Chapter Four
Gaetano
Pop, fizz. Ice melted into the scotch resting in the tumbler that sat on my desk. I watched, transfixed, as the amber liquid and water swirled together until they became one, just as Gaby and I had been swirling and melding into one another five days ago.
She had been the best I’d ever had. Her rawness awoke a fire in me that I’d kept contained for far too long.
Sinking my cock into Gaby felt like coming home to a place long forgotten.
For too long, I’d regarded that as a weakness, but it felt so right at the time.
I wrestled with the dilemma, but ultimately decided that caring for her was a series of blurred lines that I wasn’t comfortable dissecting at this time.
The mistake itself wasn't what troubled me. Nurses made mistakes. Doctors made mistakes. Hell, every person in that operating room had likely committed one at some point in their career.
Yet every time I replayed the scene in my head, I kept returning to the same uncomfortable truth.
I was the one in charge.
I was the senior surgeon.
The older one.
The more experienced one.
She had been exhausted.
Frightened.
Overwhelmed.
And instead of recognizing it immediately, I'd allowed my own temper and desire to cloud my judgment. It wasn't a mistake I was accustomed to making.
All the careful control I exhibited in bringing her to my office for a private chat had meant to be only that, a chat. But her tantrum and the disrespect she exhibited brought out a side of me I didn’t want to hold back in her presence.
She’d been the source of my fantasies since that day in my brother’s restaurant when our gazes collided.
The spark that passed between us and the resulting challenge she held in her eyes practically begged me to deliver what she wanted and needed.
Unfortunately for me, when I got the chance to deliver, my passions were far from being satiated as I’d hoped.
Instead, a deep burning desire to have her again haunted me night and day ever since.
When I returned to my office, hours later, after performing the surgery, she was gone. The blanket I’d covered her with still carried her scent. Pressing it to my nose, etched her into my memory all over again. All other traces of her vanished, including her ripped underwear by the desk.
Now, even her scent was gone. My cock hardened remembering her tight, warm channel and penetrating her slick, silky entrance…I shook my head, releasing myself from the trancelike state.
Searching for Gaby had come up with nothing.
The address on her form wasn’t the one where she’d been staying.
Her friends from lunch had turned out to be nurses as well, which I didn’t find out until I saw one of them in the hallways of the hospital.
When I approached her about Gaby, she said she hadn’t seen her in days.
Ridiculous! I slammed my hands on my desk. Get a grip, Vitale! Forget about Gaby Cala and go and have sex with a woman who doesn’t matter to you.
Good advice from my conscience, alter ego, or the devil on my shoulder?
My phone pinged with a message from Gio—Come to Carnage and have a drink with your brothers.
Brothers, as in plural?
Another message, this one from Romeo—That’s an order, Tano!
Great, orders from Don Vitale, which I needed like a hole in the head. Most likely this was an impromptu get-together, and they didn’t need me there, but just wanted me to join them in blowing off some steam. They had no idea how good their timing was, as I was heading there anyway.
Fine. See you in half.
I downed the remaining contents in my glass and gathered up my things to leave.
“Leaving early, sir?” my secretary asked as I passed her desk.
I nodded. “Feel free to leave early as well, Rita. It’s been a busy week. I’ll see you on Monday.”
She smiled. “Thank you very much, Sir.”
I was almost outside the door when I turned around. “Rita, when Nurse Cala left my office the other day, how did she seem to you?”
Rita stopped typing. “She looked upset.”
“Upset?”
“Like someone trying very hard not to cry.”
I nodded, closed the door and made my way to the lot. Waiting for me was Romeo’s car and driver. That meant we were drinking, exactly what I needed to drown out the question in my head— What happened to Gaby Cala?
It wasn't a question I should have been asking.
Not after five days.
Not after one reckless afternoon in my office.
Not after spending most of my adult life avoiding attachments.
Yet there it was.
Not: Where is she?
But: Is she safe?
The question irritated me.
Women came and went.
Nurses came and went.
One reckless afternoon should not have been enough to lodge someone beneath my skin.
Yet every attempt to dismiss her only made me think of her more.
When I arrived at Club Carnage I headed up to our private section and joined my brothers who were clearly a few in.
