“Yeah?”
Something warm tried to roll through him when he heard his brother’s familiar voice, but it was crushed as rage slithered to life under his skin. The feeling was so dark and sinister it would have left the man on the other end of the line beaming with approval had he sensed it.
“Stefano.”
A chorus of under-the-breath curses came from around his hotel suite as what he was doing became clear.
“Well,” his brother drawled. “It seems my efforts haven’t been wasted after all. Looks like my wait is finally over, brother.”
“Call off the dogs, Stefano. End this now.” Would he benefit from appealing to a softer side of his brother that he wasn’t sure the guy even possessed? “Weren’t three lives to Adrianna’s one enough?”
“You mean the three women you were banging last year?” Stefano snorted derisively. “You tell me. Talk about taking things too far. There was no reason those girls had to die. Other than you needing to get laid. And people accuse me of being harsh.”
In other words, Gabriel’s need for companionship and sex had sealed the girls’ fate. By attempting to have a relationship, he’d given Stefano the green light to come in and exact his revenge by killing Elle, Jordan, and Melissa.
He ground his teeth at the condescending tone he remembered so well from when they were growing up. “Eva Jacobs has nothing to do with—”
A boom sounded in the background, like a palm hitting a hard surface. “She has everything to do with this! Or she will. And thank you, by the way, for saving me some footwork with this call. I was on my way over to the clubhouse to pick the biker’s brain about your woman.” Papers shuffled in the background as if he was looking for something. “Ah, yes. Before you go off on Paynne’s loyalty being with you, my sources found some insurance that would guarantee his cooperation.”
The wheels in Gabriel’s head spun until Stefano’s threat clicked into place.
Nika.
He was going to use Nika as collateral to make sure Paynne answered his questions about Eva. “What. So now you want to start a war with the ODMC?” Gabriel snapped incredulously. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? You’re making a lot of enemies, man.”
“So you say. I assume you or one of your Russians managed to tag Furio. That why he hasn’t gotten in touch?”
Gabriel left him wondering. “How much damage has to be done before you’re satisfied?”
“I’ll be satisfied once I take care of Eva. And if you really want to know, I’m looking forward to ending this, Gabe. You don’t deserve the time and effort I’ve put into this game.” An underlying exhaustion came through over the line, giving truth to his brother’s words. “Eva Jacobs is obviously the one I’ve been waiting for. And, really, Gabriel, you had fair warning about what I’d do when the time came. You knew I’d come after her. It makes quite the difference when your feelings are engaged, no? Just wait.”
Staring out over the twinkling lights of Seattle, Gabriel ached to reach through the phone and slap some sense into his brother. “You will back the fuck off her. If you don’t, the destruction of the family, and your life as you know it, will be absolute.”
A slight pause, and then his brother drawled in a bored voice, “Been there, done that, lived through it, so you can be sure that threat doesn’t impress me.” His voice went low. “Let me just say, I’ve gotten to her twice already, but next time, it won’t be one of my boys who has his hands on her—it’ll be me. And because I know you, I know it will drive you insane when I tell you I’m going to enjoy the hell out of her before I end her life.”
Fury nearly blinded him, flaming a path from his sternum to his throbbing head. “You touch her, you even breathe on her,” he warned, his voice warping to something dangerous and demonic even to his own ears, “I’ll make you wish for death with every remaining beat of your blackened heart. She’s mine, brother. Understand that, or you will die.” He hung up and slid his phone into his pocket with a shockingly steady hand.
“Well, that was a long time in coming,” Alek commented from his stance next to the fireplace.
Jak, who had walked in during the call, grunted his agreement from where he was leaning against the doorjamb.
Quan was staring out the window, his ass planted on a corner of the desk two feet away from where Gabriel was standing. “And so it begins,” he murmured.
“If for whatever reason I’m not around,” Gabriel said quietly, looking Quan right in the eye, “you and Jak are with her. Fuck my back. She’s what you’re to protect now, at all costs. Spread the word.”
