Chapter Twelve
Giana
Time is the thief of happiness.
Watching a clock ticking, seeming to skip faster than it should, I am shaking. I cannot stop the shivering of my body. I am cold. It’s sunny and warm out but I cannot get warm. Wiggling my frozen toes in my shoes, I sniff back another panic attack. They’ve been coming every ten minutes or so. Faster if you go by that racing fucking clock on the wall.
“Gianna, honey you have to calm down,” Dita tells me as her arms lock around me, keeping me from rocking back and forth.
“I am calm. I mean as calm as I can be. This is not a situation where being calm makes sense, is it? Being calm might seem wrong. Weird.”
Rambling again, as I have done on every minute topic she or Sabin have brought up, I sigh. Hiding my face against my knees, I try to breathe. I scoot closer to Dita, loving how warm she is. How she gives off that similar cherry smoke scent her brother does.
Sabin sits on the other side of me, checking her watch. It glitters in the dim light of the small wood paneled room we’re in. It would be a cute place if not for the situation. The one I just argued would be strange to act calmly about. How can I be calm right now? That fucking clock is ticking too fast, I am freezing my tits off, and I cannot breathe.
“Gabriel would fight the devil himself to get back to you,” Dario tells me, kneeling down beside Dita.
They exchange a look and I see him bend his head, kissing her knee. It seems very intimate, cute, and I smile at him. Until smiling feels strange. I have nothing to smile about. Nothing to make me happy. Not ever again, if that clock will not slow down. He needs more time.
If I could dream something right now, it would be that I could stop time. Just long enough to give him some time. Or I would turn the time backwards. Before tonight could happen. Even before I walked into that engagement party ready to be a little brat before he found me.
“Mrs. Capelli,” the doctor we woke up two hours ago comes out of the room, wiping his hands on a towel. No blood. No signs of distress.
“Hey, Doc,” Dario calls, pulling me after him. “How is it? Is he…”
“Calling for his wife,” the doctor asks with a small smile. “Still needs to be stitched up, but he wouldn’t shut up. Told me to fetch her.”
Flushing, I bow my head as all eyes turn to me. “We’re not…I mean…” Does he want me to be his wife? I think he does. We have not gotten that far yet.
“Go on, Gianna. We all know he won’t listen to us. Get him calmed down. Call the doc back to finish up once he will let you.”
“Remember, Gianna,” Sabin tells me, brushing my hair back from my face gently. “He will listen to you. No one else. Tell him to let the doctor work. He calls you his princess.” She smiles at me. “Go be a queen.”
Understanding what she means, I nod and head back through the glass doors the doctor just came out of. We’re up in the hills of Silver Shores, at a tiny cabin Dario says they use if things get hot. A safe house. We picked the doctor up as we fled the scene of a bloody mess at my father’s house.
No, not my father. Ceasar Bianchi was never my father. And he was not Anto’s. That was a secret no one knew before tonight. I am glad my father did not take it to the grave with him, being as he had butchered my mother before she could tell the truth herself. It is still blowing my mind.
Anto is out of the country but is flying back on a private jet now. He was in Italy, working out the plans he and Gabriel struck up weeks ago. They want to shake the bad apples out of the family tree. Get rid of the other Santino’s, Ceasars, and ensure the five families continue to prosper.
Stepping inside, I take a trembling breath. Gabriel lies on a padded table, a pillow bunched beneath his head. Bloody towels and bandages spill out of a trash can beside the bed. Turning his head, he coughs then smiles, waving me closer to him. Rushing over, I drop to my knees beside him.
“Oh, baby,” I whimper, reaching out to touch the wounds at his shoulder and just above his heart. Jesus. It was so close. “You were…you were not breathing. You said until our last breath…then you stopped fucking breathing. You cannot…I mean, I just got you. I just got my dream, capo. Don’t take it all away from me now.”
“I would never. Never leave you. Never wreck your dreams. Until my last breath, it is you and me, princess. I still got a lot of breaths in me. I promise. I fucking love you. Our dream is just getting started.”
Smiling through my tears, I nod. I glance at the clock. It is ticking slower, giving us some time. I blink, trying to be sure this is not another daydream. He is still here. Still breathing. Smiling up at me, eyes wide from the drugs Dario shot him full of on our way here.
