Chapter 11 Gabe
Aslither of moonlight cuts through the window, narrowly avoiding my dark corner of the room. Way beyond the glass, waves roar and crash as they meet the cliffs. Down the hall, a clock ticks, and from behind the bathroom door, the muffled sound of water rains down on marble.
How is the shower still fucking running?
Patience thinning, I settle back into the armchair and drive the heels of my muddied boots across the rug, squeezing the lone earbud in my fist.
Darkness is my friend, but silence is the enemy.
Can’t fucking stand it. Even more so since I followed Angelo back to the coast, because now my life doesn’t just flash before my eyes when I’m dying but in these pockets of silence too. Memories bounce from month to year to decade, running in spirals and zigzags.
And when they grow tired, they run back to Her.
Her.
My hand twitches to put the earbud back in my ear, to drown out her voice with the soothing sounds of sin.
But no. I must stay alert tonight.
I’ll roll a cigarette instead.
I balance a rolling paper on my knee and pepper tobacco into its crease. By the time I run my tongue along the gum line, I’m already thinking about her again.
Fuck. I’ve spent the last three years thinking about her. Obsessing over all the things I know and battling with all the things I don’t.
Can you keep a secret?
“Stop,” I mutter, throwing myself forward. Resting my elbows on my knees, I glare down at the blood dripping from my knuckles and onto the rug. I count nine slow splats, then start over. Again and again and again until her voice fractures and fades into the dark corners of the room.
When my pulse returns to normal, I light the roll-your-own and take a deep drag. Then I grind the charred match into the rug under the heel of my boot.
Tonight, she told me everything but her fucking star sign unprompted and walked into the dark woods with me just because I told her to.
I could have been anyone.
Could have done anything to her.
Why did I even walk her into the woods in the first place, instead of stuffing her into my trunk and saving an hour of my time? It’s not like I didn’t have anything better to do.
I know why, of course, but no good ever comes from thinking about it.
“Just stop,” I hiss to nobody but my demons, scrubbing at my jaw.
There’s something seriously wrong with me, aside from the obvious.
I have far more important shit to be annoyed about than some ditzy chick with no survival instinct I met three years ago.
Like Dante’s attack or the stupid schoolyard plan Rafe has plucked out of his ass to counter it, and the fact Angelo has cosigned the idea.
Yet, here I am, thinking about her. Again. Asking myself questions I swore I wouldn’t dig up the answers to. Like why she doesn’t drink liquor, why she panicked at the idea of getting into a car.
Why she wears so much fucking pink.
Finally, the shower switches off, and relief comes in the form of rattling glass and the thump of footsteps, lighting a spark of excitement in my chest.
The bathroom door opens, a triangle of light spills out onto the floor, and within it, a familiar shadow.
I take a final drag on the cigarette, then stub it out on the armrest. “It sure takes you a long time to shave your pussy.”
The footsteps come to an abrupt halt. A whispered Italian curse fissures through the bedroom, and when I glance up, Dante emerges from a cloud of steam.
Cue the same old dance. He slams his palm on the light switch, flooding the room with a yellow glow.
Then his eyes dart to all the usual places; the pillows on the bed, the nightstand drawer.
Over to the safe in the corner, which has a passcode set to his birthday.
Then his gaze falls to the coffee table, where all three of his guns lay in a neat row, chambers emptied.
He tightens the towel around his waist, eyes narrowing on me. “What do you want?”
Slipping the earbud into my breast pocket, I let out a tired sigh. He always fucking asks. It’s a stupid question at the best of times, but given the circumstances, it’s full-on moronic.
Though I’m enjoying the tension lining his shoulders too much to answer, so I pull out another rolling paper and take my time packing it with tobacco.
His eyes burn into my lap, and I relish the petty satisfaction it gives me.
Much to his disdain, I’ve been smoking in his bedroom at least once a week for three years.
Stubbing out my cigarettes on his armchair too.
He stopped bothering to replace it a while ago, around the same time he finally accepted he wasn’t smart enough to keep me out.
My gaze tracks his bare feet as he pads over to his liquor cabinet. He pours a whiskey with a steady hand and moves to the window.
When he spots the bodies slumped on his front lawn, his jaw locks. “How many men?”
