Gabriel Fallen, page 17
“Plumber’s coming at three today,” I say, casually shifting a file folder to cover it.
“Oh, thank heavens. I’m going to run to the bank to deposit this now so we can actually pay him!” With a giddy wave, she charges off.
I let out a giant sigh of relief, even while so many conflicting emotions swirl inside. How am I supposed to take this? There’s no doubt this is Gabriel’s doing. I didn’t ask him to do it. I didn’t suggest or hint at it.
Honestly, I didn’t even think to ask.
But he did it anyway, though he has trash-talked this place on plenty of occasions.
Appreciation swells in my chest, despite the sick irony of how that money likely arrived in his bank account in the first place.
Mercy: Thank you. You’re doing a lot of good for a lot of people.
I’m busy tearing my resignation letter up into tiny pieces when my phone chirps with a response.
Gabriel: What can I say, I’m a philanthropist.
I snort.
Gabriel: I need you to take Thursday and Friday off.
Mercy: Why?
Gabriel: Because I’m taking you somewhere.
Flutters stir in my stomach. I bite my lip as I consider his request. I write one exam tonight and the other on Wednesday. God knows I could use the break. And aside from the days I took when my father was on trial, I’ve never asked for any vacation days off.
Mercy: Where?
Gabriel: It’s a surprise.
Mercy: Only if you let me study, uninterrupted, before then.
Gabriel: Haven’t I been good so far?
He really has. Aside from bringing me meals and drinks, I’ve barely seen Gabriel since Saturday. I actually miss him.
Gabriel: Say yes.
I grin as I tap out my answer.
Mercy: Yes.
I hesitate before I send the next message.
Mercy: Make sure you’re there when I get home tonight.
Gabriel: Why?
Mercy: It’s a surprise.
So many years, so many exams.
And as I step out these heavy, glass doors for the last time, I feel weightless.
“How’d it go?” Ben asks, sidling up beside me.
“Well. I think it went well.” I sigh with relief. “Thank you for studying with me. It made all the difference.” We spent all Sunday at the library, quizzing each other and going over past exam questions until my brain was swimming.
He slides his hands into his pockets. “So I guess this is it.”
“For school? Yes.” I let out a breathy laugh. And to think, I nearly signed up for another four years of it in law school. “But I’ll call you.”
“Sounds good.” His head bobs eagerly, and then his eyes drift to a spot behind me. “I take it that’s for you?”
I turn around in time to see an SUV with tinted windows pull up next to the curb.
Gabriel steps out of the back seat in his typical sexy Empire attire—though it’s Wednesday—and gives me a subtle nod.
I’ve been so consumed with studying that aside from an hour-long shower with him on Monday night, complete with a happy ending for both of us, I’ve barely talked to him. He’s made himself scarce.
Now, the sight of him makes me giddy. “It is. See you around, Ben.” I practically float down the steps.
Gabriel is smirking when I reach him. “I take it the exam went well? Or are you just that excited to see me?”
I fight the urge to sink into his chest, but I can’t help my grin. “Exam went well. But I’m starving now.”
“Good. They have great food where we’re going.”
“And where is that?”
He gestures toward the back seat. “You’ll see.”
“Could you be more evasive?” I ask, attempting—and failing—to sound annoyed.
“I could,” he teases, and that dimple appears. “Come on.”
“But what about the Lincoln? I can’t just leave it here.”
“Already taken care of. Get in. We have a flight schedule.”
A flight schedule? I climb in, noting the two small suitcases tucked into the far back. “So, we’re going away away?”
He slides in beside me and pulls the door shut. He nods at the driver, and the SUV pulls away. “We’re going to Vegas. Rosita washed and packed all your things for you.”
“Vegas?” I can’t help the excited twang of my voice. I’ve always wanted to go.
“Yeah. Caleb and I are checking some property we’re thinking of buying and I thought you might like to get away.”
