Chapter 6
Chapter Six
For a long moment, I can’t speak.
Those horrible words hang in the air between us, incomprehensible. Impossible. I hear them—I understand what each word means individually—but strung together like that? Coming from his mouth in that cold, flat voice?
They just don’t make sense.
“Kill you?” The words taste bitter, and I instinctively pull back as his expression darkens. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play innocent.” He pushes off the door and stalks toward me. I take an instinctive step back, then another, until the backs of my knees hit the leather sofa. “Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“But I don’t know!” My voice is rising, edging toward hysteria. “Are you insane? I would never hurt you.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” His voice is low. Harsh. Dangerous. He takes another step closer.
I try to step back, but I’m trapped between him and the sofa. “Gabe,” I whisper as tears spill from my eyes. “What the hell? How could you even think that?” My heart pounds against my chest, and my head is swimming. He isn’t making sense. Nothing is making sense.
“I loved you,” he says, his voice like ice that’s near to breaking. “Loved. You were my everything. Hell, I would have given my life for you.” He lifts his head. “I never once thought you’d just take it.”
Something snaps in me. “Don’t you dare.” My voice shakes, but I hold my ground. “I spent five years mourning you. Five years of wishing I’d died in that fire instead of you.”
His eyes are hard on mine, but I don’t look away.
I can’t stop shaking my head. This is a nightmare.
It has to be a nightmare.
I swallow, then force the words past the lump in my throat. “How can you think that about me?”
He says nothing, but he’s close enough now that I can see the new lines on his face, the hard set of his jaw, and the harsh way he looks at me. Like he doesn’t know me at all.
Like he hates me.
I taste tears, then only shake my head. This is real. He truly thinks I could kill him. That I did kill him. “You bastard,” I whisper. “I’ve been dead without you. Your death was like a knife in my heart, and now you’re fucking twisting it.”
His lips curl into a sneer. “You tricky bitch.”
I see the way his hands are clenched at his sides like he’s physically restraining himself from pummeling me. “Did you think I’d just die quietly and never learn the truth?”
“What truth? Dammit, Gabe, you’re not making sense!”
“Five years.” He spits the words like venom, his eyes dipping to where I’m fidgeting with my ring. “Five years knowing the woman I loved—the woman I would have died for—tried to fucking kill me.”
“Kill you!”
But he just talks right over me. “Five years watching from the shadows while you built your little empire on my bones.”
I gape at him. “You think I wanted any of this? The gallery was ours, Gabriel. Everything I’ve done for five years has been about keeping your memory alive.”
“And do you know what I found?” he asks as if I hadn’t said a single word. “Evidence. Hard evidence.” His head tilts as he looks at me, like a predator sizing up prey. “I found a shiny paper trail. Proof. As if I needed it. Your eyes, Bella. That’s where guilt lives. That’s what truly killed me.”
I shake my head, my body going cold. I’m literally in shock. “Eyes? Proof? What the hell are you talking about?” My voice rises with each word, and more tumble out. “There isn’t proof because I didn’t do anything.” My stomach roils, and I clamp my hand over my mouth, afraid I’m going to barf.
“I followed the money, sweetheart. And it led me straight back to an account with your name on it. Three hundred thousand dollars, gone two days before I took three bullets and got left in a burning cabin to die.”
The room is spinning. I grab the arm of the sofa to steady myself.
“I didn’t,” I whisper. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what you think you found, but you are so, so wrong.”
“Do you remember what they said?” He moves closer, so I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “The men you were with. When they left me bleeding out in that cabin? Do you want to know the last thing I heard before I passed out?”
I shake my head, mute with horror.
“’Say goodbye to your girlfriend, Grimm.’ And the last thing I saw was you raising a gun.”
The world tilts. I grab the sofa harder, knuckles going white.
“No.” It’s barely a sound. “No, that’s not—I didn’t—I wouldn’t. Gabe, you have to know that. I would never hurt you. And I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in Aspen until we realized you were missing. I didn’t do this,” I say again, my voice choked with tears.
“Didn’t? Didn’t what?” His voice is a snarl, lower and wilder than I’ve ever heard from him.
“Didn’t order the hit? Didn’t know about it?
Didn’t fucking pull the trigger yourself?
Or maybe you didn’t think I’d be around to follow the money trail and identify you?
