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Chapter Twenty-One
- Gabriel -
My pre-emptive strikehad backfired. All I had to show for my efforts to use Suzanne St. Valentine against her brother was a broken heart.
Mine.
She wasn’t the woman I thought she’d be. I had a biased opinion formed by decades of spending my time with the wrong women, women I knew I could never embrace. Their smiles didn’t enchant me. Their conversation didn’t interest me. And their bodies were just for amusement.
I should have walked away after we spent that first morning talking for over two hours. I should have packed up my ego and my determination to beat Sebastian St. Valentine at his game and got the hell out of there. If I had, I would have saved myself the heartache of what I was about to do.
I couldn’t picture a world where this worked. I couldn’t see a way forward. So much shit had happened during the month I forced myself to stay away from Suzanne.
So. Much. Fucking. Shit.My head was still reeling.
I turned on my side to watch Suzanne sleep. The apartment was darkened except for the dim light cascading through the window on the other side of this cramped little studio Suzanne called home. I hadn’t told her, but it really didn’t suit her. She was that quiet country mouse who came to the big city, but never really fit in. She was too stubborn to notice this wasn’t her real home. No matter how much she wanted to escape, she didn’t really belong here. New York City was merely a temporary stopping point on her road to the life she deserved - a life where she didn’t have to worry about late-night phone calls or the sudden, unexpected loss of the ones she loved.
Her brother’s place in the Adirondacks suited her much better. She had smiled while she was there. She had laughed. For a brief time, she had forgotten what it was like to be fucked over by an asshole like me.
And when she returned to New York City, there was nothing but pain to welcome her.
I laced my fingers behind my head and stared at the ceiling, smiling to myself as I listened to Suzanne’s light, rhythmic snoring. I’d exhausted the poor woman - and myself. I should have already been on my way down Route 343, but I needed some rest from my unquenchable thirst for her.
I needed the physical strength to make myself walk out that door.
Because once I left, I wasn’t coming back.
This night was the biggest mistake of my life.
I’d made several recently, small ones that were easily corrected.
And some larger ones that were going to take time to unravel. Some of them I had actually made years ago and had been blinded to them for over a decade.
My inner circle had been breached and I just put the pieces together. My body tensed as the thoughts pushed their way back to the forefront of my mind and I worked to shove them away. I couldn’t let them consume me. Compartmentalize. Separate.
Stay focused.
I came to New York last night, knowing Suzanne was returning home from spending the Thanksgiving holiday with her brother. My people had done their job well - one of them had done it too well. Revealing things no one else should know - unless they were part of Sebastian’s inner circle as well as mine.
It’s one thing to be lied to. Liars were a dime a dozen in my line of work. Usually, I was good at ferreting them out and keeping my distance from them - or using them to my advantage, which is basically what I’d decided to do with this individual.
But the sting of betrayal left its mark.
I knew Sebastian’s nephew Darion had been feeding him information - useless crap I had planted in his path. Nothing that really mattered. But that bastard St. Valentine had someone else on his side - someone who had been in my wheelhouse for years...someone I trusted with my life and the lives of the people who meant the most to me.
And he’d been feeding information to Sebastian for almost half a fucking decade.
Fortunately, he wasn’t the only person in my circle I trusted. I had zero implicit trust in anyone who worked for me -anyone. There was only one man I put my faith in and after what I’d learned in the last thirty days, Dante was going to need me on his side.
I just hadn’t figured it all out yet. There were so many moving pieces, so many players - some old, some new. This clusterfuck would be a bitch to unravel.
In the old days, I wouldn’t have had to bother understanding who had stabbed who in the back first. I would have taken them all out. The streets would have run red with their blood.
But we didn’t work that way anymore and there were too many innocent lives caught in the balance. My sister. My brother. Even my own mother. They all had to be protected, so coming out with a blazing response of gunfire and murder wasn’t my answer. I wasn’t desperate enough to give into the knee jerk reaction and show my strength and power by eliminating the world of every fucking traitor around me.
It would take time.
But that’s what I had in abundance - time.
