19. Gabriella
19
Gabriella
I ’m pacing. I know that, but I have to move. I have to do something other than keeping still. Because if I do, my thoughts will overcome me, and I’ll only just grow more anxious.
“Gabriella, please come sit down,” Dimitri softly orders.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I spin on my heel and face him with a very bitter expression. “Oh, I don’t know, Dimitri. Maybe because my friend is in surgery from a fucking gunshot wound. He could be dead at this very moment and there is nothing I can do.”
Dimitri stands and, in a matter of seconds, is before me, staring down with a dark expression that betrays his frustration at my sarcastic comeback.
“You’re right. There is nothing you can do—”
I reach out to smack him, but he captures my wrist in his hand and holds it close to his chest.
“Because you’ve done everything you can already.” His tone softens. “Because of you, he was alive when we got here. You did that. You kept him alive.”
“But what if he dies now?” Voicing my biggest fear hurts. Like saying it out loud will almost manifest the very real possibility into existence.
“He could, but I doubt it. From what I know of the man, he’s near impossible to kill.”
I snort lightly. “It’s the Viking in him.”
Dimitri groans with a teasing smile. “I knew there was something wrong with him.”
He’s trying to distract me, calm my anxiety, and give me something positive to focus on. I appreciate it.
I drop my gaze to his black leather jacket covered chest and whisper, “Thank you for being here.”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
He steps back but keeps hold of my wrist, shifting his hand down until he’s holding my hand. My eyes focus on the sight of affection and follow him to a line of chairs in the waiting room.
I sit in one and can’t help but shiver from the cool plastic. Before he sits down, he shrugs his jacket off and wraps it around my shoulders, pulling the front snug.
“What if someone sees us?”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do,” I remind him, trying hard to keep the bitterness from my voice.
He takes a deep breath and exhales it hard through his nose, his nostrils flaring from the force. “Your brother will be here soon, but—”
“Then you should go.”
“Gabriella,” he growls out my name. “Stop interrupting me or I’ll take you over my knee and remind you of a thing called manners.”
I purse my lips and lean back into the chair, gripping his jacket tighter around me, enjoying the way his smell settles over me.
“But I’m not leaving you alone. Not again.”
My heart pangs at the memory of the child we lost, and how he couldn’t be there with me. But he’s saying he’s not leaving now. Even knowing my brother and dad are on their way. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Will you tell me what happened? Why was Rosaleen O’Leary at your brother’s penthouse?” he asks.
“Because she’s the girl my brother’s been looking for since January.”
Dimitri’s eyes widen slightly, telling me he heard something about that. “That’s her?” I nod. “And the baby?”
“Their son, Liam.”
Dimitri sits back, releasing a hard breath, as he runs a hand through his hair. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
“How? I thought he was sterile.”
I shrug, not even sure where to begin…except the beginning. “When she found out she was pregnant, she knew that the only way to save herself and her baby was to run. So she did.”
“The wedding.”
“Yeah. She used the wedding as a distraction to escape. With the help of a really smart and rich friend, she settled down in Italy with a fake identity and started a new life. But her father found her and when he learned she had a baby, he sold her into a trafficking ring. Because…”
“Of Igor,” he finishes, before he looks away at a distant wall, but it's not the pale yellow wall he's seeing.
And it occurs to me that he may know something.
“Dimitri?" His eyes don't move. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to please be honest with me.” The plea in my tone is enough for him to meet my waiting eyes. “Did you know about this? About Igor and Patrick?”
He shakes his head, his eyes never looking away from mine. “No. I’ve heard nothing about this. I promise you.”
A feeling of relief settles over me. I believe him.
The doors to the emergency room open and a man walks out in green scrubs and a surgery cap.
“Ms. DiAngelo?” he calls out, peering around the room.
I jump to my feet right away. “That’s me.”
As he walks toward me, I study his facial expressions and try hard to decipher them. Does he look happy? Relieved? Sad? Or upset?
Dimitri stands behind me, close enough that I feel his presence and know he’s there in case the doctor delivers bad news.
“How is he?” I ask right away.
“He’s in surgery still. He lost quite a bit of blood, but he’s stable,” the doctor answers.
I release a sigh of relief. He’s not out of the woods, but he’s not dead either, and that’s a win in my book.
“I need to get back in there, but I’ll send a nurse if anything changes.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
I stare at the closed doors for a moment longer before I lean back into Dimitri. It's instinctual and familiar. I just need to feel his strength and hope a fraction of it will absorb into me.
He doesn't move and, after a long minute, asks, “Would you like some hot cocoa?”
“I actually wouldn’t mind some coffee. Cream and sugar, please.”
He rubs my upper arms before placing a chaste kiss on the crown of my head. I close my eyes at the sensation. “I’ll be right back.”
