Corrupted Queen - Nicole Fox Page 0,67

to get an article that reads something like, Garrett O’Leary may seem like a tough gangster who cuts off the eyelids of his enemies but underneath it all he’s just another flirty Libra.”

I deserve this castigation, but it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. I don’t know whether I’m more frustrated with myself for telling Debbie I had everything in the first place or recanting now.

Truth is, I could write the article now. The most evidence I have, however, is on Gabriel. There’s no way for me to write this article without implicating him, and while that was always going to happen, now I’m wondering if there’s another way.

I want my cake, and I want to eat it too. Sue me.

“I have a plan,” I tell Debbie. “And for the record, Garrett O’Leary may be a Libra, but he was born under a Capricorn moon, so he tends to be an ice queen when it comes to relationships.”

I can feel her glare through the phone.

“Care to elaborate on some of the details of this plan?” she grumbles.

“You’ll find out soon enough. Anyway, I have to go.”

“So help me God, Alexis, you better send me something soon or—”

I hang up, which I know will earn me a slap on the wrist later, but I don’t care. I need to think of a plan, a way to write a great article exposing the mob connections to the purple heroin trade and how it is getting into the city without dragging Gabriel or the Italians through the mud.

The obvious solution is to pin it all on the Irish, and after witnessing Gabriel’s heated interaction with Patrick Walsh at the gala, I have no qualms with that. I might have only caught the last part of the conversation, but I saw the woman at Patrick’s side—the one who’d been harassing Gabriel only moments prior. Patrick needed to pay for his disrespect.

I turn down the pop music, chuckling at myself. Pay for his disrespect? I was starting to sound like a mobster myself.

It has been a couple days since that night, and I haven’t seen much of Gabriel. As expected, he turned cold on me again as soon as we left. Thing is, I turned cold on him too. I knew about the purple heroin before, but Patrick’s comments at the gala gave me an opportunity to react to the knowledge. To show Gabriel how his involvement in such an atrocious practice made me feel.

So I’ve ignored him. And he’s ignored me. And we’ve ignored each other.

Since that tactic isn’t going anywhere, it’s time for me to switch tracks and head in another direction. My best bet for bringing down the Irish is to have Gabriel on my side, to make him my accomplice—knowingly or otherwise.

I head out of my room and go down the hall to Gabriel’s office, knocking on the door.

No answer.

I knock again, but there’s still nothing. I try the door handle, but it’s locked as usual. Either Gabriel is inside, watching me on the cameras, waiting for me to go away, or he’s somewhere else. Either option is just as likely.

I decide to search through the rest of the house before I start talking through the door to a potentially empty room. I am surprised when my search leads me to the living room, and I find Gabriel on the sofa with a newspaper cracked open in his lap. I pause in the doorway, studying him.

Gabriel isn’t the kind of guy to sit down with a coffee and the paper in the middle of the afternoon. It would be less shocking to walk in on him meticulously constructing a ship in a bottle.

If he hears me enter, he doesn’t show it. I take soft steps around the back of the sofa and peek over his shoulder. My eyes catch on the lower-left headline.

BILLIONAIRE PLAYBOY HUMILIATED AT FUNDRAISER.

There’s a photo of Gabriel, too, with that awful woman’s pinched face opposite. My face twists with disgust.

“The fact that they’re focusing on this instead of the actual crisis at hand is criminal,” I mutter.

Gabriel stiffens. I guess he didn’t hear me come in.

He speaks in a low, almost bored tone, without looking up. “Don’t sneak up on me.”

“I wasn’t. It’s not my fault you didn’t hear me.”

“Normally your clomping footsteps are enough to wake the dead,” he replies, flipping the newspaper to the next page. “You were sneaking.”

I hop over the back of the couch and sink next to him. I try to