Chapter 17 #3
His command is the final crack in my dam.
The orgasm detonates, a white-hot eruption that seizes every muscle in my body.
I scream, a raw, broken sound, as the waves crash through me, endless and devastating.
My inner walls clamp down on Dante, milking him as he grinds deep, his own release following mine with a roar, flooding me with his heat.
The world goes white, then blissfully dark at the edges.
When I swim back to awareness, I’m lying on the hard kitchen floor. Someone—Luca—has laid a dish towel under my head. My body feels liquid, boneless, utterly ravaged. Dante is kneeling between my legs, his head bowed, still catching his breath.
Luca collapses beside me, pulling me half onto his chest. Gabriel lies down on my other side, his hand coming to rest on my hip. We are a tangled, sticky, sated mess on the kitchen floor.
Luca's chest vibrates with a low chuckle. Gabriel just presses a kiss to my temple. Dante must have gone to take care of something because I don’t see him.
The house phone rings.
The sound is jarring, intrusive, cutting through our post-orgasmic haze like a knife. For a moment none of us move, still tangled together on the kitchen floor, our breathing gradually slowing.
"Ignore it," Luca mutters, his arm tightening around me.
The phone keeps ringing, shrill and insistent.
"It might be important," I say reluctantly, even though every part of me wants to tell the phone to go to hell.
Luca groans but carefully extracts himself from our tangle of limbs. He grabs a dish towel from the counter and wipes his hands before moving to the phone mounted on the wall by the refrigerator.
Gabriel sits up beside me, reaching for another towel and gently cleaning my stomach. The gesture is tender, intimate in a way that has nothing to do with sex.
Luca picks up the phone on what must be the tenth ring. "Salvatore residence." His voice is still rough, sated, slightly impatient with the interruption.
I watch him from my position on the floor, Gabriel's hand still on my hip, expecting this to be a quick call—someone with the wrong number, or maybe one of Dante's associates with a message that can wait.
But Luca's expression changes.
The easy satisfaction drops from his face like someone has flipped a switch. His shoulders go rigid, his jaw tightening, and the hand not holding the phone curls into a fist at his side.
"When?" he asks, and his voice has gone flat, empty of all the warmth from moments before. "How long ago?"
My stomach drops. Beside me, Gabriel tenses, sensing the shift.
Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.
I sit up, grabbing my discarded shirt from the floor and pulling it on quickly. Gabriel does the same, both of us moving on instinct, covering ourselves as the atmosphere in the kitchen turns cold.
"Luca? What is it? What happened?" I ask, my voice shaking.
He doesn’t answer me, just listens to whoever is on the other end of the line, his face going progressively paler, his free hand coming up to run through his hair in a gesture I have learned means he is processing something he does not want to process.
"Yeah," he says finally, his voice hollow. "Yeah, she is here. Hold on."
He turns to me, and the look in his eyes makes my chest constrict with sudden, terrible fear.
"Lina," he says softly, and he never calls me Lina in that tone—gentle and careful like I am something fragile that might break. "It is for you."
"Who is it?" I ask, taking the phone from his outstretched hand with fingers that have started to shake. Gabriel stands, pulling on his pants, moving to stand beside me in silent support.
"It is Margaret. From the O'Connor estate."
Margaret. The head housekeeper. The woman who has worked for Seamus since before I was adopted, who taught me how to properly set a table and snuck me cookies when I was supposed to be training.
Why would Margaret be calling me here?
I bring the phone to my ear, my hand trembling. "Margaret?"
"Rosalina." Her voice is thick with tears, breaking on my name. "Oh, Rosalina, dear. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry."
The world tilts sideways.
"Margaret, what—" My voice does not sound like my own. "What happened? Why are you sorry?"
"It is Seamus, dear." She takes a shaking breath on the other end of the line. "He was killed. This morning. It was an ambush. They—" Her voice breaks completely. "He did not suffer, they said. It was quick."
The phone slips from my fingers.
I don’t feel it fall. Don’t hear it clatter against the tile floor. Cannot process anything except the words still echoing in my skull, bouncing around like bullets ricocheting off bone.
Seamus has been killed.
Seamus is dead.
My father—because that is what he became, somewhere between the orphanage and the training and the years of him treating me like I mattered—is dead.
My legs give out.
I am vaguely aware of Gabriel moving, of his arms catching me before I hit the ground, of him lowering us both down until we are on the kitchen floor with me clutched against his chest. Luca is there too, his hand on my back, both of them surrounding me.
"No," I hear myself say, and my voice sounds distant, disconnected. "No, that is not—that cannot be—"
But I know it is true. I can hear it in Margaret's broken voice, can feel it in the way they are holding me like I might shatter into a thousand pieces.
Seamus is dead.
The man who pulled me out of an orphanage when I was ten years old and gave me a purpose.
The man who taught me how to defend myself, how to stand tall, how to be more than what the world expected.