I reopen my eyes in time to watch him walk away and when he disappears around the corner, a wave of cool air rushes over me, like he took all the warmth with him. Shuddering, I sit back down in the chair and pull my knees up to my chest, curling in on myself.
My mind replays the memory of Enzo getting shot over and over. I can still hear the piercing sound of the gunshot echoing in the penthouse, feel the pain of my scream tearing free from my throat, and see the overwhelming amount of blood spilling from his wound—warm and far too precious to lose. The fear in his pale blue eyes when he looked at me will haunt me always. I've seen my fair share of gunshot wounds more horrendous than Enzo's, but I never want to witness anything like that again.
My eyes focus on the red stains covering my hands. My poor attempts to wipe it off have left the blood smeared and now dry. It’s a painful reminder. My skin itches with the overwhelming desire to clean it off. I need it gone. I can at least do that, since I’m unable to do anything else.
Maybe when Dimitri gets back—
“Gabriella!”
My head snaps up and all I see is my big brother standing in the doorway. I’m on my feet in a heartbeat, shoving out of Dimitri’s jacket and crashing into his chest a second later. I’m sobbing hysterically, even when he pushes me back to get a better look at me and then movement behind his shoulder draws my attention.Dad.
Michael releases me, and I fall into the safety and warmth of my father’s embrace. His strong arms encircle me, reminding me of all the times he did the same for me when I was a kid. The times I fell and scraped my knees, trying to keep up with my brothers and the others. Or the one time I sprained my wrist because I didn’t listen to his direction during a sparring session. He asks Michael a question over my head, but their exchange sounds warped, like I’m listening underwater. But one voice is clear as day.
“I can help fill in the details.”
“What the fuck are you doing here, Dimitri?” my brother snaps.
I twist in my dad’s embrace to see Dimitri gesture towards me. He’s wearing his jacket again and there’s a pair of generic white coffee cups resting on the table closest to him. “I brought your sister and friend to the hospital.”
“What? Why?”
“Because she asked me to.”
I raise a slight brow because it’s a little more complicated than I asked him to. Dimitri notices and his lips quirk. A moment later, though, my brother has Dimitri shoved against a wall by the lapels of his jacket.
“What the hell is going on between you and my sister?”
Fuck.
Something dangerous flashes in Dimitri’s eyes, but he remains calm. “Let me down, DiAngelo, and I’ll explain.”
“The fuck I will, Volkov.”
“Do you want me to answer you or not?”
“You can answer from where you are just fine.”
Okay, that’s enough testosterone building for one evening. Dimitri will only take so much of my brother’s crap before lashing out, and I doubt a fight between them will go over very well.
I step forward and place my hands on Michael’s arm. “Let him go, Michael.”
“No. I’d rather not.”
“Please. He helped us.” I need to get him to listen to me. “He’s the only reason Enzo is alive right now.”
Dad’s deep voice orders, “Michael. Let the man speak. We don’t have a lot of time.”
I watch the indecision battle in his eyes before he finally releases Dimitri and steps back.
“Gabriella and I are—”
“Friends,” I interrupt right away, just in case he thought to say something different. Now is not the time to cross that bridge or place a single foot on it either.
Dimitri thins his lips when he meets my pleading eyes. “Right. We’re…friends. She called me when they broke in, and I rushed over when I heard what was happening. But by the time I arrived, Patrick was gone, along with Rose and the baby. I took care of the men he left behind and then brought Gabriella and Enzo to the hospital.”
Dimitri glances back at me, and I give him a small and thankful smile. He acknowledges it with a subtle nod before he returns his eyes to my family.
“Enzo’s in surgery,” I announce, trying to rein these hot-headed fools back to what’s important right now. “He lost a lot of blood, but the doctors are confident he’ll be okay.”
“There’s more,” Dimitri continues, and I know he’s about to throw gasoline on a simmering fire. “Patrick plans on marrying Rose to Igor tonight at midnight at St. Paul’s Church.”
“And how the hell do you know that?”
My eyes zero in on the knife Michael flicks open and before he can try to bury it in Dimitri, I step in between the pair and hold my arms out like a barrier.
“Move,” Michael demands, his tone grave and his eyes just as deadly.
“No.” I know what our enemies call him and Raphael. The twin Grim Reapers. But his hot Italian anger doesn’t frighten me. It never has.
“Why are you protecting him? Because you’re fucking friends?” he hisses into my face, and I refuse to back down.
“No, you jackass,” I snap back, my own anger rising to the surface to greet him before a large, familiar, warm hand circles my wrist.
Michael’s eyes catch on the physical contact and he frowns. “Are the Russians behind this?”
“Unclear.” Really, Dimitri? Unclear? “I was with Sergei earlier this evening, and he mentioned nothing about his brother or O’Leary. If he knows something, he didn’t share it with me.”
Michael latches on to the annoyed laced anger in Dimitri’s tone and pokes the bear. “Trouble in paradise there, Volkov?”
