74. Gabriel
I leave the private suite after making sure Neomi is asleep and Lars is with her, telling them I needed to get a drink.
He doesn’t want to stray far from her, not even for a few minutes, and I understand it deep in my bones.
The bruise on her temple keeps flashing through my mind, the image of her in that hospital bed colliding with Sera’s messages until my chest is filled with anxiety.
Forty-eight hours is all I have. It doesn’t matter that I’ve already chosen them, that I’ve chosen love over safety.
It doesn’t matter that I’m done with the mission. Sera doesn’t care about my conscience.
So, I go looking for Enzo.
I find his office at the end of the west corridor, past two guards who don’t ask questions when they see my face. The door stands half open, warm light casting across the polished floor. I lift a hand, then stop. There’s no point knocking..
I push the door open and step inside.
Enzo is seated behind his desk, one forearm resting near the edge, his attention fixed on the monitors in front of him.
Dante stands at his side, silent, one hand braced on the desk as he points toward something on the screen.
The room smells of espresso and gun oil, the expensive wood of his desk is polished to a dark shine.
Enzo looks up first.
Whatever he sees on my face confirms something, because his expression hardens and his voice turns cold enough to split stone.
“Secure him.”
Dante moves before his words are finished.
One second, I’m standing there, ready to confess the next Dante’s on me—fast, efficient, every motion precise.
He twists my arm behind my back and forces me forward with a pressure point that lights up my shoulder.
My cheek hits the edge of a bookshelf before he plants me there, one hand between my shoulder blades, the other pinning my wrist hard enough against my back to make resistance pointless. He pats me down from head to toe.
I don’t fight him. Dante is massive and well trained, and I know exactly how little chance I’d have of breaking his hold. The Ghost team doesn’t earn its reputation from weak men.
Enzo rises from behind the desk with the unhurried calm of a man who already knows how this ends. He rounds the corner slowly, his eyes never leaving me. There are no shouted words, and somehow that makes it worse.
Dante releases enough pressure for me to straighten, but he keeps a hand on the back of my neck as Enzo steps into my space.
“Dante brought something to my attention,” Enzo says, each word clipped. “He recognized you, but he couldn’t quite place you. Then he recalled some time he spent in Munich. You want to tell me why my Ghost had to be the one to identify the bastard assassin that has worked his way into my family?”
I look him in the eyes. “I came here to tell you.”
“Very convenient.”
“I’m telling you the truth, Enzo. I love them and I came here to tell you everything.”
His jaw flexes. “Oh, fuck off, Gabriel. Don’t you dare say that you love my brother and his wife.”
“I do,” I say, forcing the words out. “If we could talk, I’ll tell you everything. I didn’t come here to kill, I promise you that. I came to gather information. I would never hurt Lars or Neomi."
Enzo leans in until there’s barely an inch between us. “You expect me to believe that your timing is just a coincidence?”
“No. I only expect you to believe that my love for them is a force greater than the one who hired me.”
For the first time, something breaks through the frost in his expression. I hope for mercy, but I get rage. It flashes in his eyes. I see the brother in him, the Don and the blood beneath the title, the man who would burn through the world for Lars without thinking twice.
“You are standing in my house after my sister-in-law’s car was blown to hell,” he says, voice rising now, “and you think I’ll believe you had nothing to do with it?”
The words hit exactly where they should. Shame is a blunt instrument in my chest. I let it land.
“I know what this looks like, but I had absolutely nothing to do with that hit.”
Enzo laughs once, sharp and humorless. “Really? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like a hired killer embedded himself in my family while my enemies lined up their shot.”
“I had no part of that bomb.”
His hand snaps forward, his fist tangling in the front of my shirt as he drags me closer. Dante’s grip adjusts. They work around each other with the ease of men who have done this for years.
“You better not be lying to me, Gabriel. I have rules in my organization and liars don’t live to tell another,” Enzo growls. “You have one chance to tell me your secrets. You tell me what you know.”
I draw a breath that feels like swallowing glass.
“I’m a contractor,” I say. “An assassin, if you want the ugly word. Sera Corrigan recruited me. She gave me a target, The Blackwater Key. I didn’t know what it was when I was hired, but then she told me the purpose of it and what it held.
She told me the Key was inside the estate.
My job was infiltration. I was sent to find the Key, then deliver the information so she could activate it or use it as leverage. ”
The silence that follows my words is filled with tension.
Enzo’s grip on my shirt tightens, the fabric straining against my skin. Dante doesn’t move.
“She sent you after Blackwater,” Enzo says, quieter now. “She sent you into my family?”
“Yes.”
“And you accepted.”
“Yes. But that was before I knew Lars and Neomi.”
He shoves me back hard enough that the bookshelf rattles. Dante keeps me upright with ease.
For a moment, Enzo says nothing. He just stares at me with a level of hatred I’ve earned. When he speaks again, his voice is low and controlled.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t put a bullet in your head before Lars ever learns your name was built on a lie.”
I know the words I want to say, ‘Because he deserves to hear it from me. Because I love him. Because if you kill me before I can fix this, Sera will still come for all of you.’ A dozen answers crowd my throat, and I'm not sure if any of them matter.
“Because I choose them,” I say. “I choose Lars. I choose Neomi. I’m done with the mission. I won’t complete it.”
