Chapter 8

REUBEN

For the last twenty or thirty minutes, I stared at the page without reading a word.

Finally, I slid the bookmark into place and closed the book. If anyone dogeared any of my books, they'd lose a few fingers. As they should. If I was obsessive over anything, it was the condition of my books. Meticulous, clean and with spines unbroken.

I placed the book on the table beside me and scrubbed a hand over my face. At the best of times, I couldn't sleep more than two or three hours a night. With Mina in the house, I was unlikely to get that much.

Gianni once suggested I was at least part vampire. I'd rolled my eyes at him. For his own amusement, he spent the next week with a scarf wrapped around his neck.

I ignored his attempts to goad me, and eventually he stopped wearing it. It might have been Damon's threat to use the scarf to strangle Gianni that did it. Damon was as quiet as I was and just as unpredictable. He may just as easily have carried out his threat on a whim.

Given how irritated I'd be if he killed Gianni, it was best he hadn't.

I suspected Gianni was safe from Damon's hands. They seemed to have some understanding that bordered on a fucked up bromance. Or at least, a mutual agreement not to take each other's lives. I didn't care as long as shit didn't get messy.

I looked up as Gianni slid into the room. Didn't say a word while he sat across from me, his hands steepled and pressed against his lips.

"I scared the shit out of her," he said finally.

"I saw." I heard a rapid shuffling, followed by a thump as she hit the floor.

I hadn't stopped to think, I'd just found myself at her door. Immediately, I wanted to soothe the expression of fear from her face. Fuck, I wanted to pick her up off the floor and wrap my arms around her. If I hadn't thought that wouldn't scare her more, I would have, so I kept my distance.

"I had no idea." Gianni's brow was as furrowed as I'd ever seen it. His dark eyes were troubled. "I showed her a video of her brother and I thought she'd like some other music."

"You couldn't have known," I said. "This won't be the last thing that triggers her."

"I know, I just figured if she could stand looking at my face, then a bit of music was harmless." His forehead smoothed and he smiled slightly.

I grunted softly. "Apparently there are things in this world more terrifying than your face."

He chuckled. "Reuben Brantley, did you just make a joke?"

My left shoulder rose and fell, barely more than a twitch. "I don't make jokes, just observations."

"I knew you secretly loved me." He laced his fingers together and placed them across his lap.

"So secretly I, myself, wasn't aware of it," I said dryly.

That made him grin more. "Ouch. I have knives gentler than you."

"I'm not supposed to be gentle," I said. "Gentle gets people dead."

He arched an eyebrow at me. "I saw the way you looked at Mina. There's gentleness deep inside you."

I arched mine back at him. "If you ever say that again, you'll be on the other end of one of your knives."

"You know what your problem is?" He tapped his hand against his thigh.

I gave him a flat stare.

As if I hadn't made it clear I didn't want to continue this line of conversation, he went on.

"Your problem is that you think being gentle is a weakness. Sometimes it's a strength. If you softened enough to let someone in, you might find it beneficial."

"I don't need to let anyone in," I said, my teeth gritted.

"Bullshit." He was unflinching. "Everyone needs to let someone in once in a while. Like I said, I saw how you looked at Mina. Like you wanted to tuck her into your pocket and keep her safe from the world. Or better yet, into your pants."

I gripped the arms of my chair and glared at him. "After all she's been through?—"

He smiled with something that looked like triumph. "See what I mean? I've never seen you protective of anyone before. Not like this."

I worked my jaw back and forth, but couldn't summon the words to deny the accusation. Finally, I released the arms and placed my hands on my thighs.

"She was a fucking kid," I said softly. "What kind of monster hands a kid over to another monster? What debt did DiMarco have that he'd pay for it with an eighteen-year-old girl?"

"Is it because she was eighteen, or because she was Mina?" Gianni asked. "I heard you tell her she was always beautiful." He blinked a couple of times. "Is this why you don't let anyone in? You have a thing for her. For a long time by the sound of it."

"You're stepping very close to dangerous territory," I warned. I usually didn't allow anyone around me to speculate on my personal life, especially not to my face.

Gianni scoffed as only he could. "You're not going to have me killed because I figured out you have a crush. I don't blame you. I have a bit of a crush on her myself. I want to protect her from all the shit in this world. All the bad people who might want to hurt her."

"We are the bad people," I pointed out. "We're exactly the ones she should be protected from."

"Are you going to let her go?" He cocked his head, but he already knew the answer. He was nothing if not intuitive and he knew me better than most people. Sometimes it worried me that I'd let him get too close. Other times, having someone see through my stony fa?ade was a relief.