The tension radiating from Dimitri washes over me like a series of ocean waves. Yet, he remains quiet and still—something I know is incredibly difficult for him. I’m sure he would love nothing more than to bury his fist in my brother’s smug face, and I honestly wouldn’t blame him. But everyone is on high alert and running hotter than normal. Like a tinderbox, one spark and everything will blow.
“So, how do you know where they went?” Michael asks, not really directing his question at either of us.
"Because Rose’s dad bragged about it before they left and I told Dimitri." I answer.
Michael steps back with a growl. “That bastard is not her dad. A dad doesn’t sell his daughter into the human sex trade when she’s no longer worth a dime to him.”
I lower my eyes. He’s right.That's not being a dad in the slightest.
“She told you?” My brother’s tone is a little softer this time.
“She told us everything tonight.” I can see the new fear circling his face now, the uncertainty that maybe Rose planned all of this in retaliation for how he overreacted at the house when she confessed her truth to him. He needs to know that’s not the case at all. He needs to know she’s the reason me and Enzo were alive when Dimitri arrived. “Michael, he was going to kill us if she didn’t go with him. She doesn’t want to marry Igor. You know that, right?”
His shoulders fall, like he’s both defeated and relieved. “I know.”
“Midnight is in less than two hours,” Dimitri reminds us solemnly.
They prepare to leave, ordering me to stay at the hospital and wait for news on Enzo.
“You should probably stay too,” Michael directs to Dimitri. “You don’t want to be at that church tonight. I may mistake you for the enemy.”
I expect annoyance or anger in Dimitri's voice, but he just sounds tired instead. “I assure you, I am anything but that.”
“That remains to be seen.”
Michael turns to order a handful of men to stay and guard the hospital and me. A respect I’m sure doesn’t extend to Dimitri, but they will if I demand it. I’m still a DiAngelo after all.
Dad follows behind my brother before he pauses and turns back to us. “Volkov? Don’t think we won’t be having a conversation about how exactly you are friends with my daughter.”
Once we’re alone, I sidestep Dimitri and head straight for the ladies’ room to clean the blood from my hands and arms. Of course, the fucking cleaning crew has the women’s side blocked off, forcing me to use the family restroom instead. But before the door closes, a hand appears in the crack.
Dimitri steps in and closes the door behind him, the soft click filling the quiet air.“Are you okay?”
“Are you insane?” I say back, grabbing his eyes in the mirror. “You can’t be in here.”
“Why not? It’s a family restroom.”
I narrow my eyes at him before spinning around to face him, suddenly feeling exhausted and with a need to be alone. “Dimitri, I’m fine. You can go now. Dad left some of his men, so I’m safe here.”
Dimitri crosses his arms over his chest and levels me with a challenging look. “What part of I’m not leaving you…did you not understand?”
Any other day and I’d be up for the challenge, but I can’t find the strength right now. “Please, Dimitri.”
He drops his arms and slides his hands into his pockets. Like a switch, his entire demeanor changes and becomes physically less imposing, like that’s even possible.
“Did you mean what you said to your brother?”
“I said several things,” I remind him. “You’ll need to be more specific.”
“About us being friends.” He sounds almost hopeful and scared too, like he’s not sure which way he’d prefer.
I sigh hard and bow my head. I’m not mentally prepared to consider what my words meant or could mean. But I know one thing. “You’ll always be my friend, Dimitri.”
“But?”
My lips twitch at the memory of saying the same thing all those months ago. “But my focus right now needs to be on Enzo and getting Rose and Liam back safe and sound.”
Dimitri nods and steps even closer. His hand appears in my vision and then he’s lifting my face to his. At this angle, he towers over me. His unruly hair falls forward, throwing his face into shadows that make his brilliant blue eyes stand out with a fierce emotion burning in their depths. As he uses his thumb to swipe over my lips, his eyes follow the movement and catch on the sight of my throat when I swallow from the sensation his touch brings.
“Okay,” he says, and his timber voice fills my body, a feeling I've missed.
It’s clear he wants to say more, and I almost wish he would, but I can’t trust myself to be honest with him, especially when I don’t even know how I really feel. Having his support, his shoulder to cry on, and his arms to hold me…it’s everything I wanted months ago. The pain of that night lingers and his action, or lack thereof, the following day still hurts.
So why did he come to my aid tonight? Don't get me wrong, I'm forever thankful he did, but was it because of politics or something more? What’s changed? Has anything changed?
We need to talk, but it’s a conversation that doesn’t need to be had now. Not here in a hospital where I’m covered in the blood of my oldest friend while he fights for his life and not when my nephew and his mother’s safety hang in the balance.
“Thank you again for being here tonight,” I tell him, reaching up on the tips of my toes to kiss his cheek chastely. “We’ll talk soon. I promise.”