Chapter 6 Gabe #2
Women make you weak. You let them run their hands over your body, and they’ll find every hairline fracture and fissure, claw them open until they’re canyon-deep, then have the nerve to look you dead in the eye and call it love.
It’s best not to let them touch you to begin with.
I shake her fingerprints off of my jaw and, glare back down at her again.
I don’t know what’s pissing me off more, the fact she didn’t know danger when it crossed her path three years ago, or the fact she hasn’t learned to recognize it in the years since.
Why the fuck was her door unlocked, and why did she just stand there—slack-jawed and wide-eyed, in the thinnest robe on the planet—instead of running for her life?
My gaze narrows on her with reluctant curiosity. She got her bag back, so why is she still standing there, laughing?
It sounds like sunshine and helium, light and loud enough to float over the lawn, penetrate the bulletproof window, and land on my sternum like a weak punch.
She’s laughing at Arben, of all fucking people. As if he’s even funny. As if he doesn’t have a Glock in his waistband, a taser in his pocket, and the strongest chokehold I’ve ever seen.
My temples throb, and an intrusive thought passes through me, burrowing deeper and worming its way back in time.
She touched me then too. It was soft. So was her voice. As was her breath when it grazed my top lip.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
Something in my sternum twists, and I pick up the whiskey glass and sink its contents in one gulp in an attempt untangle it.
The Good Samaritan and her little secret.
Running my tongue over my teeth, I glare at her and Arben over the rim of the glass. He’s laughing now too. Head tilted back, gummy smile on show, revealing the consequence of the last time he pissed me off.
There must have been something in that drink, because before common sense can stop me, I tap his channel on my watch and bring it to my mouth.
“Share the joke, Arben. I could use a good laugh today.”
He jolts and touches his earpiece as though it’s given him an electric shock. Probably because I switched to English. His sheepish gaze finds me instantly, but hers roves over the front of the house, trying to figure out what’s startled him.
When she spots me, she freezes. Realization washes all the light away, and black floods the blue.
Instead of glancing away like I expect her to, she doubles down and steels her chin. The longer she stares, the hotter her anger burns and the harder my heart beats. For a moment, I think she’s going to stick her tongue out at me again.
Adrenaline floods through me as the deep-rooted sickness in me hopes she does. There would be no bluffing this time; I’d carve it out slowly with a dessert spoon, then, depending on how much she fought, I’d shove it down her throat to muffle her screams.
She glares at me.
The glass cracks in my fist.
She turns away.
Though the last thing I have time for is paying her another visit, disappointment taints the faint satisfaction I feel. I’ve always enjoyed cutting out tongues. If you avoid the lingual artery and keep them in an upright position, it’ll take three-to-four days for them to bleed out.
She pulls something up on her phone and shows Arben, and my muscles twitch, preparing my body to do something it shouldn’t. Not to her, but to him. I don’t need to hear the girl running her mouth to know whatever she said isn’t the reason he’s tickled.
My men are as carefully curated as her sunny personality. They’re the best in the business, and I’ve trained, tortured, and traumatized them to be even better.
Unfortunately, they still have dicks and the animalistic urge to stick them into pretty things.
He didn’t laugh because he thought she was funny, no, he saw the blonde hair, the heart-shaped face, and the way her button nose scrunches when she smiles.
He saw the wide eyes and wondered if he could corrupt the innocence within them.
And when she touched him, he thought he stood a chance of finding out if what’s underneath that bright-pink raincoat is as tight as her silhouette would suggest.
He’ll lose the rest of his teeth tonight.
And I’ll lose my fucking mind over her secret.
The faint sound of footsteps tugs me back into the room. I cock my head, listening. Heavy strides, decisive steps. A slight lean on the left heel.
Even before the door flies open, I know it’s Angelo.
He’s agitated too.
“Listen and listen good because this is your one and only warning. No fighting, no fucking, no stepping out of line. Today is my wedding day, and if any of you idiots fuck it up, you’ll be dead before you can squeal out an apology. Got it? Good. Now get out.”
Amusement flutters through the room, peppered with a sarcastic “Yes, Boss” from Benny.
It flutters through me too because my brother rarely makes threats. Usually, he skips straight to the good part in a blind fit of rage, then calls me to sort the cleanup.
Angelo Visconti was born to lead. He was born to look good in a suit too, which is why he got away with cosplaying as a law-abiding citizen for so long. After our parents died, he stepped on a plane to London instead of into our father’s shoes and tried to shake the made man out of his bones.
I always knew he’d come back to the Cosa Nostra long before his eyes locked onto our uncle’s fiancée.
You can’t run from what you were born to do.
He shuts the door with a swift kick, then sinks into the chair behind his desk.
Rafe brings him a whiskey, letting out a low whistle. “Looking suave, brother. Nervous?”
“No. Paranoid,” he grits back, smoothing down the front of his tux.
“Of Rory not turning up?”
He huffs out a dry laugh, his eyes drifting to the photo of her smiling beside his laptop. “I’d drag her down the aisle by her curls if I had to.”
“How romantic.”
“Mm.” Angelo sinks his drink in two gulps, slams it down, and jerks his chin at me. “We set?”
I nod.
“Good. Now tell me why the fuck you’re digging up my front lawn on my wedding day.”
“It’s a secret, apparently,” Rafe says with a smirk, sliding onto the edge of the desk.
My gaze drifts down to Emile smoothing over concrete with the back of a shovel.
Secrets. The Villain’s most powerful weapon.
Our father needn’t have wasted his breath speaking rule eight into existence. He’d led by example.
When he and his two brothers arrived on the coast from Sicily, they’d decided to divide and conquer.
Uncle Alberto built Devil’s Cove up into the sky, Uncle Alfredo buried his riches beneath the cobbled streets of Devil’s Hollow, but our father saw the state of Devil’s Dip and thought it best to build outward into the Pacific.
He knocked up a port in its raging waters. Bought the church looming on the cliffs above it and established himself as it’s God-fearing Deacon.
The worst thing the locals ever did was trust him to pass on their confessions onto the big man upstairs.
Another laugh rings out by the gates and chafes my skin.
And the worst thing She did was nearly tell me hers.
Behind me, Rafe grinds out an Italian curse. “I don’t have my fucking watch. What’s the time? We need to leave soon, right?”
He’s spinning his poker chip a mile a minute, wearing out the carpet as he paces from the bookshelf to the door and back again.
I suspect his sudden change in demeanor has something to do with red hair and a smart mouth.
Sliding my hand into my pocket, I pull out a fistful of cold metal and dangle it between us.
He stops dead and stares at it. “Is that my Omega Seamaster?”
I toss it at him in response.
“Where the fuck did you get this?” he mutters, turning it over in disbelief.
“Where do you think?”
It takes a moment for the realization to dent his brow. “You know the code to my safe?”
Angelo smirks into his knuckles, earning himself a glare from me too.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing. Because if you kill another cop, I’ll have to dig the backyard up too.”
Ignoring the mutterings behind me, I turn back to the window with a locked jaw.
Secrets are my most powerful weapon but also my darkest obsession.
I bury them. I dig them up. I listen to them. Feast on them.
I make it my job to know every secret up and down this coastline, and beyond.
My attention goes back to the girl in pink.
I know every secret.
Every secret, except Hers.