Enzo’s mouth curls with contempt. “So fucking convenient.”
“It isn’t convenient.” The words come rougher now, dragged up from the place I’ve spent weeks trying not to touch.
“It is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, because I have consequences if I fail. Either way, my life ends. If I let Sera gain access to the Key, I’ll lose the only two people I have ever loved.
By telling you and not completing the mission, Sera sets off a safeguard.
Every family and associate of anyone I have killed will be notified that I did it.
I will be hunted. But I choose love, Enzo.
I couldn’t let Sera destroy your organization and put your family at risk. ”
I can feel the tears threatening to fall from my eyes. “I love Lars, I love Neomi, and if I could ever have a chance at anything real and lasting, I needed to tell you the truth.”
Enzo’s eyes sharpen at Lars’ name, protectiveness turning his whole body into a blade.
“Don’t use his name to soften me.”
“I’m not trying to soften you.” My voice drops. “I’m trying to tell you the truth before it destroys the only people I’ve ever loved.”
I force myself to keep going while I still can. “I let Sera know I was abandoning the mission. I can show you the text if you don’t believe me. Then she gave me forty-eight hours to produce the key or she sends everything. That means she’s moving now.”
Enzo turns away from me long enough to drag a hand across his mouth, then looks at Dante. Dante stays silent as Enzo reaches for the folder on the desk and flips it open. Enzo takes two photographs from it and holds them up in front of my face.
One is old enough that I barely recognize myself.
The angle catches a younger version of me stepping into a hotel kitchen in Buenos Aires, my clothes splattered with blood, my eyes soulless.
The other is grainy surveillance still from Munich, a body crumpled at my feet, my gun already down because I didn’t need a second shot.
“This is who Dante says you are,” Enzo spits.
“That’s who I was.”
“And I’m supposed to believe a man like this falls in love and suddenly grows a conscience?”
“I don’t need you to believe in my conscience,” I bite back.
His stare turns glacial. “And how much have you already told her?”
“Nothing useful. Enough to keep her satisfied that I was working on completion. Not enough to expose the Key. She knows there’s a portion of your network where it lives, but she hasn’t gotten close to it yet. Please believe me, Enzo. I’m on your side.”
Enzo steps forward so quickly Dante eases his hold in anticipation, like he knows his Don is about to strike. Enzo doesn’t hit me, though. I wish he would, I wish he would let the tension snap.
“You are not on my side,” he says in anger. “You are a ticking time bomb that walked into my brother’s life wearing a pretty face and good manners, and my brother put his heart in your hands without knowing they were made for killing.”
I swallow and let the sorrow sink deep
“Then use me,” I say. “Use what I know. Use me to stop her. I can tell you how she thinks, how she stages pressure, where she likes to place her secondary threats after the first strike. I know the cadence she uses. I know how she’ll come for Blackwater if she believes brute force won’t work.
I know her. And if you let me help, I will help you burn her operation to the ground. ”
Enzo’s gaze doesn’t shift. “And what do you expect in return?”
“Nothing.”
The answer comes easily because it’s the only one I have left.
His mouth hardens. “Liar.”
I shake my head. “I only want you to protect them. That’s all.”
That finally cracks the tension wide open.
Enzo grabs the front of my shirt again and this time he doesn’t pull me close.
He drives me backward toward the door, forcing Dante to pivot with us.
My heels skid against the hardwood. The desk, the monitors, the photographs all slide out of view as the office narrows into movement and the hard line of Enzo’s body in front of mine.
“You don’t get to crawl in here after poisoning my house and ask me to protect the people you were hired to betray.”
“I just want to make sure they’re safe.”
He wrenches the door open and shoves me into the hallway. Somewhere farther down the corridor, I hear movement that tells me other members of the family have noticed. Enzo follows me out, fury spilling with him.
“Enzo—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
The command cracks through the corridor loud enough that every conversation nearby dies. Dante emerges behind us, silent and lethal.
I plant my feet because this is the last chance I may have to get the warning out cleanly.
“She will trigger Blackwater if she gets hold of it,” I say.
“If she can’t penetrate the system directly, she’ll go after the people around it.
She will force your hand any way she can. I’m telling you the truth.”
“And I’m telling you to get the hell out of my sight before I forget what Lars would suffer if I kill you in this hallway.”
There it is. The final line drawn in the sand.
For a second I think of fighting for one more sentence, one more plea, one more explanation.
Then I picture Lars upstairs with Neomi, still raw from the sight of her in that hospital bed.
I picture what it would do to him to hear this from Enzo.
I picture Neomi’s face if she realizes all at once that the man in her bed came to the estate carrying Sera’s poison in his pocket.
I’ve already done enough damage.
So, I stop resisting the motion of Enzo’s hand at my chest as he marches me toward the front of the house.
“You want to make yourself useful?” he says, his voice low and vicious now that we’re moving again. “Stay away from my family until I decide whether your information is worth the breath you used to give it.”
“I love them.” The words leave me before I can stop them.
Enzo halts on the first step and turns back slowly. The look in his eyes could level cities.
“If you loved them,” he says, each word laced with disgust, “you never would have walked through our door with Sera’s leash around your throat.”
Then he draws his gun, the barrel staring me down.
“Get the fuck out of our home.”