knew her father? Who happened to be a Russian mobster? And not just any Russian mobster, like that wouldn’t be enough, but the head of some deadly syndicate?
The last few months swiftly played through her mind.
Her mother’s accident…Caleb showing up in New York…right around the time Gabriel said he’d been contacted…seeing Gabriel at TarMor…then at the gala…him being her boss…
Everything suddenly clicked into place.
Caleb’s apartment that day. Stefano Moretti knowing who she was. Unknown men with their unexplained warnings and messages. Gabriel always showing up at the right time.
Her mom, murdered.
Her father, protecting her.
Gabriel and Stefano Moretti, brothers.
Gabriel, the son of a mafia boss.
People were trying to kill her.
With a swift shove, she slipped out of his arms and leapt from the bed. She barely made it to the bathroom before her stomach unloaded. She wretched and wretched, but not having eaten anything in hours, she basically had dry heaves that wouldn’t quit. She felt Gabriel pull her hair back and settle a cool, damp cloth on the back of her neck. His warm hand stroked her back, the touch seeping through her shirt to heat her clammy skin.
Pulling away, she fell on her ass next to the toilet and stayed there, wrapping her arm around her knees as she wiped her mouth with the cloth. She stared up into Gabriel Moretti’s immobile features as he squatted in front of her.
“Eva.”
She shook her head fiercely, nearly waving the damp fabric in a sign of surrender. “Please,” she croaked. “I can’t take any more.”
“There is no more, sweetheart,” he assured her gently.
Hit by a wave of dizziness, she dropped her pounding head to her knees. She was suddenly too exhausted, too confused, and so scared she would have gladly welcomed a hard punch to the temple if it would have guaranteed another reprieve from the mess jamming up her brain.
She stayed slumped over and curled in on herself for who knew how long, until Gabriel’s strong arm burrowed under her knees. The other braced her upper back as he gathered her to his chest and rose to his full height. With no more fight left in her, she let him carry her back into the bedroom.
After all, according to him, she was trapped. A prisoner. Even if she tried to run, they would be watching. The same way they had been for the past two months.
She was too numb to react to it anymore.
When he laid her on the bed, she had just enough energy to roll over so that her back was to him. She curled her legs up and hugged a pillow to her chest as she stared at the wall.
Her father, a man she’d never even seen a picture of, a man she hated, a man who’d walked out on her and her mom, had in fact been somewhere in the background of their lives, protecting them, watching over them, providing for them, without either of them ever having been aware of it.
“Where is my f-father now?” Her voice came out froglike as she struggled through a word she’d never before used in conjunction with my.
“In Russia.”
Russia. “The people responsible for my mom’s accident. Does he know who they are? Where they are?”
“They’re dead. By his hand.”
Her heart slammed into her ribs. Dead? Her father had killed them? Because they’d killed her mom?
How evil did it make her for finding more satisfaction than censure in that?
But they’d murdered her mother, causing a beautiful, selfless woman to burn alive while trapped in her car by the seat belt—
Eva squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to continue her effort to make sense of it all.
Stefano Moretti.
At Caleb’s apartment, he’d assured her they’d meet again. Now she knew it was because he wanted to kill her. She couldn’t even touch on Caleb and why that other lying, sneaky, betraying jerk had kept such a potentially deadly secret from her.
“You knew I met your brother at Caleb’s apartment the day I left New York?”
“Yes.”
Of course he had. “The man with the long hair. He was with Stefano. Do you know him?”
“He’s one of my best friends. His name is Vincente Romani. Aside from Paynne, he was another of your shadows when I couldn’t be in New York to keep an eye on you.”
That explained why he’d seemed familiar, and why he’d tried to put her at ease that day. “He works for you and your brother?”
“V’s been with my family from the beginning. He’s now a capo—a caporegime or captain. He