Chapter 3 — My Brothers Name in the Wrong Mouth #2
This unsettled me more than if he’d sent a chauffeur. Seeing Gabriel Moretti, Ashford’s corporate prince of darkness, driving his own car suggested an intimacy I wasn’t prepared to face. It meant that wherever we were going, he didn’t want witnesses.
He wore aviator sunglasses and a white shirt with the top two buttons undone, sleeves rolled to his elbows, exposing strong forearms and the scar on his right hand. No suit. No tie. He looked younger, more dangerous, and infinitely more masculine.
“Get in,” he said, without looking at me.
I opened the passenger door and tossed my small bag in the back seat before settling in beside him. The interior smelled of new leather and him. It was a sealed cocoon of luxury.
“Good morning to you too,” I murmured, fastening my seatbelt.
Gabriel didn’t respond. He put the car in motion, driving with one hand on the wheel, relaxed and lethal.
We sat in silence as the car cut through city traffic, leaving the city behind and taking the interstate north toward the mountains. The landscape shifted from concrete to skeletal autumn trees and fog.
After thirty minutes of oppressive silence—the only sounds the powerful engine and my own breathing—I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “The contract mentioned ‘travel’ but didn’t specify a destination. I need to know if I packed the right clothes.”
Gabriel glanced at me over his sunglasses.
“Did you bring the black dress?”
I felt my face heat up.
“No. I brought work clothes. Professional clothes.”
He let out a short sigh, almost amused.
“A pity. But it doesn’t matter. Where we’re going, clothes are… optional at certain moments.”
I turned to face him, panic flaring in my chest.
“What does that mean? Gabriel, if you think I’m going to…”
“Relax, Elena.” He cut me off, his voice calm. “We’re not going to an orgy. We’re going to my country house in Blackwood Ridge. I have stacks of Vanguard documents that need to be reviewed away from prying eyes at the office and, specifically, away from Richard Hale.”
That caught me off guard.
“Away from Richard? He’s your partner.”
“Richard is greedy. And careless. He wants to close the deal at any cost. I want to close the deal without going to federal prison. There’s a difference.”
He took a sharp turn onto a back road surrounded by dense forest. The trees closed over the road like a tunnel.
“And why me?” I pressed. “Why take me to the middle of nowhere?”
Gabriel slowed down, the car now gliding over gravel.
“Because you’re the only person involved in this who’s more desperate than I am for nothing to go wrong. Your brother guaranteed that.”
Thomas’s name. He used it again. Like a whip.
“Speaking of him,” Gabriel continued, his tone shifting, growing sharper, “he was at your apartment last night.”
I froze.
“How do you know?”
“I told you that you were under surveillance, Elena. Did you think it was a metaphor?” He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Thomas Walsh. Twenty-three years old. Evicted. Asked for money. Ate your pizza. And left singing my firm’s praises.”
Shame burned through me. He knew everything. He had heard, or read a report, about my domestic humiliation. About Thomas’s stupid blindness.
“You monitor my home?” I whispered, horrified. “The inside of my home?”
“I monitor my investments. And right now, you’re a high-risk investment.”
The car stopped before a massive iron gate.
Gabriel typed a code into the car’s panel and the gate slowly opened, revealing a vast property.
At its center stood a modern house of glass and dark wood, isolated, perched on a cliff.
It was beautiful and terrifying. A golden cage at the end of the world.
Gabriel turned to me, removing his sunglasses. His eyes were pools of darkness.
“Thomas said he’s a fan of mine,” Gabriel said, his voice soft and cruel. “He said I’m a legend.”
I swallowed hard, remembering my brother’s exact words.
“He doesn’t know who you are.”
“No. He doesn't know. But you do.”
Gabriel leaned toward me. The space in the car shrank.
“And that's why we're going to spend the next two days here, alone. Because you need to understand that your loyalty to him is what binds you, but your loyalty to me is what will keep you both alive. And I intend to test that loyalty, Elena. To the limit.”
“What kind of test?” I asked, my voice faltering.
He turned off the engine. The silence of the forest closed in around us.
“The kind that requires you to forget you have a brother and remember only that you have an owner.”
He opened the door and got out, cold mountain air rushing into the car.
“Bring your suitcase,” he ordered, walking toward the house without looking back.
I stayed frozen for a second, staring at his broad back, at the glass house reflecting the stormy sky. Blackwood Ridge. No neighbors. Probably no cell signal.
My brother was back in the city, spending my last three hundred dollars and dreaming of becoming the man who was now opening the front door of my weekend prison.
I got out of the car, my legs trembling as my feet hit the gravel.
Thomas said Gabriel was a legend.
I was about to discover that legends, more often than not, are horror stories told by survivors.
And I wasn't sure I'd survive this weekend.