Chapter 3 Gemma

Gunshots are as common as fire drills in this life. It doesn’t happen often, but when you hear them, your muscles respond to memories rippling through every fiber of your body. I’m trembling as every bullet pierces the silent night in front of the clinic.

Antonio’s covering me with his arm, tugging me closer into him as if his body is bulletproof. As sexy as protecting me is, I can’t shake the rejection trickling through my thoughts. He doesn’t want me the way I want him. The way I’ve always wanted him.

I remember the day Antonio came to the house. The first day I saw him. He was disheveled and sporting a much thicker goatee making his face menacing, dark, with those eyebrows which made it hard not to stare at him.

My brothers and father are all dangerous men. They treat me like the princess, but Antonio wouldn’t even glance in my direction. Of course, he didn’t. Why would any man just released from prison pay attention to his best friend’s little sister?

Eight years after that fateful one-sided encounter, on the night of my graduation, he showed up with the outstanding news that he’d busted his ass to graduate from med school. He was moving back to New York and now that I was eighteen, I thought I stood a chance.

Still, Antonio didn’t pay me any mind. I’d flirt with him, and he’d give me a smile. A smile as if to say, aww she’s got a crush on me, but he wouldn’t bite.

Even to this day, when he has to be my fiancé, he wants nothing to do with me. This is, and always has been, a one-sided crush. A crush from my childhood I should let go of, but how?

How am I supposed to stop fantasizing about a man who broke a door down to help me? To rescue me? To save me from Frankie? A scumbag who decided I needed to be some docile version of a woman partying in his nightclub.

Fuck Frankie. I hope Bash, Casper, and Damian gut him like a fucking fish.

But, Antonio?

Antonio has blood on his hands for me. He’s everything my mind’s painted him to be; living up to someone grander than the portrait of sexual desire hanging on the walls of my imagination.

However, the words that ring loudest are of Antonio telling Bash mere moments ago that he’d take his chances against Verducci rather than going along with this fake engagement. He doesn’t even want to pretend to love me.

The brief kiss to plant the seed of him being my fiancé lingers in my memory like a wet dream. A dream I’m dying to go back to because kissing the pavement right now has my adrenaline spiking through the roof. I wonder how Antonio feels about our kiss.

As the bullets ring out above us, I want him to keep me tucked into his side, protecting me from whoever followed us here. I wish I could shake the feeling that someone is watching me.

And then ... silence.

The shooting stops. I finally let my eyes open to see the pavement underneath us. The heaviness of Antonio’s arm across my back lightens.

“You got it?” Antonio shouts to my brothers, Bash and Casper.

Bash already has the trunk of his car open while Casper jumps into the driver’s seat. Bash shouts back to us. “Get out of here. We’ve got it under control. Fucking Verducci.”

I know how this story goes. My brothers will spend the rest of the night trying to catch the guy who just shot at us.

Antonio helps me to my feet and inspects me, tilting my head gently, and running his fingers through my hair. I lean into his touch, shifting my gaze to his face, where worry etches into his eyes.

“Are you hurt?” he asks.

I shrug, a cloak of nonchalance settling over me. “Groggy more than anything, but no bullet holes.”

The crispness of the night air flowing through my nose helps ease my adrenaline as we walk toward the car.

“I’m going to hang behind here,” Ronan says, while tossing the keys to us.

“I don’t think that’s safe,” Antonio counters as he opens the door for me to get inside.

Ronan shrugs. “There are bullets and bullet holes in the walls of the clinic. My sisters will be here in a few hours, and I don’t want them to see it like this. If they do, they’ll call the cops and we know they will run through security footage from the clinic and surrounding areas. We don’t need that. Take her home. I’ll crash on the couch in Carmen’s office until the morning. You can come fetch me then.”

“Okay,” Antonio agrees and gets into the car.

The drive to his place is silent, but my mind shoots off one question after another. I can barely stand it. I open the window, catching the breeze from the waters of the bay. There’s a hint of hope the air will ease my mind, along with the high I’m coming down from, and the fear of being shot at.

“I don’t think Verducci was the one shooting at us just now.” Antonio’s voice is dark, contemplative, but his eyes stick to the road.

