Page 114 of Dirty Pool

“You’re dead to me.”

His wife stiffened.

Michel went to grab the phone out of her hand, but Charles got in the last word before he could hang up on the asshole.

“Don’t you ever step foot in my city again—I’ll kill every single feckin’ one of you. You want the Italian so much, do you? Then, you have him. You are dead to me, Gabbie.”

He hung up the phone, so she didn’t have to.

Not that it mattered.

Gabbie was already crying.

• • •

His wife was too quiet.

Michel didn’t like that at all.

Inside the hotel room, he wanted to see her wide-eyed and excited at the beauty and history surrounding her. He wanted her to ask him why he picked this hotel, so he could explain that his father rented a permanent room in the Astoria just so that Michel’s mother had a place to escape to when she needed, often with her husband.

Instead, he watched Gabbie as she stared out the window. Entirely silent, she stood there while rubbing her arm with the palm of her hand as the people crowded the street from all different directions down below.

Yeah, way too quiet.

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Michel cleared his throat. It did nothing. Gabbie didn’t turn away from the window, and there was no flicker in her distant gaze to say that she had even heard him make any noise.

Damn.

“Gabbie,” he murmured.

Still, nothing.

Michel sighed.

He was seriously regretting that phone call, now. It wasn’t his choice, though, and he was never going to do that to this woman. She could and would make her own decisions, and whether he thought they were good or bad, he was going to be there to support her through it. Simple as that.

Since she didn’t seem to be hearing him from all the way across the room, Michel figured the easy solution to that problem was for him to go to her. He closed the space between them until he was close enough to reach out and enclose her in his arms from behind. Resting his face in the spot between her shoulder and neck, he pressed a lingering kiss to the skin just above her neckline. He physically felt the tension drift from her body as she relaxed in his embrace.

That was slightly better.

“I know that wasn’t what you wanted from your dad,” he said quietly.

She shrugged. “It was inevitable, maybe.”

“No, it wasn’t.” That was his hard line—she should not expect that kind of thing from people who loved her, ever. No one should ever expect people who proclaimed to love them to hurt them. That was not how love worked. It might hurt occasionally, but only to make it better. “People always have a choice, Gabbie, to do what is right, or to do what they think is right. It might not always be obvious or easy, but that’s what it is. He made the wrong choice, and I’m sorry.”

A sniffle echoed in the room.

He kissed her skin again.

“My da was all I had … my mam’s been dead for years, and—”

“You have me,” he said quickly. “And I promise there’s a whole family of people here who are going to love you. They will love you so much just because I love you.”

She sunk a little more into his embrace.

Michel held her tighter.