Page 35 of Dirty Pool

The basement of her father’s large, three-level home was the only place that wasn’t finished. The bare cement floor was cold under her sock-covered feet, and the walls were still damp from moisture. Above her head, pipes and wiring lined the ceiling and she felt cramped at how low the beams for the first floor were to her when she stood straight.

She never understood why her father didn’t finish his basement like every other area of his home, but she figured it out quickly enough when through the maze of two-by-four boards sticking up from the floor to connect to the ceiling, she found her father and his men.

Three of Charles’ lads stood a bit back from her father. Charles, on the other hand, was kneeling a bit, and from her position, she could see that he’d crossed his arms over his broad chest as he spoke to the man on his knees below him.

Michel.

Gabbie dragged in a quick, quiet breath at the sight of him. His clothes were dirty, and his shirt had been ripped. The side of his face looked bruised, and dried blood smeared along the corner of his busted mouth.

Oh, God.

“Do you want to tell me, lad, why you keep showing up in my life?” her father asked Michel.

Michel glanced up, and a slight smirk worked its way over his bruised lips. “Circumstance, I guess.”

“Oh, is that what it is?”

“I’d say so.”

“That circumstance is going to get you killed. I hope you understand.”

Michel didn’t even flinch. “I was in my own territory tonight. I made sure of that.”

“And yet, here you are in my basement.”

“Because your men—”

Charles struck out at Michel then, the back of his hand coming down hard to slap across the side of his face. The sound of skin connecting with skin echoed in the quiet basement, and Michel’s head snapped to the side from the force of the slap.

Blood trickled from his mouth before he spat it to the dirty floor. Then, still as calm as ever, or making a good show of it, he looked back to Gabbie’s father with an arched brow. Waiting, but not saying anything more.

“I can’t have the Italians causing me issues,” her father explained, “and you seem to be one that keeps coming up lately. Do you know how I prefer to correct problems in my life, you wee shite?”

Michel said nothing.

Smart, really.

“I remove them—permanently,” Charles uttered.

Her heart clenched.

Charles stood straight, and his head just grazed one of the beams on the ceiling as he did so. She didn’t know what did it—what made her open her mouth and speak. Maybe it was the man on the left who stepped toward Michel like he was going to grab him, or perhaps it was the one on the right who took the gun from his mate’s hand.

Either way, she spoke up.

“Daddy, please don’t hurt him.”

Charles’ back stiffened before he swung around so fast that he was a blur to her eyes in the dimly lit basement. All but a single bare bulb in the corner gave them a bit of light, but when her father’s gaze landed on her, there was no hiding the fact that she was standing there, a witness to the death he was about to deliver.

“What are you doing down here?” he snapped at her.

Gabbie’s gaze darted past her father to the man on the ground. Michel stared back, a sort of wonderment in his eyes, but a wariness, too. She understood that, and didn’t blame him given his current predicament.

“I know they call him the doc, right?” She looked back to her father, ready to beg if that’s what it would take. “I had to check and see if it was him. He helped me the other weekend at the club—I didn’t want you to worry. I fell, and cut my arm. He bandaged it up, and …”

She held off from saying the rest. It probably wouldn’t help to say they’d had sex.

Charles’ jaw tightened, flexing with his irritation. “You think I don’t already know that, lass?”