13. Gabriel

13

GAbrIEL

I see her sitting up in bed, a dark shape in the low light coming in from outside, her hands pressed to her face and her shoulders shaking, those low, moaning sobs spilling from her.

I felt terrible about upsetting Bella so much, earlier. It only took a few minutes after she fled the room for me to calm down, and I realized that maybe I was a little too harsh with her. I hadn’t thought I was being that harsh, but she’d looked like I’d slapped her. Or like she had thought I was going to.

I let my frustration over nearly kissing her the night before get the better of me, and that it was part of the reason I was as upset as I was, walking in and seeing her friend sitting on the living room couch, hanging out with my children. But I also felt profoundly startled by and uncomfortable with having someone that I didn’t know there, without any prior knowledge.

The worst part of it is that if Bella had just asked me, I would have been fine with it. I would have preferred to meet Clara first, but I would have understood her wanting her friend to come and visit. It’s not as if having a friend hanging out while Bella goes about her usual day with Cecelia and Danny is such a huge distraction that it would make it impossible for her to watch them—I don’t truly believe that Bella would let it get in the way of doing her job.

But what confused me the most was how much Bella overreacted to the entire situation. How much she seems to be overreacting to it now— if that’s what this is all about. Thinking of it that way sends a flicker of guilt through me—but it seemed like an overreaction. I raised my voice a little, reprimanded her, maybe embarrassed her a little in front of her friend, I’ll admit. But I didn’t scream or shout or threaten, and she acted as if I’d done all of those things. As if she thought I was going to hit her, or throw her out of the house.

She looked terrified .

That protective instinct that I’ve felt for her since the moment we met takes over, and I walk to the bed before I can think better of it, sinking down on the edge and putting my arms around her. I pull her towards my chest, one hand against her hair, but I feel her stiffen instantly, her entire body starting to shake as she wrenches away from me. I get a glimpse of her face in the moonlight, her eyes wide and terrified, her cheeks streaked with tears, and she lets out another gasping sob.

“Bella.” I frown, utterly confused as to what’s going on. “What happened? Surely this can’t be about this afternoon?—”

The only explanation I can think of is that she’s afraid I’m going to send her home. But still, her reaction feels so disproportionate to the argument we had. I don’t even know why she would think that, I didn’t even hint at it.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to find out?—”

“Find out what?” A small dart of concern zips through me. “Bella, what’s going on?”

“I—” She swallows hard. “I have nightmares. I should have told you, but I didn’t want to freak you out. I take sleeping pills, usually, to keep from having them. But I ran out of my prescription by accident, and I called this morning to get a refill, and they said I needed to make a doctor’s appointment first. So now I have to wait until then, and this is the first night I haven’t had them since I’ve been here, so?—”

Her voice trails off, and I feel a pang in my chest. It suddenly seems a little clearer why she was so eager to have Clara come over. If she’d known she wouldn’t have her sleeping pills, she would have been worried about exactly this happening, and probably wanted someone she knew to ease the anxiety. I feel a pang of guilt for being so upset with her—but I couldn’t have known. She didn’t tell me anything about any of this.

“I—it doesn’t matter,” she says quickly, and I can see the tension in her, the way she wraps her arms around her middle. “I’ve had them for a while. I was just worried about what you’d think if you knew. Once I have the pills, I won’t have them anymore.” She bites her lip, her chin tucked down, and I let out a slow breath.

“I need to know these things, Bella,” I say as quietly as I can, resisting the urge to touch her. My instinct is to touch her chin, to tilt her face up so I can see it, but every time I’ve ever tried to touch her, she recoils from me. The only moment where I thought she might not was?—

I push the thought of that near-kiss out of my head forcefully. This is far from the time to be thinking about that.

“I can’t,” she whispers, curling in on herself a little more, and worry battles with concern, my thoughts tangling. I’m worried for her , but also about what unknown situation I might have walked into without being aware of the specifics. I was upfront with her about everything she needed to know before taking this position, and I feel a small stab of resentment that she hasn’t done the same.

