Chapter 6 Gabriel
Gabriel
The compound wakes before the sun. It always does, because daylight doesn’t mean safety here.
Daylight is just light, and my men still die in it.
I stand in my office with my hands behind my back, and I stare at the security feeds.
Fifteen screens, fifteen different views.
The monitors hum faintly, and the room smells like cold air conditioning, gun oil, and the bitter stench of black coffee that’s been sitting too long.
It’s the kind of coffee men drink when sleep is a luxury and paranoia is a job requirement.
Everything I own is built on keeping people in line, and that control is a fragile line.
Juan walks in without knocking. He doesn’t need to.
He’s had that right for years, by blood and by the way he’s stayed at my side.
His boots make almost no sound, but I still feel him enter.
I always do. He sets a phone on my desk, and the glass surface clicks once, too loud in my head.
“It’s confirmed,” he says. I don’t look at him.
I don’t let him see my eyes shift. “Say it.” Juan’s voice is firm when he answers.
“Cassio is bringing her at dawn. Private location. No council men. Just the meeting.”
Dawn. That’s fast. Cassio is moving like he knows time is an enemy, and time is always an enemy because it gives traitors room to plan.
It gives the Bratva room to breathe. I lean forward and press my palm to the desk.
My knuckles whiten from restraint. I can feel my men waiting for me to react.
Not the ones in this room, but the ones in the walls, the ones outside the door, the ones watching the screens in other rooms and pretending they’re not watching me.
They read my posture. They read my silence.
They read the smallest weakness like it’s a map to mutiny.
If I keep it together, they keep it together.
If I slip, everything starts to fall apart.
Juan clears his throat. “The guys are talking.” Men talk when they’re afraid, when they smell change and think change means weakness.
I turn my head slightly. “Which guys.” Juan’s jaw flexes.
“The old ones. The ones that think this marriage makes us look weak.” Weak. That word is poison in cartel blood.
I exhale slowly through my nose until the air stops shaking in my chest, then reach for my jacket, black and heavy in my hands.
The lining smells faintly of leather and smoke.
“What did they say?” I ask. Juan hesitates, and that hesitation is information.
“Juan.” He answers, voice low. “They said she’ll bring Italian eyes into the house.
They said she’ll turn you soft. They said she’ll never belong.
” My eyes narrow. “They said that,” I repeat. Juan nods once. “They did.”
I step closer to him, not threatening, just present, the kind of presence that makes men remember their place without me touching them.
“Names,” I say. Juan looks at me like he doesn’t want to say, but he will.
Loyalty is a choice he already made. He gives me names.
High enough to matter. Not high enough to survive being stupid.
I turn away like the names don’t bother me, but my mind files them immediately.
Traitors don’t announce themselves loudly. They whisper first.
Last night, a man stole four crates from me.
Four crates is nothing, but it is a signal.
A man doesn’t steal like that unless someone told him he could, unless someone promised protection, and protection only comes from power.
So there’s a puppet, and there’s a puppeteer.
I walk out of the office, and Juan follows.
The hall is quiet. Guards nod as I pass, their eyes straight ahead and hands ready near their guns.
Everyone is in place. The air smells like disinfectant and metal.
I need it like this, because order is not about comfort. Order is survival.
* * *
We enter the main room where my lieutenants are waiting.
Five men. Five sets of eyes. They watch me like I’m either the man in charge, or the man who’s about to get them all killed.
Good. Let them feel uncertain. Uncertainty keeps men careful.
When they think nothing can touch them, they get bold.
I take the seat at the head of the table.
The chair is heavy, and the leather creaks softly under my weight.
I don’t speak right away. I let the silence hang until it gets uncomfortable, because silence corners people, and when they’re cornered, the real story comes out whether they want it to or not.
One of them shifts in his chair. Small movements.
Disrespectful. I watch him. He doesn’t notice at first, then he does, and he still doesn’t look away.
That tells me he’s either brave or stupid.
Brave men are useful. Stupid men die. I set my hands flat on the table, fingers firm against the wood.
“We signed,” I say. No emotion. Just fact.
A murmur ripples through the room. You can feel it in the way men sit up straighter, in the way their mouths go tight. Like they’re already getting worked up.
One man leans forward. “Jefe…” I lift my hand, and he stops mid-word.
I turn my eyes slowly across them and make sure every man feels seen, seen the way prey feels seen, before I speak again.