“Tano!” Vinny launched himself out of his chair before I could evade him. I sighed. There was no escaping. At twenty-eight, Vincenzo was somehow still convinced he was small enough to throw himself at people. At six-foot-two and built like a Greek god, he was catastrophically mistaken.
I hated public displays of affection, and he knew it, but he also knew that he was the one person I’d suffer them for.
“I wuv you, Tani,” echoed in my memory, along with the image of a little boy with a golden mane.
No matter how tall he grew or how old he got, he would always be my Simba, and damn him, he knew it.
When he let me go, I immediately dropped into my chair before any of the others could touch me.
I felt Romeo’s intelligent, glittering eyes examining me but ignored them.
The man had a spooky way of being able to see what was going on with all the brothers and had no problem calling us out on them.
It must be a mafia Don thing that he inherited from our father, a man who saw and knew everything.
Rita had said she looked upset, but why? Why the fuck was she almost in tears?
“Tano, I’d like to discuss your security detail,” Romeo announced.
Was he being funny? “You know I don’t have one, Rom.”
His eyes glittered dangerously. “And that is exactly why we’re having this discussion.”
I was about to tell him to go and fuck himself where the sun doesn’t shine when Gio said, loud enough for us all to hear. “Would you look at the ass on that one?”
All eyes turned to the floor.
“They are all pretty hot,” Vinny added. “Maybe I should go and talk with them.”
“Yeah, Vinny,” Fausto said with a snort. “Take one for the team.”
“What the hell is Little Red wearing? I swear I can see all the way to Albuquerque when she bends over like that. Holy shit, she works it like a pro. Who are those women, Gio?” Vinny added.
“Don’t look at me,” Gio held up his hands defensively. “I’ve never seen them before, but one seems kind of familiar.”
Almost as if hearing us talk about her, the one in the almost see-through mini-dress looked up. No way!
It was my brother’s new wife, Vittoria. Her eyes passed over us until landing on Romeo, she smirked and blew him a kiss. A few months ago, I'd have said Romeo needed a woman exactly like her about as much as he needed a second head.
Watching them now, I wasn't so sure.
Vittoria challenged him.
Irritated him.
Drove him insane.
Yet somehow my brother seemed more alive than he'd ever been. Dangerous. A Don who lost his head over a woman was vulnerable. Yet watching them together, I couldn't deny the appeal. For the first time in years, Romeo looked happy.
“Porca puttana!” he cursed, but continued to watch in irritated fascination. When she turned and wiggled her ass at him, I swear smoke came out of his ears. “è una vera cagacazzo, dico!”
He was right, she was a pain in the ass. But I saw so much more than that. I saw a man obsessed, and in our world, that was weakness. Before I could comment, however, a hand slid in beside me and dumped a drink on my lap.
“Ma che cazzo?” I blurted, too astonished for English, but the What the fuck in my tone surely translated for me.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I stood up drenched and watched a waitress hustling away as fast as her ridiculously high heels would allow.
Not just any waitress, but Gaby Cala. Standing, I raced after her with Gio hot on my heels.
She’d passed the bar and was running for the back room where I guessed she assumed she’d be safe. Little did she know she was in the dragon’s own lair; there were no safe places here.
We caught up with Gaby in the employee’s lounge, where she was frantically trying to open a locker.
The way her eyes darted to the door told me she desired to escape this situation but probably needed what lay on the other side of that rattling door, keys and a purse perhaps.
She knew the game was up. Spinning on her heel, she lifted a defiant chin.
I glared down at Gaby, who glared right back. She wore her bravado well, but I could see her pupils constricted with fear, the rapid flutter of her pulse at the side of her slender throat, and could smell the adrenaline in her sweat.
“I’m going to forego the obvious question of why you saw fit to water my pants,” I began coldly, advancing on her. She refused to retreat further into the lockers, to the effect that our bodies were a mere breath apart. “Why are you here, Gaby?”
Gio looked from me to her and back again. “Do you know her, brother?”
Gaby’s eyes rounded in surprise. “Br-brother?”
“Oh, do forgive me. Nurse Cala, this is my brother, Giovanni Vitale. Gio, this is Nurse Gaby Cala.”
“Gaby Cala? Her application said Gigi Carter.” Gio held up his open hands as I turned a contemptuous stare on him. “She had the ID to prove it!”
“And that’s enough for you?”
“There were no red flags for Gigi Carter. Had there been, then of course I would have looked deeper.”