Hell, I see the truth in your eyes right now. ”
“Dammit, Gabe, no.”
“You wanted money? The gallery? I would have given you anything. And now I’m just ashamed I never saw the black inside you.”
“You prick,” I whisper, my body trembling with fear and fury. “You unimaginable bastard. How the hell can you believe that about me? I would never, ever, have believed you’d hurt me.”
His smile is thin. “And that’s why you thought you could get away with it.”
I try to speak, but my mouth is bone dry. I want to pinch myself awake from this nightmare. Except it’s really, truly happening. He believes it. I’ve never seen such fury on his face—and considering Gabriel’s reputation, that is saying a lot.
I start to speak—though I have no idea what to say—but he cuts me off.
“Are you going to tell me that it was a setup? Because that’s damn sure what I wanted to believe. Daddy trying to twist the knife as his people killed me. Trying to make me believe that the woman I loved was complicit.”
He steps closer, and I shake, suddenly terrified.
“I wanted so badly to believe it wasn’t you holding that gun. And that’s what I would have believed, too. And I did. I talked myself into it. She loves me. She would never…”
His lip curls. “What a fucking crock.”
“But I wouldn’t,” I say, barely restraining myself from shouting. “You were right. I truly wouldn’t.”
“If you’d wanted me to believe that, you should have paid more attention to the money trail.
Because when I checked, sure enough—money gone.
But that wasn’t the kicker,” he says before I can protest again.
“The real proof? The rock-solid proof even tighter than that. Not just your eyes, sweetheart. No, it was that you were the only person on this planet who knew where my cabin was. I hadn’t even told Leo. ”
He leans in, then traces his finger gently down the side of my face, then down my neck, then lower still until he’s cupping my breast, and I’m trembling. Not with the desire that has always been my reaction to this man. But with fear. Pure, horrible fear.
“And now you have all those pretty paintings by a famous dead artist. Now you have a fortune in the gallery. And you’re about to inherit one of the most profitable casino/hotels in the country. And I can draw a straight line back from all of those to my death.”
I taste tears, but all I can do is shake my head.
“A bullet that barely missed my heart. Another that almost nicked my spine. Then another that got me in the gut. Fists and boots slamming against me until it wasn’t even pain.
Just nothing. I was nothing. And your fucking goons were right there, making it very clear that each and every blow was a present from you and Daddy Dearest.”
He makes a scoffing noise. “The fire? They said that was from you alone. So congratulations, bitch. You worked the long con on me. But I promise,” he adds, leaning so close I feel the whisper of his breath on my ear, “I will have vengeance.”
He means it. He really means it. And fear courses through me, because I know what he’s capable of. But it’s not fear that drives me to speak. It’s pain. It’s fury. And it’s bone-deep loss.
“You unimaginable bastard,” I say, my voice low and flat.
“I would never—never—have believed you would hurt me. And for money? In case it escaped your notice, you fucking prick, I have money. Not really starving on the street.” I swallow, then lift my chin, hating that this is happening and not quite believing it’s real.
“If it had been me, I would never have believed that you’d hurt me.
You could have put a gun to my temple, and I still wouldn’t have believed you were the one holding it. ”
I wipe away the tears. “Five years. I’ve mourned you for five years, every day wishing you were beside me. And now…now all I can do is look back and think what a damn, stupid waste. Because I loved a man—I believed in a man—who didn’t love me back.”
His jaw tightens, but it’s not belief I see in his eyes, but fury. As if he’s pissed that I’m not playing my part.
Yeah, well, too fucking bad.
I take a step toward him, my rage having completely overtaken my fear.
“Do you have any idea how many tears I shed for you? How many investigators I hired to find your body? I was there with the cops. I found your ring. Your teeth.” I shudder.
“The cops found blood and bits of burned skin in a shallow grave of leaves just a foot from the cabin’s remains. ”
My voice shakes, but I hurry on, the words spilling out along with the tears. “They didn’t know if you crawled away and ended up as bear food or if you got trapped back in the cabin and turned to ash.”
Since my legs are suddenly too weak to support me, I sit on the sofa, then pull my feet up to hug my knees.
“For years, I dreamed that you’d escaped somehow.
That you were on your way back to me. And that fantasy was all that kept me going some days.
The hope that I’d find you again. That we’d be together.
We’d run the gallery and live happily ever after. ”