Chapter 17
17
CELIA
“ I need my wife.” Gabriel leaned against the bars of the cage the next day, one hand in his pocket. “Are you ready to behave?”
“It’s not as if I can escape you anyway.”
“Celia.” His tone was serious. “If you can forgive me…I hope we can be allies.”
“I’ve always tried to be your ally, Gabriel. You’re the one who hasn’t been mine.”
“An ally who hides things from me?”
“Just as you do? I want to be your ally, which implies we’re equals. I want that, not to be treated like a child or…” My fingers went to the microchip, not that I could feel it now that the bruising had gone down. “Or a pet.”
He opened the door and swept his arm, inviting me to come along. Of course I went with him.
“Tell me why you need your wife,” I told him as I walked into the bathroom. He’d already started the shower heating for me, and steam curled out of the shower. The beautiful sky- blue ballgown hung from a hook. It was almost the color of Gabriel’s eyes, but no other blue could be as alluring. “Besides the obvious, since you usually don’t seem to notice.”
“Do you remember the deal that your father’s been desperately trying to renege on?”
“Of course. I suggested that you should probably kill him.”
“Luca says I should leave that to you.”
His frank tone startled me, and I paused at the edge of the shower. Then I got in, relaxing under the luxurious waterfall of water.
“You looked relieved when I mentioned Luca. You didn’t believe me when I told you he was alive.”
“For some reason, I don’t trust you when you beat him.”
Gabriel clucked his tongue. “Celia. Don’t tell me that he doesn’t deserve it. What did he do to you?”
I turned my back to him, but I could feel his amusement radiating toward me.
Maybe he had a point. Luca had tried to take the fall for me when Gabriel discovered the phone, but he certainly owed me.
“What do you need from me tonight?” I asked, trying to keep us both on track.
He leaned against the glass on the outside of the shower, looking unfairly sexy. “The Manchester family thinks that they can outmaneuver us. I need you to come with me to play happy family tonight. Can you be my ever so devoted wife for an audience?”
I stepped out to press my damp body to his. I slid my arms around his neck and looked up at him lovingly, and despite everything, I felt his chest give a little when I was this close to him.
“You know I can, darling.” I kissed him.
He was still kissing me back when I stepped out of his reach and went back into the shower. I was getting cold.
His damp shirt clung to the hard angles of his body as he put his arm up on the glass, leaning in and watching me with amusement across his face. “And you aren’t going to try to run away from me?”
“You know I’m not. Because I don’t have anywhere to go, not because you deserve me.” He certainly did not. “Do you have some deep-seated mommy issues we need to talk about?”
His face shattered, every bit of amusement dropping away.
So that was the truth. And now I had regrets.
“I have mommy issues too,” I assured him. “Whenever a parent dies when you’re young, I think it leaves a mark…I don’t know. Maybe it’s just when they’re murdered.”
“So, you believe your father had your mother killed?” he asked curiously, as if he weren’t quite sure.
“Yes.”
“Well, Celia. It looks like we have something in common.”
I turned off the shower. He barely seemed to acknowledge the words, picking up my towel and holding it up for me. I stepped out and let him wrap me up in it.
“What do you know about your parents’ murder?” I asked.
“Their accident was a hit. That’s not the official story that went out in the newspapers, but I did my own investigating.” He swallowed, swiping through his hair. “After what I did to David…Some people think I’m the one who killed my parents. So I could take over.”
“People are stupid.”
“That’s the biggest truth about humanity, isn’t it?” he mused. “Sometimes we create great things. Sometimes we create destruction. Sometimes we’re kind, sometimes cruel. But as unpredictable as we are, there’s one fact on which to depend: we’re always a little bit stupid.”
Even Gabriel, who was so brilliant most of the time, had hurt me when he could’ve had me on his side. At least he knew he had moments where he was stupid.
I put my hand on his cheek. His gaze flashed to mine, startled, as if he hadn’t expected the contact.
