him. They claim they'll keep looking, but I know better. They never bothered from the start."
"So what now?" Alfie asked.
"Now, I guess I put an empty coffin in the ground."
The air grew suffocating with those words.
Gabriella sensed it was time for her to go.
Leaning down, she kissed her father's cheek before slipping away from the table, nobody saying a word about it or trying to stop her. She headed right for the front door, having had her fill of family. She showed up, she brought stuffed mushrooms, so now it was time for her to get the heck out of there.
When she stepped outside, someone was coming up the small path that cut through the yard, leading to the front door. He strolled along, like he didn't want to come any more than she had, which explained why he was two hours late. She took in the sight of the black slacks and plain black button down, the short, dark hair and the steel blue eyes.
Gavin.
He looked at her with confusion, like he didn't recognize her, before smiling. "Gabby?"
"Gavin."
"Look at you," he said as he laughed. "Looking like you're heading to a funeral."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not the only one."
Gavin motioned to the house behind her. "With these people? You never know."
"Tell me about it," she muttered.
"You leaving already?"
"Girls aren't really welcome in the big boys club, you know? The guest of honor showed up so I figured that was my cue to disappear."
"And sadly, my cue to get my ass inside," Gavin said, nodding as he passed her. "It was good to see you, Gabby."
He headed for the door, while Gabriella stayed rooted in place. Her feet were like lead, too heavy to move, no matter how hard she tried. Her lips parted, words on the tip of her tongue that she wanted to say but she just… couldn't.
Her family shared everything. They always had. When Gabriella was six years old, playing hide-and-seek with her father, she'd found a gun tucked beneath her parents' mattress. She'd never seen one before, except for in movies and on television, so she'd picked it up, to play with it, forgetting all about her father coming to find her. He startled her, shoving the bedroom door open, declaring, "Got you!"
So Gabriella did what any frightened kid would: she shot.
Swinging around, her finger squeezed the trigger, a loud bang echoing through the room. She'd dropped the gun with a shriek as a bullet ripped into the wall right beside her father, a mere few inches to the right of him. Alfie leaned against the doorframe, calm and collect, and glanced at the hole as he said, "Looks like we need to work on your aim, little girl."
It was her earliest memory. The world didn't really exist before then. Her father, while he did work with cars, lived another life within the Jersey crime family. It was her mother's family, a family that had happily welcomed Alfie Russo in. They were messy and blended, a dysfunctional tribe that branched out into other families through marriages, and not all of them got along. Occasionally, though, for just a few hours, they pretended they didn't want to shoot each other in the face, and they did it because of the women.
Their mothers. Their wives. Their sisters.
Sisters.
Taking a deep breath, Gabriella swung around to face Gavin, starting to ramble, but it was pointless. The front door closed as he disappeared inside the house.
Crap.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
She thought about following, sticking around, but she'd lose her nerve long before she got the opportunity to talk to him.
So she walked away, pulling out her phone to call a cab. She didn't own a car—although, once upon a time, her parents had given her a Ferrari. Graduation present. She left it behind when she moved to the city, much to her father's chagrin. She'd wanted a fresh start. She wanted to make her own way. She wanted to help people and make a difference.
The last thing she wanted was to get caught up in that world, but it seemed inevitable.
Fate was a douchebag.
"Fuck."
The curse slipped through Dante's clenched teeth in the form of a growl, loud in the otherwise silent room. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Wearing nothing but a pair of white boxers, fresh out of the shower, Dante stared down at the wound on his side. He ran his fingers along the medical tape, wishing like hell he still had some painkillers left. It wasn't that it hurt so much as it