“They’re your protection too.”
My father has a very different perspective than I.
“So you’re giving me that as protection against Stefan Sabbioni? What do you think, I’m going to shoot him?”
“If he forces himself on you, you’ll be in your right.”
“But you were okay with McKinney’s son forcing himself on me?”
“He’s not a dirty Sicilian mobster.”
“No, he’s a dirty Irish one.” McKinney is as much a crook as Stefan Sabbioni. As my father. “I don’t want it.”
“Don’t make this hard. You’ll take it.” He puts it on the bed and I notice my duffel bag that John had taken before is there too.
I look up at my father. “I want to see Gabe.”
My father’s expression tightens. He turns and walks to the window. The topic of my brother is never an easy one.
“Tomorrow’s my day to visit. If I’m going to be gone for a month or more—”
“It’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the middle of the night and Sabbioni will be here first thing in the morning.”
“And if I’m not here, he’ll wait.”
He turns to me and exhales, shakes his head with an almost amused little smile. “Things don’t work that way and you know it.”
I do.
“What does he have on you that you agreed?” I ask, not sure I want to know.
He shifts his gaze back to the window and just keeps looking out over the distance of our land, dark and wooded, the street too far to see.
“You have to tell me that at least,” I press.
He turns, looks at me, studies me as if he’s never going to see me again and for as little affection as I feel for this man, in that moment, he’s my father.
“Every day you look more like her,” he says.
It takes me a moment to process but when I do, that affection I felt a moment ago dissipates.
Mom.
He’s talking about mom.
“I won’t remarry, you know,” he says. “Never.”
My mother drowned when I was eight. She’d taken my brother and I camping, and she drowned in the lake. She was only twenty-nine years old. Ten years younger than my father.
I watch my father, study his face when he talks about her and every time he does, something inside me hardens.
He doesn’t know what I saw that morning. Doesn’t know I bore witness to it all.
“Maybe you should,” I say, turning my back on him. “I’m tired.”
He comes up behind me. When he puts his hands on my arms, I stiffen. It takes all I have not to pull out of his grasp.
“You’re owed a punishment,” he says, his voice different again.
At that, I pull out of his grasp and take several steps away before I face him.
“I don’t belong to you anymore,” I accuse, using language he understands, hating what I feel when I say it, hating how disgusting I feel.
I remind myself that I am only a thing to him. A possession. Something he can barter with and trade.
And tonight, someone beat him at his own game.
“Get out of my room,” I tell him.
My father shifts his weight to one foot and cocks his head to the side, studying me. He gives me a sneer.
“Always the princess in the tower, aren’t you? You’re like your mother in that sense too. Ever the victim. You don’t know what you have.”
“Your thugs broke both of Alex’s legs tonight.”
“He tried to steal you from me.”
“I went to him. He didn’t steal me. Do you even hear how you sound?”
“Our family is different. You know that. You, Gabriela, should know it better than your mother or brother ever did.”
My heart twists.
I wonder how he can have no idea of the pain he causes with his careless words.
Or maybe they’re not careless.
Maybe he means to twist the knife lodged in my heart.
“Sabbioni is stealing from me now.”
“And you can’t break his legs. Why?” I spit. “What does Stefan Sabbioni have on you?” There’s only one way to deal with my father. He has no compassion. No empathy. I wonder sometimes if he isn’t a sociopath.
That twitch is back. Whatever Stefan has, it’s big.
He walks to the door but stops when he opens it. “Remember who you are. Remember where your loyalties lie.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and we stand like this, silent. I think my father is taking my measure, determining if I’m ally or foe.
What I want is to be neither and, in a way, Stefan taking me, it’s a sort of freedom, isn’t it? A sort of escape.
My father grins like he’s just read my mind.
“You take care, Gabriela. And don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s a white knight come to rescue you from your tower. He’s as much a monster as I.”
4
Gabriela
It’s still early when I wake the next morning. Well, I guess it’s only a few hours later, not morning at all. The birds aren’t singing yet, that’s what gives away the time.
Because even before I open my eyes, I know I’m not alone.
I don’t move and I know I should try to keep my breathing even, but I can’t seem to breathe at all right now.
Aftershave.
My mind immediately goes to the night of my sixteenth birthday party. To the smell then.
Morgue.
At least it’s not that smell.
But it is him. I recognize the scent of his cologne from when we were in the study earlier. Recognize my inability to breathe when he’s in a room with me.
I turn my head to find him standing over my desk, finger holding my book open, reading in the little bit of moonlight that’s coming through the windows. I hadn’t closed my curtains before going to bed.
“Morning,” he says, startling me that he knew I was awake without even having to turn around.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I sit up and switch on the lamp beside my bed.
He closes the book, turns to look at me, his gaze roaming from my face down.
I touch my hair, still damp from my late shower, and glance down at my nightie, a dark blue silk tank that leaves little to the imagination.
I draw the blanket up a little, refusing to acknowledge his advantage over me. He’s fully dressed in a suit, a different one than the one he was wearing a few hours ago, and me in my bed, barely dressed, having just woken up.
“Where are your bags?” he asks, making a show of looking around the room. “I told you to be ready.”
“Is this for fucking real?”
He raises his eyebrows. His perfect eyebrows. But the amused expression vanishes quickly.
“I prefer you don’t use that sort of language.”
“Offends your delicate ears?”
Now he smiles wide. It’s a smile that makes the corners of his eyes crease, and I see a dimple on his right cheek. It’s disarming. Like his eyes with their soft color.
He steps toward the bed and I find myself sitting up straighter. He comes right to my side and sits down on the edge, slowly allowing his gaze to slide over my face, lingering on my hair. I’m sure it’s huge around my head from sleep. Then his eyes trail down to the exposed part of my chest.