“Who else would take a shot at us?” I ask him.

“I don’t know, Gemma. I broke Frankie’s nose, and I doubt Verducci would follow us all the way here, wait until we come outside, and shoot at us five times.”

“That’s it? It was only five?” I squeeze my eyes shut, pinching the bridge of my nose as I try to recall what happened only a few minutes ago.

“Yeah, just the five. Verducci isn’t sloppy enough to open fire and leave the bullets and shell casings behind. Have you bruised anyone else’s ego lately?” he asks with a slight grin.

While I sense the jest in his question, he has no idea I’ve done far worse than bruise someone’s ego. My heart thumps as memories from the most terrifying night of my life replay in my mind. One shot ringing out through a dark New York City night led to the splash of a body hitting the water.

It so happened Natalie was moving back to the west coast at that time. I went with her. I thought I could get away from this life; a life where dating me was a way to get close to my brother, the newest Don of the Marzano crime family. Betrayal, heartbreak, and murder chased me away from my posh New York City life.

San Francisco’s not a complete demotion of my lifestyle, but I wanted a fresh start. I’d done, and gotten away with, so much that I couldn’t bear to step back into the life of a mafia princess. But here I am.

Drugged, attacked, shot at, and now engaged to a guy who never wanted to be with me in the first place.

“No, I’ve been on my best behavior recently. I want to thank you for everything you did tonight. Let me cook you something,” I tell him, wanting to get off any subject that might trigger my past to become the topic of discussion.

“Right now? If you’re hungry, we can grab something on the way to my place.”

“When your wife-to-be offers to cook for you, you should let her cook for you,” I tell him with a smirk. He may not want to be my fiancé, but with everything that’s happened tonight, I need to find some joy in this shit show.

“How’d you come up with that story anyway?” he asks.

“It’s how my parents got together. My mom was being hassled by some jerk at a restaurant. She was waitressing. Dad was an enforcer or something for my grandfather. The jerk was a made man for another family. Dad said Ma was his fiancée to stop the asshole from tuning her up, and the rest is history.”

He nods. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty sweet love story. The way they look at each other; it’s like they were meant to be. I’ve always wanted something like that, but falling in love is out of the question for me.”

“Oh?” He raises one delectable eyebrow with the corner of his mouth tilting upward. “No love for you, huh? Aren’t you a bit young to make that decision?”

“So, it’s my age that turns you off. Noted,” I murmur to myself. But I don’t want to dwell on that as I answer his question. “No. Being twenty-three and growing up in New York makes you like thirty everywhere else. Tack on being a part of the Marzano Family, and well ... I’m old enough to know what love gets me.”

“What does love get you?” he asks as we arrive at one of the tallest buildings downtown. We drive into the building’s underground parking garage.

“Love gets me into trouble. It cost me something I’ll never get back, but when I think of that time, it wasn’t love. I just wanted it to be.”

“How old were you when you fell out of love with love?” He pulls the car into a parking spot, holding a finger for me to be patient. He gets out, scans the surroundings, and walks around to open the door for me.

“I was eighteen,” I admit, stepping out of the car.

I’m not as dizzy as before. Thankfully, the drugs in my system seem to be wearing off. “I was feeling a bit down, rejected, and the first guy who made me laugh got a date out of me. One date led to us dating for over a year, but then he showed me who he truly was. He was just using me to get in with Bash.”

“I’m sorry, Gemma.”

“What about you, Antonio? What’s being in love look like for you? Who’s the lucky woman we have to sit down and tell we’re in a fake relationship to stop angry gangsters from trying to kill you?”

He laughs. “You know better than that, Gemma. You’ve always been a straight shooter. You can just ask me if I’m seeing someone. Don’t assume.”

“So, are you seeing someone, Antonio?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I ask him as we step onto the elevator.

There are eighteen floors in this high rise and Antonio has to press his thumb onto a tiny fingerprint scanner beside his floor, PH. Of course he lives in the penthouse. He has to be rich, handsome, a doctor, and my savior.

His voice cuts into my thoughts, forcing me to peer into those olive-green eyes as he says, “Because the only woman I’m interested in thinks she turns me off.”