“This … yeah.” The prospect of doing something so spontaneous is overwhelming. A thought strikes me. “But when will we be back? Because my father is expecting me on Saturday.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be back on Saturday. It’s a short flight.” He slides his hand into mine, his calloused palm deliciously rough against my skin.
I can’t help but stare at where our hands are joined. Of all the heady, sexy things we’ve done, Gabriel simply holding my hand feels the most intimate.
“What’s that look for?” he asks, his brow furrowed with amusement.
“Nothing. This all just feels very …,” Boyfriendish … Lovey-dovey … I settle on, “date-y.”
He smirks. “What are you saying? That we can’t go on a date?”
“Would you even know how?”
“There’s nothing I can’t do with a woman.” He eyes me curiously. “Mercy, I’ve had my tongue in your ass. Why couldn’t we go on a date?”
I nearly swallow my tongue as my eyes flash to the driver, my cheeks burning bright.
Gabriel chuckles softly. It earns him a sharp elbow to his ribs.
“For starters, because you say things like that,” I hiss. “I doubt you could restrain yourself and do something normal like just hold a woman’s hand for a night.”
“Of course I could,” he argues.
Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it,” I mutter and let out a derisive snort.
His eyebrow arches. “That sounds like a challenge.”
Caleb is on his phone and pacing around another black Escalade when we pull into the airfield. A small private jet sits on the tarmac ahead of us, the door propped open. A nervous flutter stirs in my stomach. I wonder if this is the right time to tell Gabriel I’ve never been in a plane.
“What took you guys so long?” Caleb hollers when we step out.
“Construction, sir,” our driver explains, heading for the back to collect our luggage.
“Relax, we’re only fifteen minutes behind.” Gabriel’s fingertip trails down my spine. “You good, Mercy?”
“I’m fine,” I answer, my tone clipped. I’m so goddamn horny, I can barely stand my own dirty thoughts.
Gabriel likes to prove points. This is something I’m quickly learning. Today’s point was that he is fully capable of simply holding my hand and nothing more. It was unexpectedly sweet at first, as he weaved his fingers between mine and settled our joined hands on his muscular thigh on our way here.
I rolled my eyes at him but humored him by allowing it, offering a small smile.
But then the rhythmic stroking began. Slow, smooth strokes of his thumb to the beat of the music playing over the speaker, over my palm and my wrist. Soft drags of the edge of his fingernail, biting into my skin with just the right amount of pressure that it couldn’t fade into the background, couldn’t go unnoticed.
It wasn’t long before I found myself closing my eyes and imagining that skilled thumb stroking my bottom lip, the hard buds of my nipples, my swollen clit … and Gabriel proved even something as simple and innocuous as holding his hand could become a dangerous thing.
“Surprise!” a familiar voice shrieks.
My libido is temporarily doused when Michelle jumps out of the back seat of the other SUV. “Oh my God! What are you doing here?” I exclaim, my mouth hanging open.
She throws her arms around my neck. “Celebrating you finally being done with school! I’m coming to Vegas with you! I brought so many dresses!”
Warmth fills my chest as I return the hug. “Oh my God, this is so amazing.”
“Caleb came by my place Monday night to ask me.”
“Really?” I shoot him a glare.
He holds his hands up in surrender, but he’s grinning like the Cheshire cat.
“I asked Caleb to reach out to her,” Gabriel explains. “I figured you might want a friend there.”
“Hey!” One of the twins—Felix, I think—pops his head out of the open door of the jet. “You guys ready to go or what? We’re waiting!”
“Hot damn.” Michelle’s eyes widen at the sight of him. “Who is that?”
“Nobody while I’m around, sweetheart.” Caleb ropes his arm around my friend’s slim shoulders, pulling her into his muscular chest, his smirk downright devilish.
Gabriel leans in to whisper, “Do you want to tell her that she can have both of them, or should I?”
“Shut up,” I scold, but I’m laughing. What happens in Vegas and all that …
Gabriel presses a soft, lingering kiss against my lips.
