His Mafia Queen

All Wrong

Riley

"You've got it all wrong." Gabriel says this as peers up at me, his eyes wide and pleading.

I look over his head and out the window, into the darkness where the jungle-like foliage is barely visible. It's a tangle of vines and leaves and spiny, spiky plants out there. A visual representation of what my mind must look like right now. A sigh leaks out of my mouth.

It seems like this is a pattern for us. He does something, I find out a half-truth, I ask about it, he hems and haws. Maybe this comes with the territory of being a mob boss' girlfriend, but I'm sick of it.

I tilt my face down so I can stare him in the eye. "Then correct me."

He hauls himself to his feet and begins to pace. I know him well enough to understand that this means he's troubled about what he's going to say.

"She said that? That you should ask me what happened?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Christ." He shakes his head. "She's turning into a problem."

I held up my hands. "Hey, you're the one who invested in her business, not me."

He stops and shoots me a brief glare, then goes back to pacing. "You really want to know?"

I slap the sofa, exasperated. "Dammit, Gabriel, if I didn't want to know, I wouldn't ask."

With pure fire blazing in his dark eyes, he sits next to me. "Remember how I told you she was raped by one of her father's men, a bodyguard?"

I nod, my stomach twisting. Whatever he's about to say, it's not going to be pleasant. Now that I understand what this involves, I wish I'd never asked.

"I killed that man."

He says it so matter-of-factly that I fumble my water, spilling what's left onto me. The heavy glass tumbles to the floor. Fortunately, there's a sumptuous rug to catch its fall, and it doesn't break.

Neither one of us goes to pick it up.

I open my mouth, breathless. "Gabriel. You..."

"I shot him, then dumped his body in a swamp near Georgia."

Before tonight, I suspected that Gabriel had killed people. He'd told me as much, hell, he'd come home with blood staining his shirt. But he never spoke so plainly about it as he did just now, and never with such a quiet fierceness.

"I cared for her so much as a friend that I couldn't stand the thought of her attacker walking this earth. Living his life. He stole something from her, Riley. She used to have a certain lightness about her. Maybe she's gotten it back, I don't know. But she was almost catatonic in those weeks afterward, and I got angrier and angrier."

My heartbeat whooshes in my ears, so loud that it almost makes me dizzy. "Did she ask you to kill..." I can't get the full sentence out. "Did she ask you to do that?"

He shakes his head. "I did it on my own and told her later."

"What was her reaction?"

He shrugs. "At first she was angry, worried that her father would retaliate."

"Did he?"

Gabriel shakes his head firmly, and for once, I don't ask the details.

"Then she decided to leave university and the state entirely, which I understood. Before she left, she thanked me for murdering the guy. Hell, Riley, I was young and impulsive. But I'd still do it again if needed."