Chapter 22

Iknow she has questions. I just hope like fuck she waits until we're alone to ask them. I close the car door as soon as Daisy slides into the passenger seat. Marcel walks out of the bar a few seconds later. Of all the fucking places in the world, they had to come to this one.

"How was she?" I ask Marcel, nodding my head towards the building behind him.

"Not great," he says. "But that's understandable given the situation."

"Yeah." I walk around to the driver's side, while Marcel jumps into the back.

Daisy spins around to look at him. "You wanna swap? I don't mind."

"I do mind. You're not sitting in the fucking back, Daisy," I tell her before pressing the button and bringing the engine to life.

"It's okay. Thanks for the offer but let's not poke the bear, Daisy." Marcel laughs.

"So either of you wanna tell me who that girl was?" she asks.

My eyes meet Marcel's in the mirror. "What girl?"

"Don't play dumb, Gabrielle. It's really unbecoming. The pretty girl from the bar. How do you all know her?" Daisy presses before her face scrunches up in disgust. "Oh god, she's one of yours, isn't she?"

"One of my what?" I lift a brow, my mouth curling into a smirk.

"Is she, like, an ex? Someone you used to hook up with?" Daisy says. "I mean, I don't care if she is. Whatever you did BD has nothing to do with me."

"BD?" Marcel parrots.

"Before Daisy." She shrugs, and Marcel nods.

"Right."

"It's not like that. She's Shelli's sister, and let's just say she's not our biggest fan at the moment," I tell her.

"Shelli? Santo's Shelli?" Daisy asks. "Why isn't she your fan?"

She knows that Santo's fiancée died. She's heard about it around the house, and I've mentioned it in passing. She just doesn't know how or why. Then again, I guess none of us really know why either.

"She blames us for Shelli's death," Marcel tells her.

I glare at him through the rearview mirror. He needs to shut his mouth. The fact that our father killed our brother's fiancée isn't something that Daisy needs to know about. I've fucking worked my ass off to keep the darkness of our world from touching her. And I'm not going to give her any reason to be scared or want to end this thing we have going on. I don't like what I do. I can't exactly expect her to be okay with the things I do either.

Which is why the less she knows, the better.

"Her sister died, Daisy. She needs someone to blame, and we're the bad guys." It's not a lie. We are the villains in Shelli's story. It's because of her involvement with Santo that she ended up getting killed.

"I don't think you're bad." Daisy smiles at me.

"You might be the only person in the world who would say that." I reach over and take hold of her hand.

"I don't care what other people think or say. Their opinions really don't matter, Gabe."

I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. I don't want to be having this conversation right now. "Marcel, where am I driving you?" I ask my brother as a means of changing the subject.

"Dom's," he says.

Dom is one of his friends from school. He's also probably one of the most psychotic assholes I've ever met. "Are you carrying," I say more than ask. It would be stupid not to be.

"Worried about me, bro?" Marcel laughs.

"When you hang out with Dom, always."

"Don't be. He's harmless." Marcel shrugs, and I shake my head. Because we both know that isn't true. Dominic McKinley is as harmless as a hole in the head.

"Who's Dom?" Daisy turns around in her seat to look at my brother.

"A friend from uni," he tells her.

"Is he a hot friend?"

My head snaps in Daisy's direction. "He's about to be a dead friend," I mutter under my breath.

"How would I know if he's hot?" Marcel asks her with all seriousness.

"Does he have a flock of girls chasing after him?" she questions.

"Always, but he's also the heir to the McKinley dynasty. Kid's a fucking billionaire," he tells her.

"Oh, well, he's hot then." Daisy shrugs.

"You know, it's a good thing I'm fucking secure in this relationship," I grunt, and Daisy returns her attention to me.

"Don't worry, Gabe. No one is hotter than you. I'm not going anywhere."

"I wouldn't let you go anywhere," I tell her. "I'm not letting go of you, Daisy Blake. You're stuck with me now, baby."