This is not how I anticipated celebrating the end of school. I must admit, it’s a million times better. “Thank you for doing this. It was very thoughtful.” Something I’m learning Gabriel is abundantly capable of, when he wants to be.
He pulls me flush against him, and my body aches for the hard length pressing against my stomach. “Is it normal enough for you?” He mocks.
“Nothing with you is normal, Gabriel.” From his incarcerated mobster father to the means by which his family “allegedly” makes their fortune, to the depraved bribery scheme that got me here in the first place… it’s about as far from normal as anyone can get.
Then again, my life up until now wouldn’t exactly be labelled “normal” either.
“I’m trying, Mercy. I really am.” Gabriel bends to touch his forehead against mine. “We’re going to look at a hotel and casino to buy.”
I laugh. “That’s so the opposite of trying to be normal.” He really has no clue.
A cute, sheepish grin touches his lips. “Yeah. I know. It’s big. But if we can pull it off …” His jaw tenses, his hesitation to continue that sentence obvious. “It’ll be just Caleb and me, one-hundred-percent legit. We won’t be involved with anything else.” He gives me a knowing look. “We both want away from it. We’ve wanted away from it for a long time, but when you have family ties like we do, it’s not easy.”
It’s the most he’s ever divulged, the closest he’s ever admitted to being tied to the drug trade. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Mercy?” His deep blue eyes are oddly bright. “Because you were the final push for me. I want to be better for you. I want to deserve you.”
I swallow the rising lump in my throat. For all of Gabriel’s dirty talk and arrogance, hearing him speak so frankly, so earnestly, threatens to weaken my knees.
But what would Gabriel need to do to “deserve” me? What would I accept? I can’t begin to wrap my head around the answer to that. He wants to build himself a new life, a “legit” life, but he’s building it atop a dirty empire.
Even so, the deplorable Gabriel Easton is trying to change.
For me.
Everyone has to start somewhere, I guess. Even the asshole who propositioned me in a prison parking lot.
“You have a lot of work ahead of you then,” I whisper. “A lot of groveling. A lot of deep internal reflection. A lot of everything.”
A smirk slowly spreads across his mouth. “I can’t wait to get you into our hotel room so I can …” He leans in and teases my lips with the tip of his tongue, “… hold your hand all night.”
I burst with laughter. “You’ll be groping me within five minutes after takeoff.”
“Probably.” He grins, and it makes him look oddly boyish. “Ready?”
I sigh heavily. “Yup.”
That’s the precise moment that the plane explodes.
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SNEAK PEEK - DIRTY EMPIRE
Mercy
I want to be better for you. I want to deserve you.
Gabriel said those words to me. He whispered them as he pressed his forehead against mine, and my heart fluttered at the thought that this reprehensible man I’ve somehow grown fond of could—would—change his criminal ways for me. In my mind, he was making me a promise. The kind you make when you’re in love with another person and want to change.
And then the private jet we were about to climb into exploded into a fireball and the reality of who Gabriel is and the kind of life he leads came crashing down.
Now, sitting on Gabriel’s couch hours after being surrounded by a circus of sirens, emergency workers, and city and state law enforcement, I can hear the blast of metal, feel the intense heat of the fireball, and smell the ash and black smoke as if I’m still at the airfield. But it’s Gabriel’s and Caleb’s pained screams for their perished friends that fill center stage in my numbed mind.
“Mercy.”
It takes me a moment to focus on Gabriel’s handsome face. He’s perched on the edge of the coffee table in front of me, his calloused hands woven through mine, a somber expression pulling his brow tight as he studies me. I recall the first time I encountered those stormy blue eyes at Fulcort Penitentiary. We were there to visit our fathers: mine, a kind, loving man wrongly convicted of murder; his, a hardened crime boss who should be serving twenty times the sentence handed down to him. Whatever Vlad Easton was sentenced to is a misdemeanor compared to what he’s done in his lifetime.