“Three.” I cast a careless look at my bloodied knuckles “Want some advice?”
“No.”
I give it to him anyway. “I know nobody wants to work for you but stop hiring your men off Craigslist. They couldn’t throw a party, let alone a punch.”
“I don’t—” He rolls his shoulders back and slowly turns to pin me with his signature sneer.
I swear, he popped out of his mother with that fucking expression, and I couldn’t count on both hands how many times my fists wiped it off his face during our childhood.
“Perhaps I should take a leaf from your book,” he says, back to his usual, quiet drawl, “and pick up a few feral dogs from the local pound. Quite the pack of strays you have, cugino. They killed twelve of my men tonight.”
With a bitter smirk, he raises his glass in a mock toast before sinking half of its contents with a hard gulp.
A white-hot heat rushes from the base of my spine to the top. It’s a protective instinct, wrapped around the innermost layer of my core. He’s right, all my men are strays. Rescued from all four corners of the world, nurtured back to health, put to work.
Angelo hates them, Rafe even more so. But they don’t understand—they weren’t born to have the misfortune to understand—the thread that ties us together.
I strike a match and light the cigarette, mainly to give my hands something else to do other than reach for my gun. Taking a long, deep drag, I make a point of billowing the smoke in Dante’s direction.
The cunt got to me once, and I vowed I’d never let him again.
“You really fucked up this time. You know that?”
His glare burns through the dissipating smoke. “You want to talk about fuckups? Because holding a wedding so soon after your brother blew my father’s head off for that gold-digging whore is pretty up there.”
A sour taste brews at the back of my tongue. It’s not often Dante Visconti can say he’s right twice in one day.
I must have been silent for a beat too long because he rests against the windowsill, swirls the whiskey around the glass, and flashes me that fucking smirk again, as though he suddenly has the upper hand.
“You’re not going to kill me.”
My thoughts briefly boomerang back to Her, and how she said the same thing just hours earlier. She was right—though I don’t like how she took my fucking word as gospel. Dante, however, is not.
Still, I give him the same answer. “No?”
“No. It’s not in Angelo’s grand plan.” He huffs out a quiet laugh over his drink.
“I can picture it perfectly. The Dip brothers huddled around a table, plotting revenge on their mean older cousin.” He crooks a brow, pondering.
“You would have wanted to blow my head off immediately, of course. But Rafe would have sat there, twirling his little poker chip, dreaming up something more exciting. A game, perhaps. And Angelo …” His gaze falls to mine, glinting with amusement.
“Well, Angelo always goes along with Rafe’s plans, doesn’t he?
He’s the smarter brother, after all. And you, the Dips’ lackey, have to grit your teeth and do their dirty work. ”
Well, would you look at that. The bastard’s on a roll.
He’s right again, about Rafe at least. I don’t know what that fuck wit was high on earlier as he sat in Cas’s office flicking chess pieces off a playing board and talking some shit about taking Dante’s men out one by one until he’s the only one left standing.
Because what the fuck does he know?
The only game he’s ever come up with that doesn’t make me want to suck on the end of a loaded gun is the Sinners Anonymous hotline.
Though games are his thing, war is mine. And while I’ll nod and agree and spout whatever bullshit my brothers want to hear to keep them out of my way, I live by a mix of my father’s rules and my own to keep them alive.
“Well, this has been fun, but I’ve got more interesting things to do,” I drawl, twisting the cigarette butt into the armrest and flicking the remains onto the rug for good measure.
When I rise to my feet, Dante stands straighter, tracking each step as I close the gap between us. My shadow creeps up over his torso, and amusement bleeds into my chest. This idiot is so predictable.
Except for when he isn’t.
His gaze probes mine as I stand toe-to-toe with him. His jaw is locked and ready, but the flicker of fear in his eyes betrays him. It burns brighter when I slip my hand into my pocket and press the tip of his own knife into the tender flesh beneath his chin.
I let out a slow, wistful sigh, dragging the blade lightly over his skin. “Your day is coming,” I whisper. “But it’s not today.”
His chest caves when I drop the knife back into my pocket.
Then I drive my knee up into his balls.
A humorless smirk touches my lips as I shut his bedroom door on his screams with a quiet click.
That was for calling Rory a gold-digging whore.