CHAPTER 13
As Eva retrieved her purse from the table in the entrance, Gabriel searched her face for a sign that she’d heard anything she shouldn’t have. His lungs deflated when all he saw was the same anxiety etched into her features that had been there when she’d gone inside earlier.
She hadn’t heard his earlier declaration.
She carefully walked over and curled her body into the corner of the sofa. After taking out her cell, she placed it on the coffee table before letting the purse slide to the floor. Gabriel could see she’d brushed her hair while she’d been inside the bathroom and it now flowed over her shoulders and down her back like a shiny oil slick.
“Blink or something, you guys. I feel like I’m in a zoo,” she said.
“You’d be the main attraction, even with the shiner,” Jak quipped as he went over and filled a towel with ice. “Relax, dude.” He raised a hand in Gabriel’s direction without looking at him as he brought the pack to Eva, then dropped into one of the chairs. “You know everyone was thinking it.”
Dammit. If he hadn’t been so busy railing at Stefano, he’d have gotten the ice himself.
“The asshole is Jak,” Gabriel growled. “You haven’t met him yet, but don’t get too attached. His days are numbered.” He placed his glass on the bar, instead of beaming it across the room and into his friend’s thick skull. “Are you okay?”
She met his gaze with a twinkle of humor in her eye and shrugged as she tucked her wounded feet under her. She placed the ice on her cheek and looked at Jak. “I remember you from the other night. How’s your head?”
“S’all good. Definitely had worse.” He smirked, running his finger across the scar on his face.
“Bar fight?” Eva inquired.
“Afghanistan.”
Her perfect brows popped, and then she smiled. “Thank you. I don’t often get to personally thank those who risked their lives for us.”
Jak nodded, and Gabriel didn’t think he’d ever seen the guy so uncomfortable. He wanted to high-five Karma for finally showing up. For once the guy was getting a taste of his own let’s-make-someone-squirm medicine.
“It’s Caleb, honey. Read up.”
The chime of her cell startled Eva into a jump before she snatched it up. She read quickly and then tapped a response before putting it back on the table.
“Caleb,” she said unnecessarily, as if Gabriel wouldn’t hear that goddamned ringtone in his nightmares.
He nodded and tried to look as though he wasn’t contemplating a good ass kicking for the biker.
Keeping his hands buried in his pockets, he walked over to stand by the fireplace, avoiding the boys’ eyes. He’d have told them all to get the fuck out, but he wanted them to hear what had happened tonight in case he blacked out from rage overload halfway through the story.
“What did he want?” The words burst from him, even though he’d tried to hold on to them. But he had to know.
“Oh. Um, nothing. He just asked how I was.” Her gaze was sharp. “I wanted to call him earlier but didn’t have my phone.”
She was gauging his reaction to that, he thought. He struggled to keep his heart pumping as that serrated knife went through him. Man, he’d never thought to wish his woman was a dummy. He was wishing it now. Because this observant little thing didn’t miss shit.
“Why call him? What c
ould he have done for you from New York?” His tone was robotic, no inflection whatsoever. And no way was she going to buy his bullshit. She knew he was jealous of her relationship with the biker, and the fact that he was now trying to pretend he wasn’t was a definite flag on the field. Fuck. He should have just gone with his gut and slapped the phone out of her hand.
She was silent for a minute, and he saw uncertainty seep in. He actually watched it alter her expression and then grow into doubt. And then suspicion, wariness, and fear. She hugged her knees to her chest and shrugged, striving for a nonchalance that missed its mark by a mile. “Caleb knows people who would have helped me if that guy had come back,” she said, distracted, as though she was saying one thing but thinking about something else.
Envy sheared through muscle and bone. I know people! he wanted to roar. I am those people!
Her first thought should have been that he, Gabriel, would help her, not Caleb Fucking Paynne!
