Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,44

West.

Raphael nodded in agreement.

Titus bucked his hip away from his desk and reached for the white coat draped over his elegant chair. “I think it’s marvelous you get a fresh start away from your tainted legacy. I’m a firm believer in second chances.” He punched his arms into the coat and reached the door in a few long-legged strides. “I’m going to go make certain the surgical theater is prepared. I’ll leave you two to say your goodbyes before the procedure. It’ll be...lengthy.”

Say your goodbyes. The doctor had no idea how final that sounded.

Because it was.

Raphael didn’t want to say goodbye. He hated them.

It was why—even though every fiber that stitched his body together had felt adhered to the heaven that was Mercy Goode’s bed—he’d peeled himself away to vanish before dawn illuminated her cherubic face.

Because he might have given in to the insatiable urge to have her once more.

Or the impossible desire to stay.

As Gabriel took another moment to study the papers in his hands, Raphael studied him.

He’d a patchwork body, that was for certain. His ruined face wasn’t the only place he carried scars. His arms and chest had become a canvass of tattoos decorating a physique that was a monument to power.

And to violence.

But nothing felled his brother.

Nothing.

That wasn’t about to change. Gabriel had survived so many things that would have crushed most other men.

He’d likewise survive Raphael’s loss. He would keep his word and go to America to spread Mathilde’s ashes.

Then, he’d live the life they both craved.

The one Gabriel deserved.

“I’d like a final smoke before I go under the knife.” Gabriel stood, reaching into his jacket pocket.

It occurred to Raphael, not for the first time, that his brother looked almost amusingly incongruous in such finery. His neck didn’t like a collar and his jaw always wanted shaving, even after a razor had been taken to it. Though his mask was meticulously crafted, it made for a sinister, unsightly spectacle.

Better that than the terror beneath.

Raphael followed his brother outside, watching Gabriel’s ritual of pulling the hood low against any kind of weather for the last time. When he woke—when he healed—he’d have a face he could show to the world.

Raphael wished he’d be able to see it.

Gabriel rested his shoulders against the grey stone of the hospital, bending his knee to prop the sole of his boot on the wall. A passerby might imagine that the towering man held up the building, rather than the other way around.

This was harder than Raphael had expected. He wanted to stay. He wanted to run. He wanted for the thousandth time...a life that hadn’t been fucked before he was even born. “Do you want me to stay until you’re asleep?” He asked the question with a demonstrative fondness he wasn’t prone to.

If Gabriel noticed, he didn’t say. “Nah. You’ve work to do.” He poked the tamper into the bowl of his pipe. The instrument looked comically tiny in his hands, something like a child’s toy. “Besides, that was always my responsibility.”

Their gazes locked.

Yes, Gabriel had always stood watch over him. Had taken the wrath of their father upon his gigantic shoulders. When they were boys, Raphael’s nightmares would plague him, and Gabriel would sit up with him, both a sentinel against and savior from the nightmares in the dark.

The day he’d become so disfigured, it had been Raphael’s turn in the pits. He’d been so young and scrawny.

Terrified.

Gabriel had shoved him in a locker and taken his place in the ring.

This was why Raphael would die for him...

“Have you ever thought what we’ll do...after this?” Gabriel’s pensive question interrupted his reverie.

Raphael blinked against the drizzle and a little confusion. “Do?”

Gabriel made an impatient gesture. “You know, in America, or wherever we settle. What will we do with ourselves?” He struck a match against the rough edge of the stone and cupped his hand over the flame as he touched it to the fragrant tobacco in his pipe.

“Live like kings, that’s what you’ll do. There’s fortune enough that your children’s children’s children won’t have to worry. You’ll do whatever you bloody well please.”

Gabriel sank deeper into his hood as Honoria Goode dashed by, one arm shielding her lovely hat with a newspaper, and the other hand lifting her skirts as she nearly skipped up the stairs to the hospital to avoid the rain.

Even she didn’t know what her husband was about to do. Conleith had agreed it was safer.

Raphael’s eyes followed Mercy’s eldest sister, his eyes hungry for any sort