Chapter 18
Savvy
A blood-covered Roman greets us at the back door of a townhouse three miles away from Gabriel’s home.
“Messi’s with him now.” Roman shuts the door behind us once we’re inside the kitchen. Sitting around the small kitchen table are three more men with blood-soaked shirts. One holds a bag of ice to the side of his head.
It’s hard to tell if the blood on them is their own or from the man they’ve brought here for medical attention.
Gabriel walks over to the man with the ice and pulls his hand away so he can see the damage. There’s a gash running along his cheek, but it’s nothing compared to the swelling on the side of his face. Bruising is already forming.
I wince at the sight of it.
“Ricci’s men?” Gabriel asks, steel running through the question.
He’s in control. Complete, calm control. His back ripples with tension when he moves around the table, doing a quick inspection of his men.
“Payback for the warehouse,” one of them says, picking up a pack of cigarettes from the middle of the table and lighting one. When Gabriel cuts him a sharp look, he holds it up, glancing at me, then back to Gabriel. “Shit, sorry. Do you mind if I smoke?”
“No, go ahead,” I say before Gabriel has a chance to answer. “Your eye is swelling. You need ice, too.” I take off my coat, draping it on the counter, then busy myself finding a bag and filling it with ice while Gabriel talks with his men.
I slide behind Gabriel and hand the ice to the man blowing smoke toward the open window behind him.
“Thanks.” He takes the ice, eyeing Gabriel as he does so. “Thank you,” he repeats.
A bellow of pain comes from beneath us, and I tense. Gabriel’s jaw tightens, and the men all look down at the table.
“Who’s down there?” I ask, noticing Roman is up here, but Lucian is missing. Damien had been the one to interrupt our…talk…at the house. I don’t know all of his men. I’m sure there are too many to remember, and it’s probably best if I don’t know names or faces, anyway.
“Joey,” the man with the swollen face says, keeping his gaze settled on the center of the table.
“His brother,” Roman offers from behind me. “He was shot in the back as we were getting into the cars. The doctor is working on him downstairs.”
“Shot?” I place my hand on Gabriel’s arm to get his full attention. “He needs a hospital if he was shot. An operating room, not a basement.”
Gabriel covers my hand with his own. “Everything the doctor needs is down there.”
“But—” He squeezes my hand, stilling my argument. With a small flick of his chin, he gestures to the men sitting around the table behind me, watching us.
“Gunshot patients get reported to the police when they enter the hospital system,” he goes on to explain. “Messi was a combat surgeon; he’s operated in worse conditions.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Guilt rains down on me.
Gabriel brushes a quick kiss to my forehead. “No, we just have to wait it out.”
Roman digs through the bottom cabinets, pulling out a bottle of whiskey. He brings it, along with glasses, to the table and starts doling out drinks.
“Sav, you want one?” Roman asks, hovering the bottle over an empty glass.
“No. Thanks, though.” I move back from the table, leaning against a counter while they all make a toast to Joey and down their drinks.
Gabriel joins them for three shots, then rejects the next and moves to stand beside me. He casually rubs my back.
“I shouldn’t have let you come. Damien will come take you home.”
“No.” I lean into him. “I mean, I’d like to stay until we know he’s all right.”
He studies me for a long beat, then nods. “Okay.”
“Is Joey one of your cousins?” I ask as the men at the table start up their own conversation.
He brushes my hair behind my shoulder then traces my jaw with his thumb. “No. I don’t know him that well, to be honest. He works with Roman mostly.”
“By the way we flew out of the house to get here, I thought maybe he was family.”
“He is,” he says fiercely. “All of these guys are family. You don’t need to be blood for that to be true.”
He watches his men sitting around a tiny kitchen table in a cramped apartment, drinking, smoking, talking about the man on the floor below us having wartime surgery with pride.
He even laughs when one of them retells a story about Joey from years ago.
Something about getting his pants caught on a fence he was climbing over.
“Isn’t that how it is with you, Cassie, and that Tony?” He side-eyes me.
I groan. “I don’t want to talk about him right now. We can argue about it later, when we’re home and there isn’t a doctor around to piece you back together.”
A grin flashes across his face. “Are you threatening me, Savannah?”