But whatever this is, clearly, it’s affected her terribly. And the way she’s behaving?—

I’ve had four years to get past the hurt of what happened to my wife. But this seems as if it was much more recent. As if maybe Bella hasn’t had the chance to heal from it.

As if maybe that’s part of the reason she was so afraid of being shuffled off into an arranged marriage so soon after?—

Another, she’d said. She had avoided my question about that, last night. And I can’t help but feel that has something to do with it.

“Whatever it is, I’ll do my best to understand,” I promise her gently. I curl my fingers against my palm, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her hand. “I had nightmares, too,” I admit, after another moment’s silence. “After my wife died. I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I ended up getting a similar prescription, because I couldn’t be a walking zombie and take care of my children and my business. The nightmares were awful. I don’t like to think about them. But—” I hesitate, rubbing my hand along the side of my leg. “It took a long time—it’s been years now—but they’ve gotten better. I can sleep on my own, and I rarely have them. It’s every great once in a while, if at all. It does get better,” I repeat, wanting her to feel that that’s true. That it won’t always be like this for her. “Tell me who hurt you, Bella,” I urge gently. “I can’t help if I don’t know.”

Bella swallows hard. I see the movement of her throat, the way her fingers curl into the sheets, her body tense and trembling, as if she’s still fighting off the fears that haunt her sleep. She takes a slow, deep breath, and she doesn’t look at me as she starts to speak.

“You asked me last night about what I meant when I said my father was arranging another marriage for me. And I didn’t want to talk about it.” Her shoulders rise and fall in small, quick breaths, her fingers picking and tugging at the sheets, every part of her wound tight. “Six months ago, I was engaged to the Bratva heir. A man named Pyotr Lasilov. He was engaged to my cousin before, the late D’Amelio don’s daughter?—”

“Enzo. I did business with him from time to time,” I say quietly. “He was a good man.”

“Well, he promised his daughter to a monster,” Bella bites out. “But maybe he didn’t know. I want to think my father didn’t know. But Gia’s godfather stopped her wedding to Pyotr at the last second. There was gossip about it for weeks. He thought Pyotr would hurt her, he was her guardian, and he wouldn’t hand her over to the Bratva. There was tension for weeks; I remember my father being worried about security, that there was no telling what the Bratva would do or who they would go after—but I barely paid attention to it.” She lets out a small, bitter laugh. “I didn’t think it mattered to me.”

“And it did?”

“Salvatore convinced the Bratva to make peace if they were given a different bride. He and my father arranged a marriage between Pyotr and I. He paid my father a lot of money, and promised me security during and after the wedding, until they were sure that Pyotr would be good to me. Everyone promised me I would be safe.” Her voice starts to shake, cracking at the last. “They promised?—”

Everything in me wants to reach out and hold her. I can hear the fear in her voice, and I want to tell her to stop, that it’s okay, that she doesn’t have to keep explaining. But a part of me knows that I need to know this. Especially if her past involves the Bratva, this is something I need to know.

“Pyotr is dead now,” I say calmly. “I remember hearing about that. An attempted coup of some sort at a wedding. I ignored the finer details at the time—the only thing that mattered to me was the transfer of power. But—” I narrow my eyes, some of the pieces starting to click into place. “That was your wedding.”

Bella nods, her voice still cracking as she speaks, her hands twisting into the blanket in front of her. “It was a trap. The Bratva set up a trap. They got all of the guests in the church, locked the doors, and turned on them. It was a bloodbath. I have no idea how many people survived. I was panicking, afraid—there was blood on me—” She starts to sob again, trembling so hard it almost seems like she’s going to convulse. “They dragged me into a car,” she whispers, between small sobs. “They said Pyotr would—he wouldn’t marry me, but he was going to—” She swallows hard. “He would—have me, anyway. And his men made bets on if they would get to afterwards. They had their hands all over me, tearing my dress, and?—”

She dissolves at that, and I grit my teeth, horror sweeping through me. “I understand,” I tell her quickly, biting back my anger to focus on what’s important now, in this moment. “You don’t have to tell me anything else, Bella. I get it. I can understand why you would have nightmares after that.”

