Chapter 72 Gabi
GABI
It’s been days since the shooting, and I’m at last lifting out of my drugged haze. Ivan has hardly left my side, and when it registered that Milana and Yuri fetched the girls and they were being looked after by Rosalia in Matteo’s apartment, I finally allowed the tension in me to uncoil.
Ivan’s warm hand squeezes mine, and the gentle brush over my knuckles feels so familiar now, I could weep.
I got a second chance at life. A life I get to spend with him.
I’m in love with you, Ivan…
I thought I was dying, and then his declaration came, that he loved me already, which was one step ahead of being in love, and of course I had to live—who gives up on that?
My husband loves me, and we have time.
All I want is to be in his arms, and I can’t wait to go home. I squeeze his fingers, and soft lips laced with the gentle scrub of scruff press against my knuckles.
“Ivan?” I murmur, finally able to speak now they removed the ventilator.
“Here, moya ptichka. The girls are at Matteo’s apartment with Rosalia and Tasha. Everybody is safe.”
This is the first thing he tells me every time I wake up, and then he always leans in and kisses me softly on the forehead.
And there it is, my husband’s good morning kiss.
I open my eyes and reach up with my hand and touch his face.
God knows what I’d give to kiss him on the lips, but I still have tubes stuck to my face and body and a drip for pain medication, and even though I’m healing, I’m not out of intensive care yet.
Ivan’s stark blue gaze is right there, taking stock of how I look this morning.
He brushes my jaw with his thumb, always so gentle. “Color is coming back to your cheeks, moya ptichka.”
“Good.” I love him calling me his little bird, and all I want is to curl into his chest and be held and hold him in turn. It might be that my husband sprouted a few grey hairs at his temples the past few days, and somehow, he’s even sexier than before.
The nurse scuttles in and does her routine checks. She is quiet, bar a few questions, and very efficient. We don’t talk around the staff, and while she’s busy, I rummage through my disordered thoughts.
More memories are coming back. Mara and the shooting and how she shouted into the void that Chertnikov’s girl is here. I finally have a name for the monster. My decrepit Russian.
As safe as I’d like to think I am, none of us is safe. We haven’t spoken about anything yet, but the weight of knowledge that’s been pressing down on my chest is becoming too much. I need to know what happened with The Mole and with Mara.
I need to ask about Chiara.
“Are my brothers coming today?” I ask as the nurse leaves us. By the light falling through the shutters, it’s early, but none of these men sleep very well. They tend to walk in at all hours.
“You bet they are.”
“We need to talk.”
“I know.”
Right on cue, there comes a knock, and Matteo and Luca walk into the room, carrying the scent of coffee with them.
“Oof,” I huff with a weak smile and a nod to the takeout coffee Matteo hands over to Ivan as they greet each other. “What must I do to get one of those?”
“Get a whole lot better,” Luca says with a kind smile, but there is a new strain to his face and dark shadows under his eyes. My brother has had a sleepless night. “Soon, cara.”
“Where’s Milana?” I ask, because she always comes with him, dragging the somewhat murderous tension between them into the room. Things are probably not going as well as she bargained on. I bet she’d hoped to be in Russia by now. Our gazes connect, and in me, a dread trickles down my spine.
“I let her sleep in today,” he says, reaching for my hand where it’s resting on the bed and giving me a soft, if desperate, squeeze.
Something’s shifted, and then it hits me: he knows. Luca has guessed Milana’s secret, or she has told him. It doesn’t matter how he found out: he knows.
By the look on his face, I get his conundrum. He can’t deny her, irrespective of the promise Matteo made to Ivan. And that means…Russia.
He gives me the slightest shrug, acknowledging to me that we are now three in the family who need to guard a secret for life. From what I’ve seen of the Scaleras, Luca will figure out a way to take Milana to Russia…but nobody can ever know.
I brush my thumb over his with quiet understanding, then pull away from his hand before Matteo and Ivan can catch on to our secret communication.
“Nobody has told me what happened with Mara, or The Mole, and I need to know. Now.” I turn my gaze on Matteo. Suddenly, it’s become all-consuming. If Luca does take Milana to Russia, this whole tangled web of secrets could topple two families into the hands of our mutual enemy: Chertnikov.
“We can talk later, Gabi, you’re still—” Matteo starts.
“No, now. I need to know,” I insist. I have work to do. A network to destroy. A friend to find.
The men all exchange looks, and for a second, I wish I wasn’t so weak so I could blow fire like a dragon and make them all stand to attention.
I might have walked out of a convent mere months ago, always on the run, but now, I’ve seen and felt my strength, and I’m staying put and fighting for what’s mine.
Fighting for every girl that went down Mancuso’s cellar and who disappeared.
“Don’t spare me. I think we all know I can take it.
And for the love of God, please tell me where Chiara is. I’ve run out of patience.”
“There she is,” Ivan says, pride in his voice as he raises his coffee as if it’s a glass of vodka, ready to toast with my brothers. “Moy drakonchik.”
My little dragon. My heart swells. Ivan won’t hold me back. Something in him has shifted and I get the feeling he is all in with this marriage, with us, grasping what we have with both hands.
