Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Gabriel
Ihave to wait for hours for news of Aurora.
And it’s torture.
Almost as bad as when Giovanni tortured me.
After he killed my family and I went to him when I was older and he helped raise me up in the mafia, I knew it was time to kill him.
So I tried to attack him and that’s when I got my scar. But he didn’t just give me an ugly scar on my face. No. He also tortured me for days for disobeying him.
Cuts and bruises everywhere. I thought I was going to die so many times but I always pulled through. For my family. My parents would have wanted me to survive.
When I found a chance to escape, I did. It was a moment of weakness on Giovanni’s part.
He saw the boy he had helped raise up high in the mafia.
He loosened my ties and I managed to get myself free.
It was just him and I in that disgusting dungeon where he held me for a week.
I don’t even remember where it was now. Some house far away from here.
I overpowered him. I remember standing over him with a chance to end his life… and I couldn’t take it. I was disgusted with myself. The one thing I vowed to do and I couldn’t do it.
So I ran and I built myself back up after the torture.
Now here I am, desperate to find Giovanni again, who went into hiding after that. I will not make the same mistake twice.
I pace around the hospital waiting room.
Aurora was in bad condition when I brought her in.
Lost a lot of blood. All because she went into my dungeon where I was torturing Mark, one of Giovanni’s closest allies.
All because I let her get under my skin and I touched her when I shouldn’t have.
All because I wanted to control Aurora and turn her to the darkness with me by getting her to kill Mark.
But it gave Mark the chance to escape his bind and hurt her.
Now I could lose her. Just like I lost my family.
I’ve been holding onto Aurora so tightly because of the light I see in her. The spark. The bravery. I care for her even though I don’t show it much. The last thing I want is for her to die.
A doctor finally approaches. “We managed to stop the bleeding and stitch up her wound. She’s doing better now. You can go into see her.”
I rush to where Aurora’s room is to find her asleep in a bed with cold, fluorescent light shining down on her. Her wrist where Mark cut her is all bandaged up.
I gaze down at her beautiful face. Her sweet, innocent face that lights up with fury for me. I love that she stands up to me. No one else ever does the way she does it.
I grab her hand and hold it tight, letting her know that I’m here, even though I know I’m not the comfort she needs. Who she needs is her father but I’m too much of a selfish asshole to let her go back to him.
What I did to Andrew was petty of me. He tried to steal from me, yes, but I’ve let other men go for worser crimes. I don’t know why I wanted to hurt Andrew so much. Maybe in my darkness to get to Giovanni, I let myself grow colder. Andrew was caught in the crosshairs and now so is Aurora.
I’m an asshole to her but I can’t seem to stop. I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to get rid of the memories of my family’s murder. Of the pain. Of the anger and destruction.
Aurora makes a soft sound as her eyes flick open. They land on me and for a moment, I see them soften, before they harden again. Harden against me.
She looks at my hand on hers before pulling it away. I deserve that.
“What happened?” she asks, sounding groggy.
“Mark cut you. You were bleeding from the wrist. Badly. You’re in the hospital now. You’ll live.” My voice sounds a lot more curt and cold than I mean it to.
“Why were you holding my hand?” She looks at it like she can’t believe I’d actually show her any kindness.
“I… it doesn’t matter. You’re all right now. We can go home after you’ve had time to rest.”
The fire I love within her sparks to life. “It does matter. You rarely show any sort of vulnerability. Why now?”
“Aurora…”
“No. I almost died, Gabriel. Open up to me. Talk to me.”
“Yes, you almost died. And it was na?ve of you to go into that room in the first place when I was busy.”
“Busy torturing that man.”
“Yes.”
“What did he do to you to make you torture him like that? Did you ever do that to my father?”
Her question throws me off guard. “No. I never did that to your father.”
“How can I believe you? You never tell me the truth. I know you’re keeping something from me.”
I grab her hand again and this time, she doesn’t pull away. “I never hurt your father like that.” Why does it matter to me that she knows this? It shouldn’t matter and yet, it does. “I only put him in that cell.”
“To die.”
I hesitate because there’s no way to defend myself. “Yes. To die. He stole from me.”
“That’s how you exact punishment? Anyone who wrongs you in some way deserves to die?”
“I’ll admit… your father didn’t deserve to die. But I can’t change who I am, Aurora. This is who I am.”