"No," I said firmly. "She's not…well enough to leave here. Oliver Ryan was adamant about that."

"And when she is?" Gianni pressed. "In a week, or a month, or a year, when she's well enough to walk out the front door, are you going to let her?"

I averted my eyes. "No." It was as simple as that.

"Because?" He shot back. "Because you've already decided she's yours. Now you have her here, you want to keep her here."

"She's mine." I looked back at him, my jaw firmly set. "I'll make sure she knows that."

"And if I want her too?" His jaw was just as firm.

Gianni with his mind made up was insurmountable. He rarely needed to be so rigid, but when he was, nothing, and no one was moving him. Not a single millimetre.

I was just as stubborn, but I could have someone killed if they tried to get in my way.

"That's a conversation for the future," I said. I didn't bother to threaten him. If Mina wanted both of us, I wouldn't deny her. I didn't let myself think about what would happen if she didn't want either of us. She had too much healing to do to contemplate any of these possibilities yet. Healing we'd help her through.

"I'm going to have to find out what kind of music she likes," he mused, the tension leaving the conversation. "She didn't seem to be a fan of Wolf Venom."

"Then she has good taste," I said. My brother's band was not music I enjoyed. Another advantage when he quit and rejoined the family, was that I wouldn't have to hear any more of it.

"She might prefer Blazing Violet or Ice Blue Roses," Gianni mused.

I grimaced. Blazing Violet was at least as loud as Wolf Venom. According to the twins, both bands would be touring together soon. Along with Abbie Hart. She seemed to hold some influence over my brother. I made a note to have the twins bring her to me for a little chat.

"You should try listening to something that was released more recently than twenty years ago," Gianni said.

"I'd rather read books," I said bluntly. "Books aren't loud."

"Audiobooks can be loud," he pointed out.

"Have you ever known me to listen to an audiobook?" I asked.

He rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "Now I think about it, no I haven't."

"Because I don't," I said.

"Is this one of those 'audiobooks aren't real books' things?" he asked.

"No, it's one of those 'I prefer quiet,' things," I said. I couldn't concentrate on voices reading out loud to me. My mind wandered too much. Maybe if I had fewer thoughts fighting it out in my head to be noticed, I could focus on something like that. Right now, only reading a physical book shut out the noise. For the most part.

"Yeah, I guess you do," he said. "You tend to leave the room when the screaming starts." He wasn't accusing, just stating a fact. When the people he was slicing into started to shriek, I made myself scarce.

"I have better things to do than listen to you torture people." He was right though, I did leave the room before the noise became too much. One of the benefits to being the boss was that I didn't have to subject myself to things I didn't want to be subjected to. That included ear piercing sounds that gave me a headache.

"You don't know what you're missing." He rubbed the palms of his hands together and grinned.

"I know exactly what I'm missing," I said dryly. "Which isn't relevant. I pay you to do things like that so I don't have to." Just like I paid Terry to cook and the twins to do various odd jobs, and Damon to keep them in line.

"That's what I love about this job," Gianni mused. "I get paid to have fun."

"Maybe I shouldn't pay you," I said. "You might turn up and do it for free."

"If you didn't pay me, I'd have to go and work for the Bell family," he said. "I hear Samuel Bell has a?—"

"I don't give a shit what Samuel Bell has," I said.

I wouldn't stop paying Gianni, because he might do just that. And if he did, I'd have to have him dealt with. He was too good an asset to let go like that. I wouldn't admit it to myself, but I was accustomed to having him around. He was good at what he did, including taking care of Mina. Scaring the shit out of her with a song, notwithstanding.

"Not even if it's bigger than yours?" Gianni teased.

I rolled my eyes. "Nothing he has is bigger than anything of mine."

The Brantley and Bell families had been rivals for as long as anyone could remember. So long, I wasn't sure anyone knew how it started. It didn't matter, it wasn't ending anytime soon, unless one of our families was wiped out.

Gianni chuckled. "That's what I like about you, boss. You don't pull any punches. You know who you are and you don't give a shit what anyone thinks about you."

That wasn't true, I cared what Mina thought. She was the only one since she got old enough for me to really look at her. I'd wanted her back then, but her father got in the way. If I had any clue what he'd done, I would have prevented it, no matter what it took to do that. I would have paid back his debt and taken her for myself. Her life and mine would have been very different.

Now she was back with me, it was time to put us back on that path. As far as I was concerned, it was inevitable. No matter what I had to do to convince her of that.