of this family. I don’t give a shit if you have to threaten every loved one they have right down to their newborn children—I want that cabin. If they don’t give it, tell them to draw up a will. Make it clear and make it quick.”
“Gabriel.”
He looked to Vasily, noting the raised brow, and knew exactly what it was about.
“If claiming my rightful place will get her back, and remaining there will prevent this from ever happening again—” Absolute conviction weighed down his every word. “—then that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Grunts of approval were heard around the room as his cell rang. He snatched it up. “Eva?” he barked, desperate for it to be her.
“Looks like you lost, brother.”
Stefano. His blood cooled. “You listen to me, you shit-eating cunt. If you touch one hair on her head, I’ll deliver a vengeance unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. I’ll make what you’ve done to me all these years seem like a night out with the boys. When I get to you, Stef, I’m gonna do things that our associates will be talking about for deca—” He cut his threat short when he heard someone in the background.
“Furio’s forty minutes out and no tail.”
Disregarding the familiarity of the voice, Gabriel quickly did the math and came to the conclusion that forty minutes out worked for Enumclaw.
Without a word, he hung up. His brother was already dead to him, his only regret now that he’d let Stefano live as long as he had. He’d been as naïve as Eva to think there might be hope for a reconciliation between him and his only sibling. And his beauty would be the one to pay for his delusions.
The most important person ever to enter Gabriel’s life was forty minutes out from a hell she should never know existed outside of a horror movie.
† † †
Stefano stood in the moonlit woods with more than a dozen men milling about, smoking and talking shit, some looking around as though they thought the Grim Reaper himself was about to float out from the trees and steal their souls.
If that phone call was any indication, the backstabbing fucker was on his way.
He reached up to rub away the frown making his head ache. Getting rid of the hollow feeling invading his chest wasn’t so easy. Nor was stopping his little brother’s rant from echoing in his head, over and over.
“…what you’ve done to me all these years…”
For the next while, the words continued to skip like a scratched vinyl, repeating until he finally had to shake his head to stop it. But the emotion he’d heard beneath the fury in Gabriel’s voice…Jesus Christ.
When headlights bounced off the trees in front of him, he turned to see a black SUV pull into the makeshift drive.
His brother’s voice sounded off again and he had to bring a hand up to rub at his chest. He didn’t get what he’d heard. Didn’t understand the scope of it at all.
But he felt it. Deeply.
The loss—anger, mostly—he’d experienced when Adrianna had actually been killed five years ago had been nothing compared with what Gabriel was clearly feeling right now. And nothing had happened to Eva yet. His brother’s reaction was only to thoughts of what might happen to her. And it was that strong. Obviously, he’d been wrong in thinking Gabe would harm this woman like he had the others.
As he watched Furio get out of the SUV with Eva in his arms, Stefano thought back to all the years he’d fucked with Gabe, basically making him pay for the sins of his father. Why had his brother never once retaliated? He’d always turned the proverbial cheek.
Until now.
It was threatening the beautiful pawn Furio carried toward him that had finally broken the steadfast bond siblings shared. One Stefano had refused to form.
His teeth ground together when he met Furio’s triumphant stare as the guy walked by. Why was he so fucking satisfied? By the look on his face, you’d have thought he had Jimmy Fucking Hoffa in his arms.
Stefano watched, trying to detach himself as his underboss climbed the two steps and entered the cabin with Eva. He followed more slowly, streams of clarity bleeding through the heavy shroud of hostility and resentment that had cocooned him through most of his life.
Why now?
He’d spoken to Gabe twice in the past week, when he hadn’t exchanged two words with him in almost five years, and suddenly he was getting soft?