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She couldn’t see the man who’d followed her home from work in a burgundy Expedition, but she was betting he was still out there somewhere too.
Watching.
It made her feel better to know the cruiser was there, but she knew it wouldn’t last, which is why she’d finally bit the bullet and called Hawk. Nathan would risk the mayorship to keep her and Leo safe, would answer the abuse of power allegations that would come from using city resources to give them security, but she couldn’t ask him to do that when there was another way.
And there was another way, even if the thought of it — the thought of asking Logan for a favor after what she’d done to him — made her stomach turn.
Imperium was the best, and Hawk had already refused to let her pay them. She would be safe on their watch, and more importantly, so would Leo.
Stepping away from the window, she headed for the kitchen, trying to let go of the day’s tension. She’d made it home in time for Leo’s bedtime but had missed dinner, and she went to the fridge and removed the meatloaf and mashed potatoes Bea had left for her. The older woman was a godsend, keeping the house neat, getting Leo to and from school, making meals, and standing in for Gabriella’s parents, who had moved to Florida to be near Gabriella’s sisters.
She heated the food in the microwave and poured half a glass of wine. While her dinner finished heating, she contemplated getting the files Marcus had given to her on her way out of the office — dinner alone was always good time to get in extra work — then decided against it.
Her head was full — of the past and the present and the challenges that lay ahead in the weeks before they went to trial.
She needed some mental white space.
She took her plate to the table in between the open concept living room/dining room/kitchen and sat down with a sigh of relief. It felt good to eat a real meal at her own table, even if it wasn’t a meal prepared by her.
Bea was an excellent cook, and Gabriella appreciated the way she snuck spinach and shredded carrots into the meatloaf for Emilio. It was healthy, but it was also delicious, and she closed her eyes and savored the garlic and hints of sage in the meat.
She took a drink of wine and looked around, taking in the gourmet kitchen, the perfectly appointed dining area with the rustic farm table she’d bought from an antique dealer in Paris, the overstuffed sofas in the living area and the big screen TV where Leo watched his favorite shows.
It would have been easy to say the girl she’d been would have been surprised, that she never could have dreamed she’d have such a comfortable, beautiful life.
But it wouldn’t have been true.
She’d always had big dreams. She’d just held them close, like a secret she didn’t dare tell. Hawk and Leo had been hungry in their own way, but they’d conspired to make their way within the confines of their place in society.
Hawk had worked his ass off building Imperium, had worked two or three low-paying jobs at a time while he put all the pieces in place. And still, in the interviews she’d read in magazines and the ones she’d seen on TV, she’d caught the defensiveness in his posture, the challenge in his eyes. It was probably invisible to anyone else — except maybe Logan — but Gabriella had known Hawk since kindergarten and she knew what she saw.
Hawk still didn’t feel like he belonged.
Logan had taken a similar approach, working entry-level office jobs and working his way through school at night, earning a business degree from one of California’s many state colleges, his own stamp of legitimacy.
But Gabriella hadn’t wanted a slow and steady escape. She’d wanted to turn her back, had wanted to go someplace so far away that she could reinvent herself. She’d wanted to become someone else, someone who didn’t answer to the name Ella, someone who was educated, who wasn’t poor.
She hadn’t dared tell Hawk or Logan. Not when they’d been kids and Hawk had taken pride in pummeling anyone who looked at them wrong, and not when they were teenagers and she spent every second of every day wrapped up in Logan Bane.
Telling them she couldn’t wait to leave had felt like a betrayal of their friendship, of everything they’d been to each other. She’d kept it to herself, nodding and agreeing when they dreamed about their future as if she was going to be a part of it.
She couldn’t blame Logan for feeling blindsided by her announcement that she was going to school on the other side of the country. She’d never blamed him for his reaction. It had been a surprise because she’d designed it as a surprise, because she’d been seventeen and hadn’t known how to tell the boy she loved that she needed to leave him behind to save herself.
Telling him was the hardest thing she’d ever done up until their ill-fated dinner when she’d told him she was getting married, that she was pregnant with Nathan Fitzgerald’s child.
They’d been apart for over ten years by that point, but somehow Logan had still felt like an open door until that night.
She leaned back in her chair and finished her wine. It had always been a lie. They’d been doomed from the beginning: Logan, determined to stay and make good. Ella, determined to leave and never look back.
There had never been an open door. That was just an illusion, a dream she’d given herself when the vacuous sorrow opened up inside her, a notch carved out of her heart the day she’d walked away from Logan.
Sighing, she rose to her feet and carried her plate to the sink. She couldn’t afford to think about him, couldn’t afford to think about all the things that might have been.
And it didn’t matter anyway. Logan was a partner in Imperium. As far as she knew, he didn’t even do fieldwork anymore.
Hawk would assign one of the many bodyguards on the Imperium payroll to come to Chicago. Gabriella would hunker down and win the Vitsin case. After that, everything would go back to normal, her memories of Logan stored away in the dark corner of her heart where they belonged.
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