Chapter 20
GAbrIEL
She’s been avoiding me for three days.
She still sleeps in my bed, curled against me in the dark, her breathing soft and even. But she’s up before me, showered, and hard at work by the time my alarm goes off. Throughout the day, she’s distant, polite, careful.
Like I’m an enemy to whom she’s decided to be civil.
I’m in the library, reviewing contracts for a shipping deal. It should have my full attention. But it doesn’t, for the simple reason that Thea is there with me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, a stack of books beside her.
She’s been in here for hours, before I entered. Her choice of books interests me—one about ancient Rome and Greece, another on Mesopotamian archaeology. She’s totally focused on the text, only stopping to make notes in her notebook or take a sip of her tea.
Thea isn’t like other women. Thea wants knowledge, life experience.
“Find something interesting?” I ask, setting down the contracts.
She looks up, startled, like she’d forgotten I was there.
“Just reading.”
“I can see that.” I stand and move closer. “What’s caught your attention?”
She hesitates. Then she holds up one of the books. “This. It’s about the excavations at Pompeii. It’s fascinating—the way they’re using ground-penetrating radar now to find structures that haven’t been uncovered yet.”
Her eyes are bright as she speaks, animated in a way I haven’t seen in days.
She sets the book down. “I used to dream about traveling. You know, seeing the pyramids, the Parthenon, Machu Picchu. Maybe even working on a dig site somewhere. But—” She shrugs. “That was never going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was too busy trying to survive.” Her tone is matter-of-fact.
There’s no self-pity. Just truth. “College costs money. Travel costs money. Not to mention that going to school for a degree in something like anthropology isn’t exactly a wise move when you’d have massive student loans to worry about afterward.
” She sighs. “I wanted to go to college. But I couldn’t make it happen.
I had to work two jobs just to afford my shitty apartment. Then I blinked and I was twenty-five.”
I move over to a shelf where some of the artifacts from my own travels are sitting. The scarab beetle from Cairo, typically in the living room, is there. I’d brought it in the other night to study while reading up on its history and meaning.
“This is from the Valley of the Kings,” I tell her, holding it up. “A reproduction, unfortunately. But the original is nearly 3,000 years old. It was found in a tomb that had been sealed since the reign of Ramesses II.”
“I was admiring that my first shift here,” she says, her eyes locked onto it. “It’s beautiful—reproduction or not.”
I place the glass container on the table. Then I open it and remove the beetle, holding it out to her.
“Are you serious?” she asks.
“I am. Take a look.”
She looks at the scarab, then back at me, as if I might change my mind at the last moment. Thea handles it delicately.
“Amazing,” she says. “Just beautiful.” She hands it back carefully, and I return it to the container. Wonder is written across her face.
“You’ve been to Egypt?”
“Several times. Cairo, Luxor, Aswan. The history there is…” I pause, searching for the right word. “Overwhelming. In the best possible way.”
“What was it like, standing in front of the pyramids?”
“Humbling.” I take down another piece—a fragment of pottery from Athens. “You realize how temporary we are, how brief our moment is in time. But also how much we’re connected to the people who came before us. Their ambitions, their fears, their need to create something that lasts.”
She’s looking at me differently now—not with wariness or confusion, but with curiosity.
“I still can’t get over that you care about this stuff,” she says softly.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a mob boss. You decide who lives or dies, you run territories and make underground deals. An appreciation for ancient pottery doesn’t exactly follow.”
I smile slightly. “I am a man of many facets.”
She laughs. Actually laughs. The sound does something to me.
“What would you study?” I ask. “If you could go to college?”
“Oh, anthropology, of course.” She raises a finger. “But with a minor in history and archaeology. I want to understand how cultures develop and how they adapt. And what they leave behind.” She pauses. “But like I said, it’s not practical. There’s no money in it.”
“It’s not impractical.” I step closer. “It’s exactly who you are. Curious, thoughtful, hungry for knowledge. And not far from the family tree.”
She cocks her head to the side. “Pardon?”
“Your father. He had a taste for the subject, as well. Not as global as you and me, perhaps. But he fancied himself a historian of sorts regarding San Remo—a city in Italy where his family is from. Everything he collected is in storage, I believe. Perhaps we could find it someday.”
She smiles. “I’d like that.”
“Would you still like to go to college?”
“What?”
“I could make it happen for you.”
Her eyes go wide. She looks at me like I just said something in a language she doesn’t understand.
“You can’t be serious. No. No way. Not with everything going on. God, I can’t even leave the estate without risking death.”
“After. After the council and Kolya is dealt with. You could enroll wherever you want—Columbia, NYU. Or even outside the city, if you desire. I could arrange for you to work on excavation sites during the summers.”
She just stares at me, as if she wants to make sure she heard me correctly.
“But why? Why would you do that?”
Because I want to give you everything you’ve been denied. Because watching you light up when you talk about your passions makes me want to burn down the world that kept you from pursuing them.
Because I’m falling for you and I don’t know how to stop.
But I don’t say any of that.
“Because you deserve it. Because you’re brilliant and passionate, and it would be a waste not to nurture your talents.”
She’s quiet for a long moment.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” she says finally. “One moment you’re dragging Liza in here like some kind of medieval punishment. And the next you’re offering to send me to college. I don’t get you. Not at all.”
“Perhaps I don’t understand myself half the time. At least when it comes to you.”
I kneel down in front of her. She doesn’t back away.
“I want you to have the life you deserve—education, travel, whatever you want. But I also can’t stand the thought of letting you go, of watching you walk away and build a life that doesn’t include me.”
“Gabriel—”
“I know it’s selfish. I know I don’t have the right to ask you to stay. But I’m asking anyway.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want all of you—your mind, your passion, your curiosity, your obsessions.”
She laughs, but it’s shaky. “That’s not… we can’t—”
“Why not?”
“Because you bought me, Gabriel. Because I’m still your property. How can this be anything real when it started like that?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But it feels real to me. Does it feel real to you?”
She regards me for a long moment. God, the urge to kiss her is overwhelming, and I realize I want her more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.
“I don’t know.”
With that, she picks up the books and stands, preparing to put them back on the shelves. I stand too and place my hands on them.
“Allow me.”
She looks up at me, then allows me to slip the books out of her grasp.
“I need to go. Shift starts in a few.”
I want to tell her to forget work, to instead march right up to my bed and let me do to her all the things I’ve been fantasizing about for the last few days. Hell, even longer than that.
But I don’t.
“Of course.”
She smiles weakly, then turns and leaves.
Once she’s gone, I’m left there, alone and more confused than I’ve ever been in my goddamn life.