingers flexed at his sides as though he was physically restraining himself from crossing the room and taking hold of me. When he finally spoke, my name sounded wrecked on his tongue.
“Gabriella.”
There was no humour in it. No trace of the boy who had once grinned at me like I was the punchline to his favourite joke.
“Well,” I said softly, because I couldn’t bear the weight of that silence for another second, “that’s no welcome at all.”
He shut the door behind him without looking away from me. The click of the latch seemed to echo through the room, making the air feel even tighter, even heavier.
“You should not be here,” he said, though the words lacked any real force. If anything, he sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“No?” I asked, keeping my tone light even though my body was strung so tight it ached. “Because I seem to remember spending quite a lot of time in your room once upon a time.”
“That was before.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I know.”
His gaze dropped again then, slower this time, tracing the line of the jacket over my body, taking in what I had done and why.
I watched the exact second understanding hit him.
The exact second he realised this was deliberate.
That I hadn’t come here in a blind panic.
That I had come to him on purpose and dressed for the significance of it.
“I thought we weren’t playing with fire anymore?” he asked me.
“I decided you were worth the pain of the burn,” I whispered back.
He moved forward then. And with every inch he closed between us, my resolve began to tremble beneath the weight of what I had set in motion.
When he stopped in front of me, he was close enough that I could smell the outside on him—cold night air, faint smoke, leather, a lingering trace of whiskey.
Close enough that if I leaned forward, my mouth would brush his stomach through his shirt.
But I didn’t move. I made myself sit there and hold his stare.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“You snuck into my clubhouse.”
“I did.”
“You’re wearing my fucking cut.”
“I am.”
“And you’re looking at me like you don’t understand why I’m trying not to lose my fucking mind right now.”
That almost made me smile. Almost. Because beneath the heat of it, beneath the adrenaline and the recklessness and the dangerous thrill of being here, there was something far sadder sitting beneath it all. Something desperate enough to make my chest hurt.
“I didn’t come here for a fight,” I said softly.
His laugh was sharp and humourless. “Then what the fuck did you come here for, Gabriella?”