“Is it? Why were you torturing that man then? If you didn’t do that to my dad, who stole from you, then what did this man do to make you hurt him like that? What did he do?”
“Stop pressing,” I growl.
“No.” When I try to pull my hand back, Aurora holds on tighter. “I almost died because of that man. So who is he? Why did you have him down there? You asked him about Giovanni. Who is Giovanni?”
“The man who killed my family,” I snap. It startles her so much that she loosens her holds on my hand. I pull away.
“He… killed your family?” Her voice has no emotion in it.
Fuck. I didn’t want to show this side of me to Aurora. This vulnerable side. It’s weakness. It’s what led me to not killing Giovanni the first chance I got.
But she knows now and she’s not going to stop pressing until she knows all of it.
“Yes,” I say, steepling myself for the truth.
“He killed my family. When I was a boy. He came into my home and shot my father in the head. I hid under the bed in my bedroom but I could see my mom in the hallway. She was eight months pregnant at the time and Giovanni cut her stomach like it was nothing. She fell to the floor. Her baby… my brother… I remember see a part of his body sticking out of her stomach.” I turn away from Aurora as the emotion hits me.
The fear I felt. The anger. The absolute dread. How alone I had felt in this world.
“That’s terrible,” she breathes out. “Gabriel, that’s terrible.”
“She looked at me under the bed. We locked eyes until the life left her.”
“What happened to you? Did… Giovanni find you?”
I let out a sharp laugh. “No. He didn’t.
” I face her again, pushing my emotion down.
“I was raised by a different family until I was a teenager and then I found Giovanni. He raised me to be in the mafia. He didn’t know who I truly was.
That I was the son of Gabriel Romano Sr. That I had been born in the mafia.
When I had the chance, after I gained power myself, I tried to kill him.
He… got away. And I’ve been hunting him down ever since.
” I don’t have the courage to tell Aurora how I let Giovanni go in a moment of weakness.
“That’s how I got my scar. He gave it to me when I tried attacking him. ”
I force myself to look into Aurora’s eyes. What will I find there? Disgust for my story? Worry? Pity?
But instead, I find Aurora crying. Tears silently seep down her eyes.
“Why are you crying?” I ask in a gruff voice.
“Because it’s sad, Gabriel. It’s a sad story. That’s why you keep their picture hidden.”
Seeing the tears in her eyes makes me want to cry but I hold myself back. Aurora cannot see me cry. No one can.
She already saw me have a panic attack and that’s the most anyone can see of me.
“I get now why it was hard for you to tell me,” she says. “I get it. But I am your wife, Gabriel. You made me your wife. Why, I don’t know, but you did. Thank you for letting me in. I needed to know. I get why you were torturing that man now. He had to do with Giovanni, didn’t he?”
“He was a close ally of Giovanni’s. I was hoping he’d tell me where Giovanni is.”
“I see your pain. I get why you’re so closed off now. You experienced something traumatic.”
“I don’t want your pity,” I snap.
The hardness in her eyes returns. “I get that. You’re a proud man. But still. Thank you for opening up to me. I needed to hear it.”
“I don’t want you leaving the house. It’s not safe out there. Giovanni could hurt you.”
“You care for my safety?”
There’s no point in denying it now. “I care for your safety.”
“So if you care for me, then why do you treat me this way? Let me see my father. I can still be with you. Just let me have more freedom.”
“No.”
“Why? Gabriel, why control me like this? It won’t make me love you.”
I startle at her words. “Love? Who said anything about love?”
She reaches her hand out to me. “Gabriel…”
“No.” I back away from her. “I don’t need your love.
I want you, Aurora, because it’s fun. It’s fun to tear down your innocence.
To make you mine. But I don’t need love in my life to be happy.
I don’t need your love to be happy. I will make sure you don’t die because I refuse to lose you like I did my family. But it’s not out of love.”
“It’s possession,” she whispers as a coldness enters her eyes.
“Whatever you want to call it. But love is a weakness. It only ends up hurting people. You do not love me, Aurora, so don’t pretend like you could ever have those feelings for me. I forced you into this marriage. Into this life.”
“But you want me to be yours.”
“I do. But it’s different from love and you know that. We both do.”
“Do we?” She looks at me like she can see into my soul and it’s disconcerting. “It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself of that but you don’t really believe it.”
“You don’t know my head.”