“I was barely able to get out of bed for three months,” she whispers brokenly. “I was finally starting to be able to function again, when my father said he’d been looking for another husband for me all that time. He thought I would just get married to someone else, just like that. I said I couldn’t, but—” Another sob escapes her. “And then I ran into you?—”

So many things click, at that. Why she was so panicked at the thought of marriage—not just because she objected to marrying a stranger, but because of what had so recently happened to her. Why she flinches at any touch. Why she had a panic attack when I barely raised my voice to her.

Anger floods through me, hot and thick, at the thought of what was done to her. At the Bratva for harming her, at her father for agreeing to the marriage, at all of it. I can feel the fury boiling up, itching for an outlet, and I have to fight back the urge to go out this minute and find one of the people responsible, and make them pay.

“I know you won’t want me to keep working here, after this,” she whispers. “You won’t want me to keep taking care of Cecelia and Danny, not with me being so unstable, like this?—”

She starts to cry again, and I once again have to fight back the urge to put my arms around her. The urge to protect her, to take care of her, to comfort her—it feels like a physical thing, like something I have to restrain because I know it’s not what she wants or needs. It’s not going to help her. It will only make things worse.

But this, at least, I can fix. This, I can reassure her about.

“No, Bella,” I tell her gently. “You’re not going anywhere, unless you want to. I understand. I can’t imagine you not having a reaction like this, honestly. And this isn’t so bad that I don’t feel that I can still trust you with them.”

She looks up, visibly startled. “You’re not kicking me out?”

I shake my head. “No. Of course not. Tell me when your doctor’s appointment is, and I’ll make sure the driver is available to take you to it.” I pause, taking a breath. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”

At the moment, I can’t help but feel that I’d do anything. Anything within my power, to take that look out of her eyes, to help her not feel this way. It feels like a visceral need, something stronger than anything I’ve felt in a long time, and I have to hold myself back, to remind myself that I have no idea what she really needs. That I won’t know unless she tells me.

A look of surprise crosses Bella’s face, ever so briefly. She seems startled that I care, that I want to make this better for her. And I find once again, that I’m reconsidering my opinion of Masseo after all this time that I’ve worked with him. Her father should have been there for her, cared for her through all of this —especially since he’s partially the architect of it all. But it seems as if she’s been all alone.

“No,” Bella says quietly, sniffing back tears as she shakes her head. She wipes her face, giving me a small, weak smile. “Thank you, though. Getting to my appointment will help—a lot. And being able to stay here,” she adds after a moment. “I really am happy here. This doesn’t mean I’m not.”

“I know that,” I assure her. And I do. I’ve been able to see that, since she’s been here. I’ve seen her relax little by little, with more happiness on her face than there was when we first met. She’s been less nervous, less jumpy. And now that all that has clicked, I don’t want her to lose the progress she’s made because of tonight.

“If you need anything,” I add, “Tell me. If there’s something I can do, I’ll do it for you. I promise.”

She gives me another of those small, sad smiles. “I don’t really think there is anything,” she says softly. “But I’ll keep that in mind.”

“That’s all I’m asking.” I feel that urge to reach out and touch her again, to comfort her, but I stop myself. Instead I stand up, fighting the instinct to stay with her. To not leave her alone when it’s clear that she has so much to contend with.

Once again, she lingers in my thoughts as I finally leave, trying to shake the image of her sitting in the middle of her bed, the sheets pooling around her, her hair loose around her face. But it feels different this time. I slide back into my own bed, and I feel that twinge of desire, that reaction that’s so hard for me to stifle when she’s near. But there’s more to it.

It feels like an impossible tangle of emotions—lust tempered with caring, with concern, and that boiling inferno of rage simmering just below the surface, the undeniable desire to go and find the people who hurt her, to make them pay for it. I know Pyotr Lasilov is dead, and with him, a good number of his men. I heard that news already, some months ago. But I’m sure that some of his men survived. I’m sure that there are others who were party to it who haven’t paid any price at all. And that thought makes my hands curl into fists, my jaw clenching as I think of what I’d like to do to the men who dared to do such awful things to an innocent woman. Who reduced Bella to what I saw tonight—a scared, broken girl.

One thing feels certain to me.

I need to talk to Masseo again, as soon as I can.