Chapter 20 - The Cost of Peace
Moretti looked like a cornered animal.
His expensive silver hair was disheveled, his coat torn, his eyes bloodshot and crazed with the realization that his empire had crumbled to dust. In his right hand, pressed against Eli’s small, trembling chest, was a snub-nosed revolver.
Eli wasn't crying. His dark eyes were wide with terror, his small hands clutching the fleece blanket beneath him, but when he saw me in the doorway, a tiny whimper escaped his throat.
“Mom...”
“Step back, Clara,” Moretti rasped, his voice wild and unstable. “Drop the gun, or the kid dies right here!”
I raised the nine-millimeter Gabriel had given me, leveling it directly between Moretti’s wild eyes. My hands, which had trembled on the stairs, suddenly locked into absolute, unyielding stillness.
“Let him go, Salvatore,” a voice said from behind me.
Gabriel stepped into the doorway.
He didn't raise his gun. He didn't yell. He walked into the room with the slow, terrifying calm of the Angel of Death. Blood from a reopened stitch was seeping through his white collar, but his face was completely devoid of mercy.
Moretti’s hand trembled against the trigger. “Gabriel! Call your dogs off! Give me a helicopter to Gary airport and ten million cash, or I swear to God I’ll paint this wall with Arthur Vance’s bloodline!”
Gabriel stopped three feet from the edge of the bed.
He looked at Eli.
Eli looked back at him. And then, slowly, Eli’s little fingers slid toward the edge of his pillow, where the tiny lead Roman soldier—Marcus—sat standing guard.
“You came into my house, Salvatore,” Gabriel said, his voice a low, terrifying whisper that seemed to drop the temperature in the room by twenty degrees. “You touched a woman who belongs to me. And you put a gun against a boy who gave me his guard.”
“I’ll do it, Gabriel! I swear to God I’ll—”
“You won't,” Gabriel said.
In that fraction of a second, Eli did something that proved whose blood ran in his veins.
He didn't scream. He didn't flinch.
He bit down on Moretti’s gloved thumb with everything his seven-year-old jaws possessed.
Moretti roared in pain, his aim instinctively pulling upward as he yanked his hand back.
*BANG.*
The shot didn't hit Moretti.
It came from my hands.
The nine-millimeter kicked violently against my palms as I pulled the trigger without a second of hesitation. The bullet struck Moretti squarely in the shoulder, spinning him backward off the bed and slamming him against the mahogany dresser.
Before Moretti could raise his weapon again, Gabriel closed the distance like a striking cobra.
His hand clamped onto Moretti’s wrist, snapping the bone with a sickening, audible *CRACK*. The revolver clattered uselessly to the floorboards.
Gabriel shoved Moretti against the wall by his throat, his face inches from the old mobster’s.
“Leo,” Gabriel said softly, not looking back.
Leo stepped into the room, his shotgun lowered, his eyes cold.
“Take him to the lake,” Gabriel commanded, his voice holding the finality of a closing tomb. “Cut a hole through the ice. Let him sleep with the rest of the garbage.”
“Yes, boss.”
Leo grabbed Moretti by the hair and dragged the weeping, broken old man out of the room, leaving a trail of blood across the floorboards.
The room fell into absolute silence.
I dropped the gun onto the rug, my knees completely giving out. I fell toward the bed, gathering Eli into my arms, burying my face in his neck, sobbing uncontrollably as I held his small, warm, trembling body against my chest.
“Eli... Eli... oh God, Eli...”
Eli wrapped his little arms around my neck, burying his face in my hair. “Mom... Mom, I bit him. I bit him like Marcus.”
“You did, baby. You were so brave. You were so brave...”
Strong, warm arms wrapped around both of us.
Gabriel sank onto the edge of the bed, pulling Eli and me against his broad, bandaged chest, encasing us in a fortress of muscle, warmth, and unyielding protection.
He buried his face in the curve of my neck, his breath ragged, his massive body trembling with the aftershocks of a terror he had never felt for himself—only for us.
“I have you,” Gabriel whispered against my skin, his lips pressing a fierce, desperate kiss against my temple, and then against the top of Eli’s dark hair. “I have you both. It’s over. No one will ever touch you again.”
Outside, the gunfire had stopped.
The snow continued to fall silently through the broken window, covering the blood on the lawn, coating the ancient oaks in a blanket of clean, pure white.
Eli pulled back slightly, his dark eyes looking up at Gabriel’s bruised, bloody, and fiercely beautiful face.
“Mr. Hart?” Eli whispered.
“Yes, Eli?”
“Does Marcus get to stay in the castle now?”
Gabriel looked down at the boy, then up at my tear-streaked face. His slate-gray eyes were filled with a love so deep, so profound, that it outshone every crystal chandelier in the city of Chicago.
He smiled—a real, true, breathtaking smile.
“Marcus stays,” Gabriel said softly, reaching out to wipe a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “And so do you. Both of you. Forever.”
I leaned my head against Gabriel’s shoulder, holding my son in my lap, feeling the steady, unbroken rhythm of the mafia boss's heart beating beneath my cheek.
May you like
We had survived the fire.
And for the first time in my life, beneath the fortress walls of Lake Forest, I knew that tomorrow was a story we would write together.