“I would never do that.” I feign insult.
“Because it’s disrespectful?” A little crease forms on the side of his mouth with his half grin.
“No.” I nudge him with my elbow. “Because everyone in this room has a gun, and I don’t.”
He leans into me. “Yes, but I have something even more dangerous with me than that.”
“Your belt?” I blurt before I can stop myself, and he bursts into a laugh. Not a huff or a snort, a full laugh with a big smile.
“You stole my line.” He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me into his side, kissing my temple.
“Gabriel, you want in?” Roman offers him another drink.
“I’m good.” Gabriel shakes his head. “And watch yourselves, no one needs to get piss drunk tonight.”
Roman nods, then pours another round.
“You can drink with your men if you want. I’m sure there’s a TV or something in the other room.”
“No.”
“If I wasn’t here, would you be going shot for shot with them?”
He nods. “Probably. But you are here.”
“I don’t care if you drink.”
“Sometimes you say more when you don’t say anything at all.”
“What does that mean?”
“When I was having a drink back at the house, your body locked up when I poured a second. Do you even notice how easily your body tells on you?”
I don’t. Obviously, or I wouldn’t have done it.
After another half hour goes by and the guys are still talking, my feet start aching from standing in the kitchen. Gabriel has gone down to the “operation room” to check on the progress. When he comes back up, the controlled devil is back.
“Another hour,” he tells his crew. “The bullet nicked an artery. He’s working on the bleeding now.”
The men nod, quiet falling over them.
“I’m so sorry, Gabriel.” I grab onto his arm. “This is my fault.”
He turns confused eyes on me. “What are you talking about?”
“You only got involved with Ricci because of me. If I hadn’t gone into your shop that day—”
“This isn’t your fault.” He cuts me off before I can finish explaining. “Ricci thought he could use our situation for his benefit, and when I rejected his offer, he made some bad decisions.”
“Right, but if I—”
“Savvy, he was going to make those moves anyway; he just thought he had an easy win by using the situation with you.”
I search his face to see if he’s bullshitting me. But as far as I know he never has, so I’m not sure what it looks like.
“It’s late, and Messi’s going to be a while still. The front room has a comfortable couch and a TV; why don’t you relax in there?”
He walks me through a short hallway to the front of the apartment. He flips on the television and finds Schitt’s Creek, pulling up the next episode from where I’d stopped.
“How did you know this was the right episode?” I take the remote from him as I sink into the well-worn couch cushions.
“There’s very little about you that I don’t know.” He glances back toward the kitchen where his men are laughing. “Relax in here, Messi should be done soon.”
I nod, planning to focus on the TV and not the fact a man could very well be dying on the floor below.
I’m asleep before the first scene finishes. When I wake, it’s to Gabriel lifting me from the couch and cradling me against his chest. Instinctively, I wrap my arms around his neck and snuggle into him.
Then I remember where we are and why.
“Joey!” I jerk, and Gabriel has to tighten his grip on me.
“He’s fine. Messi stopped the bleeding, got the bullet out. He’s going to need a lot of rest and time to heal, but he’s going to be fine.”
Someone opens the back door for us, and Gabriel carries me down the back steps and through the small alleyway to where he parked the car behind the garage.
“You talked to him?” I ask as he settles me into the seat and pulls the seatbelt over my chest.
“I did. He’s tired and he’s hurting, but he’ll live.”
I blow out a long breath. “Thank god.”
He smiles and finishes locking the seatbelt in place.
I’m half asleep again when the car dips as he climbs in and the engine fires up.
“If he had died…” I don’t finish my thought, mostly because I’m not sure what I’m asking.
Gabriel rests his hand on my knee as he drives us home.
“He didn’t.”
“Did the guys stay or did they go home? It took forever.” I yawn and close my eyes again.
“They’re still there. They’ll stay with him until he’s able to be moved to his own place.”
I nod like I understand. But I don’t.
Gabriel runs a successful company and sits at the head of a powerful mafia family, yet when one of his men, a man he doesn’t really even know, is shot, he drops everything to get to his side.
And the other men are going to stay in that small apartment with him, instead of going to their assuredly more comfortable homes.
“Sometimes, Savvy, people do stay.”