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I sighed. I never left my business unfinished, but Bailey had paid the price for what he’d done. For the girls he ruined; the lives he’d taken.
I stepped over Bailey and shook Gabriel’s hand.
“I owe you,” I said. “I’m leaving you with a fucking mess. This should have been my kill. I should be the one cleaning it up.”
“It was the only way. You know that. And yes, you do owe me. I’ll call in the favor someday. Trust me.”
I wanted to hug him, but he had his gun on Bailey as the general gurgled his last breath, so I just stood there, feeling awkward and lost. I’d never had a job go down like this. It was... uncomfortable.
“I know,” Gabriel said. “Now get the fuck out of here, will ya?”
I nodded, grabbed my blazer, and walked to the door where one of Gabriel’s men waited.
But I couldn’t walk through it.
Shaking my head, I turned to look at him. “It was too easy,” I said. “It shouldn’t have been this easy.”
“I know. I’ve got your back on this, Dante. Delacroix will get his, too, and Willis will never find out that Delacroix was the one who betrayed him. Now stop stalling and let me deal with this piece of shit.”
I turned to leave, but I paused when I got to the door. I didn’t know how long it’d be before I saw my brother again. Walking away didn’t feel right. I hesitated.
When I turned around, Gabriel was on one knee next to Bailey’s body.
“I told you to stay away from my family. You should have listened,” he said in Bailey’s ear.
“He won’t let you... get away with this,” Bailey gurgled.
I didn’t hear what Gabriel said back to him. I turned around. He thought I was gone. I was never meant to hear those words. It was probably for the best that I didn’t.
I drove to my hotel room, unable to get Gabriel’s words out of my mind. He never mentioned that he knew Bailey. Not once. I hadn’t told him everything, but when I had called him back the night I changed my mind about how I wanted to handle Bailey, I gave him a brief description of why Bailey had to go. If he was going to take the risk of helping me, he deserved to know why Bailey had to die, beyond my own selfish reasons. It was his idea that he be the one who pulled the trigger.
And now I knew why. It wasn’t because he was trying to protect me like he said it was. He carried out his own vengeance. No, I couldn’t have single handedly handled the four men Bailey brought with him as well as Bailey himself, but I had no qualms about killing Bailey. I let Gabriel talk me into giving him that option because he said it’d be better for Noemi if I kept my hands clean. My fucking hands had never been clean, but Gabriel didn’t know that, did he? He thought I was a fucking stockbroker. If he suspected more, he never said it. He never once questioned anything I asked of him while we made our plans to deal with Bailey and Delacroix.
I never told him that murdering people was what I did for a living.
I pulled into the hotel parking lot, shut the car off and laid back on the headrest.
Noemi. I missed her. It’d been three months since I’d left her at the house with Gabriel, Lilly and Ma. The alarm system was installed at her house even though she wouldn’t be allowed to stay there. Gabriel made a point when he told me she couldn’t live with them forever. But it wouldn’t be forever. He promised me that. “I’ll take care of it,” he kept saying like a broken record.
I spent weeks going through the files Marco sent. It may have been easy for him to retrieve them, but what they revealed was invaluable. Delacroix was a lying, double-crossing bastard, and now, he couldn’t be found anywhere. He played Bailey and Willis against one another, thinking he’d come out on top. What he’d gain by that, I didn’t know yet. I thought he was the man in the knit cap at Noemi’s house, but I couldn’t prove that either. There were too many things left unexplained.
I told myself they didn’t matter.
I told myself Bailey was gone. He was no longer a threat to Noemi or Willis.
But in my soul, I knew it wasn’t over. All the secrets mattered: Mine. Delacroix’s. Willis’. And now, Gabriel’s.
It all mattered if itmeant that it’d be another year or even longer before I could get Noemi back. I didn’t think I’d live that long. I’d become a melodramatic bastard without her. Loving her was the motivation I needed. Having her back in my arms was the only thing that would keep me sane.
In a few months, the furor over Bailey’s death would die down, and I could start working again. Gabriel had a plan, but he didn’t share it with me. Another thing he convinced me would be for the best. He just told me he’d take care of Bailey’s body. And I trusted him.
So, what the fuck had he meant when he’d said those last words to Bailey?
I sucked in a breath, blew it out slowly, and got out of the car. My brother always said he knew me, but he really didn’t. I knew that my brother was the head of an organized crime family, but we never discussed his business in detail. Maybe I didn’t know him very well, either.