Matteo huffs a sigh and takes a fortifying sip of his coffee. “Okay. Here is the lowdown. The Mole is on the run. We have no clue where he is. Mara is dead, and we’re disposing of her body.”
“Did you do an autopsy or anything?” I cut in. “She took three pills just before she walked out of the bathroom.”
He raises a brow and shoots glances at Luca and Ivan. “No, but it isn’t too late.”
“Probably took something to make sure she wasn’t taken alive,” Luca says. “Won’t be the first time someone who deals with the Mafia has that backdoor open.”
“She knew she was going to die,” I say. “But it would be on her terms, even if she was there under duress.”
“What do you mean, under duress?” Ivan asks.
“Do you have footage from the washroom?” I shoot Matteo a glance.
“Probably. I’ll check with Dominic. We were focusing on The Mole once we realized he was on the run.”
On the run to spread the word that Chertnikov’s girl is here. The last words Mara screamed down the phone. There’s only one guess where that info went: right back to Chertnikov with The Mole.
God help us all.
“While she was in the washroom, she said that The Mole needed to stick to their deal and release her, or she would haunt him.”
Ivan lets rip a string of Russian curses. “Release her? Fuck. We didn’t know this.”
“You’re sure that’s what she said?” Matteo asks.
“Yes.” I swallow and it’s painful with the ventilator’s bruising in my throat. “I don’t know who Mara referred to. It could be any girl, her daughter, her mother—anyone. And more than one, too.” Locked in a cellar. Just like I was.
Ivan’s eyes grow icy, and I’ve started to recognize the signs, how he turns into the Pakhan, with cold, calculated, ruthless wrath gathering. I knew how he’d feel about all of this, just like my brothers would feel when I finally tell them everything that happened to me.
Soon. I’ll need to tell them soon.
“It could be Chiara,” Ivan says.
His words rip right through my chest. “What? How? What do you know? You’ve had news?”
“Slow down, cara,” Matteo says. “Don’t overexcite yourself.”
I want to roll my eyes at him, but Matteo knows firsthand about surviving gunshot wounds. So does Ivan.
“Yuri’s had some intel,” Ivan says. “She’s been recruited to work for Chertnikov. We don’t know what happened when they found her and interrogated her—”
“You mean tortured her? Don’t spare me. I’m no longer a kid.” I’ve never really been one, bar my first seven sweet years of bliss. I’m not backing off now. “She had no clue who I was or that I was coming to the States.”
“Maybe, but if they realized she’s useful, young as she is, with a certain…skill set, they might train her to be more.”
“To be a spy?”
“To be what they need her to be, cara,” Matteo says, letting the words hang, open for interpretation.
A prostitute? Trust men to slot a woman right in there, not knowing her from a bar of soap.
Chiara’s sneaking around fills my mind’s eyes, picking locks, breaking into a convent as if she’d done so a thousand times. She is wise beyond her years, knowing things, trusting her gut. What if she was more than she ever gave away?
“Whatever use they have for her, she’ll be abused, hurt…
I can’t—We need to find her because wherever she is, it might lead us to-to—” I break off, not knowing where I’m going with this.
“We need to find her. Save her. And I want in on every last lead. No more testing my patience. No more off-limit areas. I want into your network”—I point to Ivan—“and I want into your network.” I point at Matteo, but really including the whole of Il Consiglio.
“I’m the only one here who has seen glimpses into both.
With Ariana’s help, we can break this ring. ”
We can break Chertnikov.
“I didn’t think for a second that Randazzo’s world had intertwined so tightly with the Chertnikov Bratva, but Gabi is right,” Matteo says, as he drags his hand through his hair. “She is the bridge that links those worlds.”
Life was fairly straightforward for my brothers and Il Consiglio while I was out of the picture. Now Randazzo is dead, and they’ve been saddled with me, Randazzo’s ‘heiress,’ plus every other business partner he’d ever had who wants their cut of the deals he had going.
But that’s just a part of the story. We’re now bonded in blood, as I, a Scalera, took bullets meant for my husband, a Russian Pakhan, to protect him. There’s signing a contract in ink, and then there’s signing a contract in blood. Nothing can undo what we’ve become to each other.
“Best you come over to my place so we can make our plans,” Ivan says. “We need to move quickly. For too long, I’ve waited to deal with the real problem, focusing on little fires while the bigger blaze got cockier and out of hand.”
My brothers nod, and I heave a soft sigh of relief. Nobody is saying it out loud, but we all know until Chertnikov is dead, none of us are going to be safe or rest easy.
“And yes, moy drakonchik, you get to sit in on every meeting, every call…” He groans as he rests his hand protectively on my arm.
“Not on any of the action, I can’t—hell, I won’t survive—” He stalls, emotion breaking his voice as he grips my hand tight.
He swallows and nods. “I vow we will take that devil down, even if it’s the last thing we do. ”
“Not the last thing we do, my love,” I say, moved by his raw emotion. I squeeze his hand, not keen for more bullets, either. “It’ll be another chapter—one I’d like to see closed sooner rather than later.”
It’s a promise we make in front of my brothers, and as he leans in to seal it with a kiss, I realize who I’ve become: Gabriella Petrova, dragon heart, and Chertnikov’s bait, luring him over land and oceans to his death.