Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
OLIVIA
I couldn’t breathe. My heart pounding in my chest, I tried again and again, but it just wasn’t happening. My lungs were too constricted. The muscles around them clinched so tight that I couldn’t pull any air in.
All I could do was stand and stare. My eyes fixed on the man whose hands had just been running all over my body. Tangling in my hair. Pulling me close as he pounded into me again and again until we’d broke apart in pleasure.
The man who had purred playful words against my ear. Who had teased me. Who had riled me up beyond my wildest imagination.
The same man who had coldly ordered the death of a stranger right in front of me.
My vision started to go fuzzy at the edges. My knees went weak. Wobbling, I reached out to steady myself on the door or the sink— anything —before I crashed to the ground.
“ Liv .”
Gabriel was there in the next heartbeat. His strong hands wrapped around my back, and he swooped me up into his arms.
At the grounding feel of his touch, breath came back to me—and along with it, my voice.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“Gabriel, please.” My voice was shaking along with the rest of me. “I want you to put me down.”
“I said no .” His tone was so much harder than mine. Deeper and more powerful, too—and every bit as unrelenting as his hold on me. “You nearly collapsed. I’m not letting you go until we get to the bed.”
I tensed up, grinding my back teeth together as he carried me across the room. I knew there was no point in arguing with him. There was nothing I could say that could change his mind.
As angry as he’d sounded, I half-expected him to toss me down on the mattress like a piece of discarded trash. But instead, he laid me down gently, almost delicately. The care of his touch was at total odds with the horrible things I’d just heard him say.
“Liv—“ he started as I sat up.
But I cut him off, shaking my head. “Don’t bother, Gabriel. Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it.”
He barreled ahead anyway. “I’m sorry you overheard us. I thought Tony and I would be finished with our conversation by the time you were out of the shower.”
My fingers bit into the thick terrycloth towel, struggling to keep it tightly clasped in front of my chest as I stared up at him.
“That’s what you’re sorry for,” I gaped at him, aghast. “That I overheard you. Not that you just sentenced a man to death?”
He shook his head, dragged his fingers through his hair, pressed his lips together hard. Did everything other than look ashamed. “Liv, you don’t understand?—“
“Then explain it to me,” I challenged him. “Tell me why I shouldn’t be horrified that you just ordered one man to be murdered and another to be terrorized.”
Gabriel took a step back. Turning his back to me, he cursed under his breath before spinning back around to face me.
“No, you’re right,” he said, his voice somehow even tighter and angrier than before. “You should be horrified. Because the life I live and the things I do are horrifying. But this isn’t news to you. You’ve known who and what I am for a long time now. So the one thing you can’t be is surprised.”
Each of his words landed like a blow to the gut—because he was right.
I did know.
I’d known there was something terrifying about him from the moment he’d sent the drunk in the Ritz running out of the lounge.
And after that, when he’d threatened my brother’s life and my family’s livelihood. And when he demanded I hand myself over to him for three whole months. Or all those nights sitting next to him in nightclubs across Manhattan, watching as mobsters and thugs lined up, hoping just to get a few minutes of his time.
I knew what he was.
But somewhere along the line, I’d decided to pretend I didn’t.
I’d let myself be seduced, not just by his touch, but by all the charitable fairy tales he wove around him. Maybe he did save that little kid’s life, but how many other people did he send to their graves?
Only a monster could do something like that.
“But this guy you sent Tony after, do you really have to kill him?” I asked, practically begging for him to show a shred of humanity and prove me wrong. “They said he was just some punk. Surely, you can let him off with a warning.”
“There is a time and place for mercy, but there is never room for pity,” he said, his voice heavy with the weight of responsibility. “My papa taught me that.”
“I don’t…” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Is this about your wall of protection again?”
“You know it is.”
“Then you have to know that one guy stealing a few boxes of black market anxiety pills can’t possibly tear cracks in the wall.”
“Liv, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gabriel closed his eyes. His head fell back in frustration. I could see the muscles in his neck tightening, the tendons sticking out. Anyone with a sense of self-preservation would have known to stop right there. That pushing him any further wasn’t a wise choice.