“The treaty stands,” I say. “You will not question it in my presence.” The brave or stupid man’s jaw tightens.
He speaks anyway. “With respect,” he says, voice tight, “marrying an Italian…” I tilt my head.
“Finish,” I tell him. He swallows, throat moving, panic hitting too late. “It makes us look weak,” he says.
Weak again. The word hits the room and it sticks.
A few men nod, not openly, but their eyes do.
They want reassurance. They want permission.
They want to know if I am still the same man.
I lean back in my chair, count two seconds, then speak softly.
“Do I look weak to you.” No one answers, because the correct answer is no and the wrong answer is death.
I stand and walk around the table until I’m behind the brave man.
He stiffens. His breathing changes. His body tries to decide whether to fight or submit.
I rest my hand on the back of his chair, gentle, almost kind, and that’s what makes men panic, because kindness in my world is never free.
I lean down, my mouth near his ear, my voice quiet enough that only he gets the full force of it.
“You will respect my wife,” I tell him. Wife.
I say it like it’s already true, because saying it makes it true in their minds, because words become law when a leader says them without blinking.
I straighten and walk back to the head of the table, then look at all of them.
“If any of you touches her,” I say, “I will cut your hands off.” I don’t shout.
I just lay out the consequences. The room goes still.
A man clears his throat. “Jefe, no one would…” I look at him, and he shuts up.
Good. Juan steps closer behind me, a quiet support and a silent threat, the air shifts when he moves, like even the room respects him.
I tap the table once. A small sound, but it feels loud.
“This marriage is not about love,” I say.
“It’s a calculated move, meant to secure power.
” I lean forward and let my gaze drag across their faces.
“It’s a leash on the Italians,” I continue, “We will be peaceful in public while we quietly take out the Bratva behind the scenes.” I let that sit, because some of them understand and some don’t, and the ones who don’t are dangerous.
Stupid men make mistakes. Mistakes attract enemies.
I straighten. “You will show up,” I say. “You will behave. You will smile when I tell you. And you will remember that my decisions keep you alive.” No one argues now. Good. I leave the room without dismissing them, because I don’t need permission to end conversations, and that’s another lesson.
In the hallway, Juan catches up to me. “You’re meeting her alone,” he says quietly.
It’s not a question. It’s a concern. I look at him.
“I’m meeting her as her husband.” Juan’s eyes narrow slightly.
“You haven’t even seen her.” “I’ve seen enough,” I answer, and I walk faster, purposeful, because dawn is coming.
Cassio is bringing his sister, and the girl is the deal, and deals either hold or they break.
I enter the security room and the world becomes screens and cameras and maps and timetables.
Fluorescent lights hum overhead. The air is cold and dry, smelling like electronics and sweat and the metallic tang of weapons cleaned too often.
I point to the route. “Double the sweep,” I say, and a tech nods quickly.
“Switch vehicles last minute.” Another nod.
“Any unknown car gets stopped. No exceptions.” The room moves like a machine, and that’s how I like it, because machines don’t betray you. People do.
Juan steps beside me, voice low. “What if she hates you.” I don’t answer right away, because the truth is she will, and she should, if she’s smart.
I keep my eyes on the screen and speak softly.
“She doesn’t have to like me,” I say. “She just has to stay alive.” Juan watches me.
“Are you going to be rough with her,” he asks.
I turn my head slowly and let him feel my gaze.
“That depends,” I say, and the words are simple because the truth is simple.
It depends on what she is. It depends on if she’s trained.
It depends on if she’s lying. It depends on if she thinks she can manipulate me.
I look back to the screen where a guard patrols the perimeter with a rifle, the kind of man who believes this compound is a fortress.
Tomorrow I bring an Italian woman into it, one my men already resent, one my enemies will want dead, one Cassio thinks he can use.
I don’t like being used. I don’t like being managed.
And I don’t like the way my chest tightens when I imagine her walking into my compound with fear in her eyes, because fear makes people unpredictable and fear makes people dangerous.
I press my thumb against the edge of the desk and glance at the clock. Then I speak quietly, more to myself than to Juan. “If she belongs to me,” I say, “then no one touches her.” Juan nods once, because he understands what that means.
It means she has my protection. It means she’s my possession. It means a bloody death.
And it means tomorrow, when Savannah Amato steps into my world, I will decide what she is.
And everyone will obey it.