His limbs felt mannequin stiff as he crossed to her once more, preparing himself as best he could to tell her everything. A murdered mother, an unknown father, a mobster lover with a bloodthirsty brother . . .
He only hoped that she wouldn’t want to run from him once she learned the truth.
Because he would not allow her that freedom.
“Can I get you a drink or something, Eva? Are you hungry?”
Eva blinked at the courteous inquiry. Drop food into her churning, aching stomach? Not happening. She almost laughed as she shook her head, refusing Quan’s kind offer. Her eyes went to Gabriel as he advanced, his movements measured and precise. Not at all his style.
Something was up. Something with him and Caleb. For one thing, Caleb had never texted her asking, “Everything okay?” before. Like he knew there was a possibility that things might not be okay. And the way Gabriel referred to Caleb was just too familiar. For all he knew, Nika’s brother could be a hunchbacked nerd with a hairy wart on his nose, yet he practically seethed with jealousy the second his name came up.
“Caleb is a member of the Obsidian Angels,” she said, watching closely.
“It’s the Obsidian Devils,” Gabriel corrected.
She gasped and his gaze clashed with hers, narrowing, his jaw rippling as if he was grinding his teeth.
She knew it! He and Caleb knew each other.
“Slow your roll, sweetheart,” he muttered with dry amusement. “It’s a motorcycle club known throughout the world. As if I wouldn’t know the proper name of it. Now, stop distracting from the issue here and tell us exactly what happened at your house tonight.”
What he said was true, though she didn’t buy it. But she’d drop the issue. For now.
Gabriel came to stand before her, his big body strung tight, his hands flexing in a way she found oddly entrancing. Unable to sit still while she rehashed the incident, she got up on her sore feet and walked the room as she talked.
“I was in my bedroom when I heard the window break,” she began. “I went down the hall and found the guy already halfway up the stairs.” Wandering over to the organized bookshelf in the corner, she ran her finger over the hotel’s logo on a room service menu that had been carelessly tossed onto a neat pile of Forbes magazines.
She described the man with the Mohawk as best she could. “I tried to make it to the bathroom, because the door has a lock, but he grabbed my ankle and pulled me down. That’s how I hit my cheek . . . when I fell . . .” Her hand came up to touch the bruise on her face, her heart thumping when she remembered the man’s warning. She walked back to Gabriel and watched him as intently as he normally watched her.
“He told me to stay away from you. Said you’re not who I think you are. What did he mean by that?”
Gabriel turned to stone. “What else?” he demanded, his tone so harsh that she took a step back.
“He said it was the only warning I was going to get. And he called you Gabe,” she supplied as she wrapped her arms around her middle, her body so cold all of a sudden. If she’d thought him intimidating before, it was nothing compared with what she was seeing now. He was all coiled strength and danger personified. Fierce and deadly. She flinched when his hand appeared in her periphery.
He dropped his arm before his fingers came into contact with her cheek. “Don’t you know that I would die before ever raising a hand to you?”
Tears pricked her eyelids. She didn’t know anything anymore. Except that he wasn’t being completely honest with her. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . freaking out.”
“Is there anything else, Eva?” Alek’s steady tone was a blessing, and she turned to find him just behind her, his hand swiping through his dark-blond hair. “Any other unusual things happen in the last few days?”
The memory of being followed came to mind. “Now that you mention it, last night when I got out of my car near the club, it seemed like someone was following me.”
“What did you notice exactly?” Gabriel asked.
She quickly told them about the incident with the sedan, finishing with Nika’s assumption that the driver was probably looking for parking. When she was done, her teeth worried her bottom lip. Should she tell them about Stefano Moretti’s visit to Caleb’s apartment the other day?
Unsure, she looked around at the four men scattered throughout the room. And frowned. Gabriel was angry. But he didn’t seem surprised by any of this. None of them did, she realized as she looked at Jak and Quan and then at Alek, who was now leaning his shoulder into the wall behind her.
The average person would at least have given her a holy shit when she shared her unusual story.