I remember thinking Gabriel a wildly attractive man, with that chiseled jaw and plump lips and playboy swagger. But he was affiliated with a dangerous inmate and therefore someone I wanted to stay far away from. His indecent proposal a week later—that I stay with him in exchange for his providing protection for my father—only confirmed it.
And yet here I am.
“Are you all right?” Gabriel asks, his raspy voice unusually soft.
I nod absently, though the last thing I feel right now is all right.
“She needs something to take the edge off.” Gabriel’s brother, Caleb, hands him a tumbler glass of amber liquid. Gabriel wordlessly slips it into my grasp. It must be the scotch Caleb cracked as soon as we strolled through the front door. I only noticed because it’s not his usual thirty-eight-thousand-dollar vodka. I thought it strange at the time that he bypassed his favorite. Funny, the things you notice when you’re in shock.
I’d rather drink gasoline than scotch, but I tip my head back and pour it down my throat anyway, relishing the burn of hard liquor, barely aware of the taste.
“That a girl,” Gabriel croons, smoothing a hand over my bare knee.
“Ready for another?” Caleb tops his own glass.
I swallow and shake my head. Only then do I notice my best friend is missing. “Where did Michelle go?” There’s a hint of panic in my voice. Did she change her mind and take off?
“I sent her up to my room to take a nice, hot shower,” Caleb says, his tone dispassionate.
Normally I’d have some quip, some warning, some ring of an alarm inside my head at the idea of Michelle getting too close and comfortable with Gabriel’s brother, a manwhore by anyone’s standards. Now, all I can think about is how Michelle could have already boarded that plane with Caleb while she waited for me to arrive.
My best friend could have died tonight, simply for being connected to me.
We all could have died, if not for road construction that made Gabriel and me fifteen minutes late. Pylons and fresh asphalt literally saved our lives.
And in the aftermath of the explosion, while we sat on that tarmac as emergency vehicles raced up to deal with the fiery carnage, and we ducked away from view of countless news cameras that congregated outside the gates to capture the scintillating story, Michelle remained startlingly calm. She told the police who questioned us nothing beyond the surface truth—that she was joining her best friend for a weekend in Vegas to celebrate my having written my last college exam. She didn’t so much as hint at the other, more vital details that she is fully aware of—that she was traveling with a well-known crime family and that every minute of the trip had likely been bought and paid for with drug money. She played clueless, beautiful arm candy to perfection.
When Gabriel instructed our driver to bring us home, Michelle didn’t demand to be dropped off at her house, she didn’t tell me to get the hell away from her. She clasped my hand and said she was going wherever I was going, even as her fingers shook.
I’ll never find a friend like her again.
And tonight, I almost lost her.
But Gabriel and Caleb… they did lose people.
“I’m sorry about Felix and Finn,” I offer, my voice sounding hollow to me. I didn’t know either of them well, and can’t say that I liked what I knew of them, but it was clear by Gabriel’s and Caleb’s horrified expressions after the explosion and their somber demeanor since that the twins were important to them. “And about your crew, too.” The pilot and a flight attendant also died in the explosion. Four people, in total. All of them simply because they were connected to the Easton family. All collateral damage.
I’m connected to the Easton family.
How long before I become collateral damage too?
My stomach roils at the thought. “Who tried to kill us?”
“It was a fuel leak,” Caleb says without missing a beat, dumping his glassful of scotch down his throat.
“That was not a fuel leak,” I counter evenly. Does he take me for an idiot?
Gabriel’s mouth twists. “No one’s trying to—”
“Don’t feed me the same bullshit you tried to feed the cops. They didn’t buy it either.” I saw the looks, the whispers of “Easton” on lips. Everyone there knew who Gabriel and Caleb are. It’s virtually a guarantee that their investigation will conclude that plane was rigged with a bomb. Unless, of course, Gabriel buys a more palatable report for insurance purposes and to avoid unwanted attention. I wouldn’t put it past him—there doesn’t seem to be anything they can’t afford—but with the FBI rolling up in their black sedans, I doubt there’s a price tag affixed to sweeping this one under the rug.
