Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
OLIVIA
M atteo was right
The old books for his new nightclub were a mess. A tangle of bad bookkeeping methods and devious practices. All it took was one glance at the first few columns, and I could tell just how screwed up the rest of the pages would be.
Gabriel’s brother sat next to me for the first few minutes, making me painfully aware of his presence with his critical stare. His gaze was every bit as intense as his twin’s, but even though the eyes and expression were technically the same, their effect on me wasn’t.
Don’t get me wrong—he was still scary as hell.
I was starting to think there was no possible way that a D’Angelo could be anything else. But even though his scrutiny made me uncomfortable, it didn’t do anything else.
And that was a more unsettling realization than I was prepared for.
All this time, I’d thought that my reaction to Gabriel had come down to simple physical attraction—nothing more. After all, the man was as hot as Mt. Vesuvius. What woman could resist those dark eyes and sculpted jawline? Any straight woman would be drawn to a body like his.
But if that was true, then surely I should have felt the same pull toward his identical twin. After all, they shared the same features, the same physique.
But I didn’t.
Unlike with Gabriel, there was no heat, no electric sizzle as Matteo’s eyes bored into me. The only thing I felt was nervous. Which meant maybe all these feelings I had for Gabriel were far less superficial than I wanted them to be.
And that was something I really didn’t want to think about.
When I woke up, I wasn’t sure how in the world I would spend the day. My eyes had only been open for a few seconds before the guilt had crashed over me.
Maybe I could have been forgiven for that first time with Gabriel. Without knowing his full name or who he really was, I could have eventually written it off as a wild, one-time fling.
But last night had been different. I couldn’t pretend ignorance. I couldn’t act as if he’d seduced or coerced me. He’d been very careful to lay the truth right out on the table.
We’d fucked because I wanted to.
There was no way to twist that. No way to pretend I was the victim. No way to hide from what I’d done.
Well, that last one wasn’t totally true.
Even before I’d used the excuse of a job offer in Milwaukee to distance myself from my family, I’d been a master of using work as a distraction for personal problems. So, it just felt right to bury myself in the pages Matteo had given me and focus on untangling his convoluted knot of numbers.
For a while, I sat at the kitchen table, sipping tea and making notes. Matteo must have grown bored because when I looked up from the books a little while later, he was gone. After that, I moved back up to Gabriel’s room and continued to poke away at the problem while sitting cross-legged on his bed.
I know for most people, it wouldn’t have been an entertaining afternoon, picking apart row after row of figures of sums, but for me, it was exactly what I needed.
Immersed in a difficult puzzle, time flew by quickly, and before I knew it, the clock on the bedside table read seven o’clock.
Time to get ready to go out again with Gabriel.
I showered, did my hair, picked a black dress from the closet this time, and was just slipping on a pair of heels when the bedroom door opened just as the clock read eight.
“You’re ready,” he said with an approving nod. Apparently, punctuality was something very important to him. “Good.”
“What would have happened if I wasn’t?” I asked.
He shook his head as he offered me his arm. “Fortunately, you don’t have to find out.”
This time, we went to dinner first—an upscale steakhouse with dark wood walls and at least a century’s worth of history hanging on the walls. Like everywhere else, the owners and staff bent over backward to serve him and make him feel welcome, ensuring we were seated at the best table and gifting him their finest bottle of wine.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I dared as after we had ordered.
“You can ask me anything, dolcezza ,” he said, shooting me a look over his glass. “But I can’t promise I’ll answer.”
That was fair. “Don’t you ever get tired of being treated this way?”
The sides of his eyes crinkled as they narrowed. Clearly, that wasn’t the kind of question he’d been anticipating. “What way?”
“Everyone tripping over themselves to make you happy because they’re afraid.”
A slight smile curled his lips as he took a drink. “No one here is afraid of me.”
“I’m pretty sure they are,” I said, turning my head slightly to look across the room. All around us, the other diners shot us quick glances and whispered to each other. Some had even scooted their chairs a few inches to the side as if that small distance could somehow buffer them from Gabriel’s presence.
“No one who works here is scared of me,” he amended. “They know me.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. I know you and I…”
The second I realized what I was admitting, I stopped myself. But it was too late.
Gabriel stared at me from across the table for a long moment, his gaze deep and assessing. “You’re afraid of me?”
There was no point denying it.
“That can’t come as a shock,” I said, nervously picking up my wine glass. “You’ve threatened to do all kinds of terrible things to my family.”
“But not to you,” he countered. “I thought we settled this last night.”
A blush crept into my cheeks at just the mention of all the deliciously carnal things we’d done to each other.
“Last night has nothing to do with this,” I said. “Put yourself in my shoes. How would you react if I threatened Matteo’s life?”
In an instant, his expression darkened. “Pray you never find out.”
His voice was so hard and full of warning that I had to gulp down nearly half my glass of wine just to have the nerve to look up at him again. “It’s not a nice feeling, is it?”
“Do you really think I don’t know what it’s like to live under constant threat?” he said. “I’ve seen death, Liv. I know it intimately. It runs in my veins. My own father was murdered in the same room I sleep in now.”
I winced. Not just at the image but at the pain in his voice. Without thinking, I reached across the table and covered his hand with my own.