Yet, I kept right on going.
“Come on, Gabriel,” I pleaded with him. “You don’t have to use violence to solve every problem. You’re so much better than that.”
“No. I’m not,” he growled, his eyes snapping back to me. “ You are. You’re the good one. Not me.”
“Gabriel—“ I tried again, reaching out to him, but he took a step back from my outstretched hand, shaking his head with even more intensity.
“That’s why I’ve done my best to keep this side of my life away from you,” he continued. “It’s why I go away in the morning and don’t come back until night. Because I never wanted this part of my world to touch you and tarnish that goodness.”
I rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of his statement.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “Like you said, I know what you are. I’m only here with you so you don’t tell Tony to bring you my brother’s head.”
“Is that true?” Gabriel arched a single brow. “Is that the only reason you’re here with me? Be honest, Liv.”
No, it wasn’t.
Maybe in the beginning, it had been. But now…
Now, I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Or why I was fighting so hard for the soul of a man who the rest of the world had written off as a monster.
“I am being honest,” I told him plainly, raising my chin defiantly. “That’s one of the reasons you made this deal with me in the first place—remember? You wanted someone who would confront you with the truth no matter what. Someone who wasn’t afraid to stand up to your pointless macho bullshit. Well, that’s what I’m doing.”
The muscle lining his jaw twitched and tightened at my words. “You think I want to go after this Giordano kid? You think I like ordering Tony to off someone I don’t even know?”
I don’t know about like , but... “I didn’t see a lot of hesitation from my perspective.”
“Do you know what would happen if I didn’t make an example out of this punk?” Gabriel demanded without an ounce of softness in his voice.
I could only shake my head. I couldn’t even pretend to know about the inner workings of the mob world. Not even after a month of living right in the heart of it.
“Then let me tell you,” he continued. “Let’s say this kid goes back to the Giordanos with half a million in black market pills. He tells his boss it was an easy score—no trouble, no pushback. That gets the head of the Giordanos thinking maybe there’s more opportunity on D’Angelo’s turf than he thought. Then do you know what happens?”
Yeah, I did. “They try it again.”
“That’s right,” Gabriel said with a humorless grin. “One incident becomes two. Then three. Then, I have no choice but to send my men in to stop them from taking what’s rightfully ours. Except now, we’re not just going after one punk, but dozens of them. And we’d take them out, sure—but how many men would I lose in the process? Three? Four?”
“Okay, I get it.” I held up my hands in surrender.
But Gabriel kept on going. “And these aren’t some nameless, faceless men, Liv. They’re my men. Men like Tony who have families. They’re men I look in the eye and talk to every day. Men who are my responsibility. Men whose deaths I would have to carry with me every day of my life, knowing I could have saved them if I’d only dealt with the problem before it grew into disaster.”
All I could do was nod as his words, hard and powerful, echoed off the walls around us. I saw his point.
That didn’t mean I agreed , but I understood…and for right now, that was enough.
Lifting myself up onto my knees, I reached out and cupped his cheek with my hand. Even though I could feel the tension in the taut muscles running along his jaw, his skin was warm and soft. I didn’t even mind the prickle of his five o’clock shadow against my palm.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I get it now. I really do.”
He was in an impossible situation, playing a part in a game he was born into. For someone so strong and powerful, he had little control of his own life. He couldn’t choose to be good .
He could only choose the path that led to the least amount of harm.
And that was something I understood completely.
Letting go of my grasp on the towel wrapped around me, I placed my other hand over his shoulder. A second later, the terrycloth fell away, leaving me totally naked and exposed.
His dark gaze flashed down the length of me before coming back up to lock on my eyes.
“Sometimes I wish I was a better man for you. The man you deserve.”
My cheeks warmed as a slight smile cracked my lips.
That had to be the sweetest thing he’d ever said to me. The most sincere.
“It’s all right,” I assured him, gently guiding him down onto the bed on top of me. “You’re the man that I want.”
And, God help me, it was true.