The man who looked at me—a nobody, a street kid with sticky fingers and wild hair—and decided I was worth saving.
The man who loved me like a daughter even though I was not his blood.
Gone.
The sob that tears out of my throat does not sound human.
It is raw and jagged and comes from somewhere so deep inside me that I didn’t know it existed.
My hands fist in Gabriel's shirt, and I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything except feel this enormous, crushing weight settling over my chest and pressing down until I think I might suffocate under it.
"I have got you," Gabriel is murmuring, his hand stroking my hair, his voice steady even though I can hear the strain in it. "I’ve got you, Bella. I am right here."
Luca's arm wraps around both of us, his forehead pressing against my shoulder.
Another sob rips through me, and then another, and then I am crying so hard I cannot catch my breath, gasping and shaking in their arms while they hold me together because I cannot hold myself together.
Seamus is dead.
The words keep repeating in my head like a broken record, each repetition driving the truth deeper until it settles in my bones.
He is dead and I was not there.
I was here, in Manhattan, playing house with three men while my father was being killed.
I was washing dishes and flirting and having sex on the kitchen floor like I didn’t have a care in the world.
I was happy.
And he was dying.
The guilt crashes over me in waves, mixing with the grief until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
"I should have been there," I gasp out between sobs, my voice broken and barely recognizable. "I should have—I could have—"
"No," Gabriel says firmly, his arms tightening around me. "No, Bella. Do not do that. Do not blame yourself."
"I am his guard," I choke out. "I was supposed to protect—I should have been protecting him, not—"
"You were protecting Erin," Luca interrupts, and his voice is gentle but unyielding. "That is what he asked you to do. That is what he wanted."
But it doesn’t matter what he wanted because he is dead and I was not there and nothing will ever make that okay.
I hear footsteps—heavy, running—and then Dante's voice, sharp with concern. "What happened? Gabriel, Luca, what the fuck—"
He stops. I can’t see him, but I can feel the moment he takes in the scene—me on the floor between Gabriel and Luca, the phone abandoned nearby, my entire body shaking with sobs I cannot control.
"Rosalina," Dante says, and he is beside us in an instant, dropping to his knees on the hard tile. His hand finds my face, turning me toward him, and I see his expression shift from concern to devastation when he sees whatever is written on my face. "Flower, what happened? Are you hurt?"
I can’t answer. Cannot form words past the sobs still tearing through me.
"Seamus O'Connor is dead," Gabriel says quietly, his voice tight. "Killed this morning. That was Margaret on the phone."
Dante goes very still, his hand frozen against my cheek.
Then he is pulling me from Gabriel's arms into his own, gathering me against his chest and holding me so tightly I can barely breathe, but I don’t care because breathing hurts and existing hurts and everything hurts.
"I am sorry," Dante murmurs into my hair, his voice rough with emotion. "God, Rosalina, I am so sorry."
I cry until I have nothing left, until my throat is raw and my eyes are swollen and my entire body aches from the force of it.
I cry for Seamus, for the father I lost, for the life I had that is gone now.
I cry for Erin, who doesn’t know yet, who is on a farm in Texas thinking she is safe and free.
I cry for Margaret and all the people at the O'Connor estate who loved him.
And I cry for myself, for the girl who thought she could have it all—love and happiness and a fresh start—without paying for it somehow.
Because this is the payment. This is the cost of choosing myself over duty.
Seamus is dead and I was not there.
Eventually, the sobs fade to hiccupping breaths, and then to silence. I stay curled in Dante's arms with Luca and Gabriel pressed close on either side, and I stare at nothing, feeling hollow and scraped raw.
"What do you need?" Dante asks finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "Tell me what you need and I will get it for you."
I don’t answer for a long moment because I don’t know what I need, don’t know if there is anything that could possibly fill this enormous hole that has opened up inside me.
"Erin," I finally manage, my voice hoarse and broken. "I need to call Erin. She doesn’t know yet. She needs to—I have to tell her."
"Okay," Dante says immediately. "Okay, we will get you the phone and you can call her."
"And I need—" My voice cracks. "I need to go home. To the estate. For the funeral. I need to—"
"We will take you," Gabriel says, and there is no question in his voice, no hesitation. "Whenever you are ready. We will all go with you."
"You do not have to—"
"We are going," Luca says firmly, his hand finding mine and squeezing. "You are not doing this alone, Lina. Not a chance."
I close my eyes, fresh tears leaking from beneath my lids, but these are different. Not grief, exactly. Gratitude, maybe. Relief that I do not have to face this alone.
"Okay," I whisper. "Okay."
Dante presses a kiss to my forehead, long and gentle. "We have got you, Flower. Whatever you need, however long it takes. We have got you."
And sitting there on the kitchen floor, surrounded by three men who have somehow become essential to my existence in the span of two months, I let myself believe him.