Corrupted Queen - Nicole Fox Page 0,25

or hear something in the process? Bonus.

I pause to listen at the door, hovering my ear over the wood.

“Little Walsh and I are doing a deal next week,” I hear Gabriel say, voice slightly muffled. “We can discuss it then.”

“Some of the men are still questioning the alliance with the Irish,” a male voice responds. Vito, I think. “Mirko chief among them.”

“Yes, well—” Gabriel pauses and I stiffen. He mutters something in a hushed voice to Vito, and then footsteps approach the door.

I reel back just as it swings open. Vito stands in the doorway, smiling fondly at me.

“Good morning, Alexis,” he says, silvery eyes crinkling at the corners. “It’s good to see you.”

“I wish I could say the same,” I mutter blithely.

He chuckles and salutes in Gabriel’s direction before taking off down the hall, leaving me staring through the open doorway at an unimpressed-looking Gabriel. He is still seated behind his desk, and lifts his hand, beckoning me into his office with the smooth flick of one of his fingers.

I swallow and enter, closing the door behind me.

Gabriel’s laptop is open on the desk in front of him and he swings it around to face me. The screen is divided into several squares, each of them showing security footage of a different part of the house. One of the squares, of course, shows the hallway outside his office door.

“I would say that snooping isn’t very ladylike, but that’s never stopped you before,” he remarks coolly.

I slap the lid of his laptop closed and sink into the chair across from him. “For that same reason, I guess I won’t remind you that kidnapping isn’t very gentlemanly.”

He settles back in his chair, lip ticking ever-so-slightly, and for a second I think he’s going to make a comment about our midnight rendezvous, but when he speaks, his words are razor edged. “You took my son.”

“You killed my father.”

His eyes settle on mine. They are like bottomless black pits. I can hardly tell where the iris ends and the pupil begins.

“I told you, it’s more complicated than you think.”

My pulse throbs angrily. I try to remind myself why I’m here—to ask about my father, to listen to what he says and let him think that he has appeased me. Once upon a time, Gabriel falsely accused me of manipulating him. Now I am here for that express purpose, to hear his lies and let him think that I am gobbling them up. Only then will he lower his defenses.

So I try not to snap at him. I really do. It’s just that I’ve never been good at controlling myself where Gabriel is concerned.

“You’re disgusting,” I spit, sharpening my glare. “You really think anything you say is going to make it okay that you made me an orphan? I lost both of my parents in one year. At least I can’t blame the cancer that took my mom; it was doing the only thing it knew how to do. Then again, maybe you were too.”

Gabriel swallows, staring at me, and I wonder if my words have actually cut him. For a second, I don’t see the murderous mob boss across from me. Instead I see Gabriel, forced to his knees in front of me, a gun pressed to his head, ready to die for my freedom. I feel a pang of guilt deep in my gut.

When Gabriel speaks, his voice is gravelly and low. “It wasn’t the cancer.”

Silence ripples through the air. I blink. Then I blink again.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

I think of my mother’s frail body, propped up in bed, machines whirring and beeping beside her. My father’s hunched form, her tiny hand in his. The weight of her hollow stare as she slipped further and further away from the land of the living.

Gabriel scrubs a hand through his hair and gets to his feet. “Come with me.”

I stay put. “Where?”

“Where we won’t be overheard,” he states impatiently, propping his laptop under his arm and walking around the desk to haul me to my feet.

He starts to guide me out of his office and I know exactly where we’re going. The room next door is soundproof and bugproof and lined with lockers filled to the brim with weapons of every kind and all the documentation I would need to bring Gabriel’s whole enterprise down. As he unlocks the door and leads me inside, I wonder if there is anything in here that would incriminate him in the purple heroin trade.

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