We rushed him out to Stefan’s waiting car. I cradled him to me, soaking my clothes in his blood. Primo was at the house too, but he promised to clean up the mess with my brother’s crew. I am riddled with guilt over all the blood shed today. Over my mother. Even my father.
All of this death is at my feet.
It is all my fault. Because I just could not behave. I could not just say yes to help my father out. I was too selfish to make the sacrifice. If I had never met Gabriel, no one would have been there to get hurt today. My mother would still be alive. So would my father. At least until he made another bad choice that led him down the same inevitable path.
“This is all because of me,” I sob, shaking my head in despair. “My mother. Dario got shot, you got shot. Santino is dead. He almost killed you. He tried to.”
“Yeah but he didn’t get his way. Your father was a dead man walking, Gianna. He owed a lot more than some campaign debts. Dario has been shot before. He will probably get shot again,” Gabriel laughs before he winces in pain, pressing down on the bandaged wound on his chest.
“Stop it. This is…it is so bad. I should have never…if I had never met you…”
Gabriel pulls me closer, so close I am almost on top of him. He presses his forehead to mine, sighing. “My sisters believe every little thing we do is for a reason. What we have for breakfast, the route we take to work, what bus we get on. They say you can delay fate—you can’t stop it. We would have always met, Gianna. You were my, you are , my fate.”
Shaking my head, I try to catch my breath. Not another panic attack. I am too tired. I close my eyes and pull back from Gabriel. If I were a good person, if I weren’t such a spoiled brat, I would have never let this get this far. I would have done what girls like me are told to do.
All I ever had before was dreams. They never amounted to much, but they were mine. I could have still had those dreams. I might have never known this happiness, but I could keep dreaming. My mother would be here. My father would be here. Santino would, regrettably, be here too.
Sitting there telling myself I should have walked away, I recall those ties breaking in me earlier. Those ties that choked me, that bound me to my father’s approval, my mother’s love. Inside me, something else breaks. I try to stop it, but it’s too late. Lowering my head, I rub my nose against his.
“Yes,” I whisper, smiling against his lips. “Yes. We were…we are fate. I am your princess, my king,” I murmur with a little laugh.
Because I am. I am his and he is mine and not even a dance with death could ever change that. I love him. I love the me I am because of him. The girl who laughs, who dreams, who loves, no matter the pain that washed me out for so long. We can do this. We can survive this war and any other that comes our way. As long as we do it together, we will survive anything.
“Ahh, there she is. There’s my princess. Missed her. Come here, give me some sugar. It might heal this all right up,” Gabriel teases, pulling me closer.
Sighing against his mouth, I am smiling. I brush my lips over his as he cradles the back of my head with a gentle hand. It is the gentlest kiss we have ever had. It tastes like a promise. Tastes like a brand-new start.
“Oi, doc,” I shout, knelt at his side. “Come stitch the capo up!”
Grinning up at me, he winks at me as he settles back down. The doc comes in, but I refuse to leave. I am there through the curses, the stitches, the tinging of bullet fragments dropping in a tin bowl. Each clink of shrapnel makes me flinch. Gabriel sucks down some whisky and smiles up at me.
“My pretty princess. Going to make a beautiful bride. We’re going to have gorgeous babies. Can’t wait to see you pregnant.”
Beaming down at him, I bend to touch my nose to his. I am dreaming with him again. About a future, a family, a life of freedom that I get to choose. I want to be his wife. I want to have his babies. I want to be tied to him in every way possible.
“Will we have a lot of babies, capo/? I tease him, watching him wince as the doctor beings sewing up the wound on his shoulder.
“Damn right, at least four. I want you to be pregnant a lot.”
Gabriel kind of laughs and I smile because I know the whisky and the pills the doctor gave him must be talking for him. Lying there with a smile, he goes on about wanting two boys and two girls. So, they always have a built-in best friend. It is the sweetest thing, and he is adorable even as he is bleeding all over the floor of the tiny cabin.
Dario helps me get him to bed in an upstairs room. We get him settled and Dario tells me to look after him. The two share a look that says how important they are to one another and then he is gone. I climb in bed beside him, letting him snuggle up against me as he drifts off.
“Little mafia princes and princesses. Little dreamers,” he hums before he clutches me close and passes into what I hope us a rest full of dreams.