“I’m so sorry, Gabriel,” I said. “I had no idea.”
He didn’t shake off my touch, but he didn’t look me in the eye either. His gaze remained unfocused and fixed somewhere far off across the room. His expression was so distant that I could almost see the memories flickering in his mind.
“It was the worst day of my life,” he said so softly that no one walking past the table could have possibly heard. “And the moment I saw his body, I swore nothing like that would ever happen again. Not to anyone I cared about.”
I swallowed down the last of my wine. There was a firmness to his tone that was both frightening and soothing at the same time. I believed him completely, for the moment feeling safe in his company but shuddering to think I might one day find myself on the wrong side of that deadly resolve.
“So you made yourself into someone so terrifying that no one would dare cross you. Was that the idea?” I asked.
He shook his head. I watched his dark eyes focus back on the present moment as he turned back to me.
“Fear can be an effective tool at times, but it’s not the goal.”
“Then what is?”
“Building a wall of protection around the ones I love.”
I have to admit it was strange to hear the word love from Gabriel’s mouth. Tolerate? Sure. Desire ? You better believe it. Even care about didn’t cause me to blink.
But love ?
Yeah, something about the softness of that word was at complete odds with the hardened man sitting next to me.
Yet, at the same time, the sound of it coming out of his mouth was enough to send another one of those electric thrills straight through me.
Damn—those were becoming a habit.
“People need to know that anyone who crosses me will pay a steep price. No matter what,” he continued. “There’s no other way. Every action I take against those who try to fuck with me or my family is another brick in that wall. Give it enough time, and that wall becomes an impenetrable fortress. Then people aren’t merely afraid to mess with me; they know for a fact they can’t.”
On the surface, I understood the logic. But his line of thinking still had some major flaws.
“But fortresses keep everyone out,” I pointed out. “A life where no one can get close to you might be safe, but isn’t it also lonely?”
“Normally, yes,” he admitted, flipping his hand over so his palm was flush against mine, our fingers intertwined. “But once in a blue moon, something surprising comes along that?—“
“My apologies, Mr. D’Angelo,” a voice broke in, cutting off Gabriel before he could finish his thought. I looked over to see one of the servers standing sheepishly at the edge of the table. “But we’ve been so busy tonight, and this is the first chance I’ve had to come over and give you this. It’s from Ray Jr.”
He pulled a neatly folded sheet of white paper from his black apron pocket and slid it across the table.
“It’s all right, Raymond,” Gabriel said. For once, he didn’t look at all upset about being interrupted. “You know I always look forward to receiving another one of his drawings.”
Gabriel opened up the paper to show a child’s colorful crayon drawing. Lopsided buildings rose high in the background—the skyline of New York, no doubt—but in the foreground was a stick figure family. A mother, father, and little boy clustered together in the center, but there was one more figure to the side.
A big man in a dark suit with jet-black eyes standing protectively behind them.
“He drew that one last week for you, sir. So, I was hoping you’d come in again soon,” the waiter said before shifting his focus to me. “I hope you realize what a great man you’re out with tonight, miss.”
Great ? I wasn’t prepared for that. I couldn’t imagine anyone going out of their way to describe Gabriel that way. Infamous, maybe, but not great .
Still, I smiled politely, which the waiter took as a sign to keep explaining.
“My son was born with a heart condition,” he explained. “We knew for a while that he needed surgery, but my wife and I were struggling to figure out how to afford it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“There’s no need to be sorry,” the waiter was quick to say. “Because the moment Mr. D’Angelo found out about his condition, he immediately paid for the surgery. Just like that—no questions asked.”
I looked over at Gabriel, trying to reconcile a selfless action like that with the ‘impenetrable fortresses’ story he’d been telling just moments ago. “You did?”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Gabriel said, attempting to shrug it off. “Raymond has been taking care of me for years in this restaurant. Anyone in my position would have done the same thing.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” I said softly.
“It’s true,” Ray added. “And it wasn’t just the money. Mr. D’Angelo also took it upon himself to have my son transferred to the best hospital and secured the top heart doctor in the city to do the surgery. From the moment he found out there was a problem, he’s been our guardian angel.”
“Not so loud, Ray,” Gabriel teased. “You’re going to ruin my reputation.”
“Of course, sir.” The waiter beamed back with the widest smile I’d ever seen on a man. “I just wanted to give you the drawing. Now, I’ll get back to work and let you enjoy the rest of your evening in peace.”
I couldn’t do anything but blink as the waiter nodded respectfully before walking away. Eventually, though, I found my words.
“How many more people are walking around this city with stories like that about you?” I asked.
He picked up the bottle of wine and refilled our glasses. “None that you or anyone else need to worry about.”
“Why don’t you want people to know about this?” I asked. “All it would take was a couple of stories like that getting out the press, and it could change the whole narrative about you in the city.”
“And that’s exactly why I don’t want it to happen.”
“Because you’re afraid that kindness will cause cracks in that fortress of yours?”
“Partly,” he answered before taking another long sip. “And also because if a man only does good for the praise it brings, then what he thinks is goodness is nothing more than pride.”
Oh, wow .
“That’s…surprisingly wise,” I admitted.
“It ought to be,” he said. “It’s what my papà used to say.”