Page 17 of The Beast

Chapter Six

For a long moment, I can’t speak.

Those horrible words hang in the air between us, incomprehensible. Impossible. I hear them—I understand what each word means individually—but strung together like that? Coming from his mouth in that cold, flat voice?

They just don’t make sense.

“Kill you?” The words taste bitter, and I instinctively pull back as his expression darkens. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play innocent.” He pushes off the door and stalks toward me. I take an instinctive step back, then another, until the backs of my knees hit the leather sofa. “Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“But I don’t know!” My voice is rising, edging toward hysteria. “Are you insane? I would never hurt you.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” His voice is low. Harsh. Dangerous. He takes another step closer.

I try to step back, but I’m trapped between him and the sofa. “Gabe,” I whisper as tears spill from my eyes. “What the hell? How could you even think that?” My heart pounds against my chest, and my head is swimming. He isn’t making sense. Nothing is making sense.

“I loved you,” he says, his voice like ice that’s near to breaking. “Loved. You were my everything. Hell, I would have given my life for you.” He lifts his head. “I never once thought you’d just take it.”

Something snaps in me. “Don’t you dare.” My voice shakes, but I hold my ground. “I spent five years mourning you. Five years of wishing I’d died in that fire instead of you.”

His eyes are hard on mine, but I don’t look away.

I can’t stop shaking my head. This is a nightmare.

It has to be a nightmare.

I swallow, then force the words past the lump in my throat. “How can you think that about me?”

He says nothing, but he’s close enough now that I can see the new lines on his face, the hard set of his jaw, and the harsh way he looks at me. Like he doesn’t know me at all.

Like he hates me.

I taste tears, then only shake my head. This is real. He truly thinks I could kill him. That I did kill him. “You bastard,” I whisper. “I’ve been dead without you. Your death was like a knife in my heart, and now you’re fucking twisting it.”

His lips curl into a sneer. “You tricky bitch.”

I see the way his hands are clenched at his sides like he’s physically restraining himself from pummeling me. “Did you think I’d just die quietly and never learn the truth?”

“What truth? Dammit, Gabe, you’re not making sense!”

“Five years.” He spits the words like venom, his eyes dipping to where I’m fidgeting with my ring. “Five years knowing the woman I loved—the woman I would have died for—tried to fucking kill me.”

“Kill you!”

But he just talks right over me. “Five years watching from the shadows while you built your little empire on my bones.”

I gape at him. “You think I wanted any of this? The gallery was ours, Gabriel. Everything I’ve done for five years has been about keeping your memory alive.”

“And do you know what I found?” he asks as if I hadn’t said a single word. “Evidence. Hard evidence.” His head tilts as he looks at me, like a predator sizing up prey. “I found a shiny paper trail. Proof. As if I needed it. Your eyes, Bella. That’s where guilt lives. That’s what truly killed me.”

I shake my head, my body going cold. I’m literally in shock. “Eyes? Proof? What the hell are you talking about?” My voice rises with each word, and more tumble out. “There isn’t proof because I didn’t do anything.” My stomach roils, and I clamp my hand over my mouth, afraid I’m going to barf.

“I followed the money, sweetheart. And it led me straight back to an account with your name on it. Three hundred thousand dollars, gone two days before I took three bullets and got left in a burning cabin to die.”

The room is spinning. I grab the arm of the sofa to steady myself.

“I didn’t,” I whisper. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what you think you found, but you are so, so wrong.”