After I drop Marcel off at the gate outside Dom's ridiculous mansion, I head to my place.

"Want to stay at mine tonight?" I ask Daisy. She doesn't answer right away. When I look across at her, she's chewing on her bottom lip. "What's wrong? You don't want to spend the night or something?"

"Not really. Can we go back to my place?" she asks.

"We can go anywhere you want to go, baby. But I am curious. What's wrong with my house?"

"It's going to sound stupid," she says.

"Try me."

"There are just a lot of people there, and I'm really selfish. I don't want to share you with everyone else. When we're at my apartment, it's just the two of us. No outside noise or distractions, and we can just be us. I don't know… I guess you're different when your brothers are around. Not bad different. Just more… tense. The only time I really see you relaxed is when you're in my apartment," Daisy explains.

I blink at her. She's fucking observant. I do relax when I'm locked away with her. It's easier to just be when it's just the two of us. I'm not really sure how to respond to her though. "I'm just going to stop and grab a bag."

"Okay."

Hours later, when we're in bed and Daisy is asleep on my chest, her words are still running through my head. She's right. I am so much more at ease when it's just me and her locked away in our own little space.

I pick my phone up from the bedside and fire off a message to El.

Me:

I want to be your first client for the De Bellis Agency. I need a house. Somewhere close to yours, but not so close you can just pop over to borrow sugar.

Surprisingly, my sister-in-law messages me back almost instantly. I wasn't expecting a response until morning.

El:

What sort of house? How many bedrooms? What kind of style? There are so many questions, Gabe. Also, does Gio know you're in the market for a new house?

Me:

Whatever you think Daisy will like is fine by me. But make it modern. I don't want shit falling apart. And it needs to be secure.

Me:

By the way, why are you awake?

El:

Can't sleep. Does Daisy know about this?

Me:

Not yet. Why can't you sleep? Where's Gio?

El:

He's in his office… working. I can't sleep because my brother-in-law is messaging me in the middle of the night about buying a house.

Me:

Go to sleep, El. Find me a house tomorrow.

Scrolling through my contacts, I bring up Gio's number and call him. Then I look down at Daisy, who's still passed out. This girl could sleep through a tornado.

"Gabe?" Gio answers.

"What are you doing?" I ask him.

"Working. Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, but you do know your wife is awake and waiting for you to go to bed, right?"

"She was asleep when I left her."

"I was just talking to her," I tell him. "She's awake."

"I'm heading back up in a minute," he says, then adds, "Why are you talking to my wife in the middle of the night?"

"I want her to find me a house." There's silence on the other end of the line. I pull the phone away from my ear to check that it's still connected. "Gio?"

"You're moving out?" he questions.

"I am."

"Why?"

"Because it's time. We can't live together forever, Gio."

"I can find a bigger house," he offers.

"That's just being over the top. I'm not leaving. I'm just getting my own place."

"Is that something you'd want to do? Leave?" he asks.

We both know he's not talking about the house anymore. He means the family. As much as I want to leave this life behind, I would never want to leave my brothers.

"No, I'd never leave you guys. You know that."

"Okay. I need you to go down to Zone B tomorrow. There've been issues the past few nights. Customers getting handsy. Someone needs to sort it out. We have to demonstrate more presence around town again," he says.

Zone B is one of our strip clubs, and honestly the last fucking place I want to be going. "Okay. Go to bed, Gio." I hang up the phone and set it on the bedside table.

I wonder how Daisy will feel about visiting a strip club with me…

Guess I'm going to find out tomorrow. It's one of the nicer clubs we own. I know I've been keeping her out of family shit as much as I can, but maybe showing her a little bit of what I do isn't that bad. Besides, all I'd really be doing at Zone B is people management. It's all aboveboard. Nothing illegal goes on in that club. The girls aren't even allowed to offer any off-the-books services to guests there. If we find out they have, or at the very least attempted to, they're out on their asses.

But that's tomorrow's problem. Right now, I just want to focus on the present. So I close my eyes and finally let sleep overtake me.