“Gabriel?”
With a sigh that was nothing short of resigned, he took her arm and led her over to the couch.
Her cell phone chimed. Not Caleb’s greeting this time but the usual ring.
Thinking Nika was finally returning her call, she withdrew her arm from Gabriel’s grasp and snagged her phone from the table, just as Gabriel’s cell started to ring. They both answered at the same time.
“Go.” He barked his usual greeting.
“Hello?” she said, rubbing her temple. Gawd, she felt like she was being pulled in ten different directions all at the same time.
“What?” Gabriel snapped. “How?”
Nothing but harsh breathing sounded in her own ear as a fiercely whispered conversation began behind her between Gabriel and his friends. “Hello? Nika?”
“You wasted your warning, kitty. You couldn’t stay away from Gabe, could you?” said a voice she’d never forget. The man who’d broken into her house! “Now I get to play. When I find you, I’m going to make you screa—”
The phone fell through her fingers as panic flooded her system. In a far-off corner of her mind, Gabriel’s voice registered as he asked which hospital someone’s brother was being transported to, but she couldn’t organize her thoughts enough to care. A shadow suddenly crossed over her—Gabriel’s—and scooped her phone up from where it had landed.
“Who was it?” he demanded.
“It w-w-was h-him . . .” she mouthed as she tried to breathe, black spots dancing in her vision. His big hands reached for her. But she was done. Limit reached.
She was going to the police.
Ducking under his arm, she ran for the door, too terrified to think of anything other than getting the hell away from this man and his scary-ass friends. Or enemies. She didn’t know which. But she did know he was somehow involved in all of this insanity.
How had her intruder gotten her cell number? And how had he known she was with Gabriel right now?
Her hand was an inch from freedom when a strong arm snaked around her waist and pulled her back into a solid wall of muscle. Gabriel’s fingers dug into her flesh as her feet were plucked right off the floor. “I can’t let you do that,” he said in her ear, his voice dark and hushed.
Eva went crazy, thrashing wildly, kicking, slapping, and clawing at his arm, trying anything to get free. �
�Let go of me!” she screamed, her terror rising when he turned with her and began shepherding her toward the bedroom door. “No! Nooo!”
“G!” Alek called.
“Get out!” he yelled to the other men in the room. He silenced her by covering her mouth with his hand—a hand she immediately tried to bite. He pressed down harder. Whimpering, her vision blurred with hot tears. She continued to struggle to no avail. She was powerless against his strength and the infallible hold he had on her.
She met Alek’s stare and then Quan’s and Jak’s as they passed by, her eyes imploring them to help her.
They didn’t.
How could she have been so stupid? So naive? Why had she ignored her intruder’s warning about Gabriel? She was pretty damned sure the man with the Mohawk wasn’t one of the good guys, judging by the way he spoke to her, but she should have listened to him anyway and washed her hands of all of them!
“G, let me talk to her.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. Alek’s voice was so ridiculously calm it scared her more than if he’d been holding a knife to her throat. Could they be so blasé about this because holding a hysterical woman against her will was a common occurrence for them?
“No. I got this.” Gabriel sidestepped another of her kicks. “Calm down, Eva. No one’s going to hurt you.”
He was lying. She heard it plainly in his voice, that trace of but-I-have-no-choice. She doubled her efforts, twisting and squirming wildly, which only made him grip her harder, squeezing until she could barely breathe. Little fireworks went off in her periphery from lack of blood or oxygen. Who knew which?
“I’m out of here,” she heard Quan announce. “I can’t watch this.”
“Go. All of you. I’ll call later,” Gabriel puffed as he entered the bedroom. He back-kicked the door shut and lowered her to the floor when they reached the foot of the bed.
“Are you going to relax enough for me to take my hand away?”
In response to his lame question, she peeled her lips back from her teeth and sank them into his palm, her foot going back again for another heel kick. He grunted and hissed when it connected.
A Love of Vengeance Page 19