“I know you are capable of doing terrible things with your goals in mind,” I said. “You’re singular, driven. But you would never truly hurt the people you love.”
If only I ever were sure I was on that list…I would trust Gabriel.
Even though I knew it would be hard at times, due to his nature. David had doubted him when Gabriel raised the gun to his face five years ago. Luca had doubted him when Gabriel had him beaten.
Gabriel’s love could be brutal.
His mood changed in an instant, his cool facade coming back over him. Something must have shaken him. “Well, it has been a convenient story. It makes people afraid of me, and that’s always very useful. Speaking of people being afraid of me…put on your dress and come on. I want to show you something.”
“What’s that?” I asked, hurrying to dress. “I still have to blow-dry my hair and do my makeup.”
“Don’t do your makeup until after. You don’t want to ruin it crying,” he said, which was an unnecessarily ominous statement.
I threw on my clothes, trying to calm my flustered heart, and then walked out into our bedroom.
As Gabriel opened the door, I stopped dead, preparing for whatever this unpredictable man delivered next.
Dante walked in.
The world dropped from under my feet as I took in his tall, dark-haired form, the deep brown eyes that looked so much like David’s, the uncertain half-smile across his changed features.
“I’ll give you a moment,” Gabriel told me.
I stopped, standing rooted to the ground. Part of me had felt that I would never see him again.
“David…” I whispered.
There was a second’s hesitation.
Then he said, “I’m here, Celia.”
There was no mistaking his voice. That was the voice I had fallen in love with. The voice that used to make my heart rise when I heard it.
In high school, he could be out of sight when I would hear his voice, and it was like the whole world flipped upside down. I was the happiest, luckiest girl in the world for a few seconds, freed from all the constraints and miseries of my everyday life.
All those memories rose for me, all those emotions, all that love .
But now, it was mixed up with so much pain and grief and guilt.
I took a step back from him.
“All that time, you were really alive, and you didn’t tell me. So that you could get revenge on my father.”
“For a long time, Celia, I was in no state for you to see me…my face was ruined.” His voice was anguished.
I studied that face that was different than the one I’d grown up with but that still meant the world to me. “It was never your face that I was in love with, you idiot. Just hearing your voice would have changed my whole life. It would have given me hope.”
He crossed to me and tucked my hair back behind my ear, looking at me fondly. “It seems as if you made your own hope, Celia.”
I smiled through my tears. I couldn’t make sense of my emotions. It seemed like I was feeling all of them all at once.
“But you’re right. The need for revenge drove Gabriel, and I let him. Celia, we don’t deserve you.” His hands cupped my shoulders as he looked into my face seriously. “We were selfish, we betrayed you, and we don’t deserve you. If you get the chance to run…run.”
“I wouldn’t leave you,” I whispered.
“You should.”
“Well, now I feel more sympathy for Luca and how frustrating it was as you constantly worked against his plans.” Gabriel walked back into the room.
He walked into his walk-in closet and came out, shrugging his suit jacket on. He was dressed in an impeccable black suit over a dark-gray button-down.
“My little brother will tell you to run, because nothing matters to him—not revenge, not power, not even family—as much as you do,” Gabriel said. “And now that you know that I saved his life, you also know how far I will go to get what I want. How much I’ll hurt people that I love if that’s what I need to do. So, I hope that I don’t need to spell out the stakes if you betray me tonight, Celia.”
“You don’t.”
Why make me hate you more ?
I’m not even sure I believe you . You just want me to be afraid of you , to hate you , because you’re afraid of how you feel when it’s good between us.
He was more comfortable putting me in a cage than leaving his own.
Gabriel held his arm out to me. “It’s time for you to finish getting ready. My men will take care of Dante until we come home.”
I clung to Dante, giving him one last kiss goodbye.
Then Gabriel dragged me away toward the bathroom, and the door opened behind us as Gabriel’s men came in and claimed Dante.
Dante’s eyes and mine met in one last anguished look.
No matter how much Dante told me to run, I wouldn’t let this be goodbye.