Page 27 of Sacred Blood

Inwardly I winced at how casually she spoke of an issue that had been tormenting me since I took her to bed last night. What to do with Gabriella?

“Please sit.” I pulled out her chair and as she took her seat, I stole the opportunity to breathe in her scent. She had used my shampoo and conditioning products, but beneath those familiar scents was her own, a subtle yet unmistakable feminine musk. Dressed only in a shirt that hung to her knees, her damp curls flowed down her back. She wore no bra and her perky nipples poked through the cotton fabric enticingly.

She surprised me by not digging into the food right away, although I knew she must be starving. Instead, she reached for her full coffee cup and inhaled.

“Ah, the decadent notes of Molinari.” She inhaled again and took a sip, pleasure evident on her face.

“You have a refined palate, impressive.”

“It’s my father’s favorite,” she replied, tilting her face to the sun and closing her eyes.

Now was as good a time as any to dig. “Your father, Don Rego Calabretta?”

Her demeanor completely shifted. She lowered her chin, opening her eyes and staring at the full plate of food in front of her.

“He is,” Gaby replied shortly. She placed a forkful of crepe, egg, and bacon in her mouth. “Mmm, this is as delicious as it looks. You’re a keeper.”

Despite the compliment, her words sounded a false note, too cheerful, too shallow. When confronted, Gaby hid behind a mask, very much like me. Except my walls were strongly erected, near impossible to penetrate, or they had been until she showed up in my life. Gaby’s were not as well-built, but the fact that they were there at all was proof of her survival instincts. Had she learned to protect her true feelings growing up in the combative environment that many mafia households were, or was there something else at work? I wasn’t yet sure.

“Gaby, why are you here, under a false name? Did something happen to make you afraid, or are you just reinventing yourself away from family?”

Her fork dropped and clattered to her plate. “Do we have to talk about this? How do I know I can trust you not to rat me out?”

That answered my question about motive. “I don’t see how you have a choice, but if it makes you feel confident, I promise that I will not share this with anyone who could possibly use the information against you.”

Gaby pulled up her feet, resting her heels on the edge of the chair with her knees only inches from her chin and pulled the shirt over her legs. My cousin JoJo used to do that as a child when she was about to be lectured. Was it a way to disassociate or feel safe, to make themselves small like that? She grabbed her coffee and held it in both hands, resting the mug on her knees, effectively blocking a portion of her face.

Her gaze found mine and held a mix of trepidation and resolution. Regardless of the outcome, she seemed to be saying, she was ready to share her secret.

“I already confessed that I am a daughter of Don Calabretta.” She watched me closely as she spoke and must have seen what she wanted, because her tense body relaxed slightly and she continued in a less strained tone. “He gave me a lot of freedom growing up, which my mother didn’t approve of. Ours is a traditional family…Well, you surely understand what I mean by that. He indulged us to a degree, but despite his lenient nature when it came to his daughters, I always knew that one day, I would have to marry.”

“Ah yes.”

Marriage, of course. I’d guessed as much. It was how Vittoria had joined the family, her father had traded her to my brother along with some shipping lanes and a supposed peace. It was just the way of things in our world. Although some matches eventually found love together, most mafia marriages were little more than business contracts or alliances.

“You think you understand,” said Gaby, as if she’d read my mind. Unnerving. “You don’t, you know. Not really. It’s different for men. You have to marry and you don’t always have a choice, but you don’t have to be anything special. You don’t have to be handsome. No one cares if you can sing or dance or cook. And a virgin? Ha, as you say, you’ve had dozens of women and no one blinks an eye. But God forbid your bride-to-be has ever so much as kissed another man. She’s spoiled, shameful, a slut.”

I frowned.

“It’s different for men,” Gaby repeated and gulped down some coffee for courage before continuing. “One day, my father came to visit. He dropped the marriage bomb on me and left me with a choice to make. Marry a man I’d never met, give up on my dreams of a career, because God forbid a mafia bride has a life outside her husband’s bedroom. I love nursing,” she interrupted herself fiercely. “I love what I do! It’s exhausting and heart-breaking and smelly and I love it. I’m helping people, I’m healing people, and I’m supposed to just give that up because the man who owns me can’t let his property associate with other men.”

Now it was my turn to drink my coffee, black and bitter, while my earlier decisions about her job made on her behalf drifted through my head.

“So, yeah,” Gaby said at last. “The choice was to get married or…don’t. And since I couldn’t just say no, I called Red, my best friend, and asked her to get me a new ID. She’s…kind of a hacker. I knew she did a pretty good side hustle fixing grades for preppies who can’t be bothered to go to class and faking IDs for the teens who are always trying to party in a college town. She made me Gaby Cala, and Gigi Carter, in case Gaby got compromised, and I took the next bus out of town.”

“Who were you promised to?” That shouldn’t have been my first concern, as falsifying documents was a serious crime that put my hospital at considerable risk, but my dick had its own priorities. And despite my very real chagrin while she’d fumed about controlling husbands, my inner caveman wanted to know who to kill. As for her career, even if I wanted to give her a choice, that couldn’t happen now, not at the hospital and certainly not at one of Gio’s clubs. Too dangerous. Even if the Calabrettas—or, more likely, the family Gaby had been promised to—was not actively looking for her, if word ever got back to them that Gaby was working in a Vitale business, tradition demanded that they seek vengeance, no matter how they personally felt about it.

“I have no idea,” Gaby said, and as evasive as that sounded, I believed her. “He never told me a name, only that I would be leaving Toronto with my new husband, possibly to live in the States, but he wasn’t even sure of that.”

Interesting. That sounded like a contract for the sole purpose of securing an alliance, but with whom and why? I stored the information for now, making a mental note to contact Simon for a proper investigation later.

“Tell me about your friend, the one that forged your papers,” I ordered.

Her guilt-laden eyes broke from me as her face colored.

“I can’t say much, only that her father is part of the Russian Bratva, so most of what I know about her is personal stuff, not family stuff. Anyway, I met her when her family sent her to school in Canada to study. I think they wanted her out of Russia, and out of their way somewhere relatively safe. Knowing me probably put her in danger, but when I needed help to escape, she was there.”

What a fortunate coincidence. Was Gaby’s father really unaware that the Russian Bratva had inserted a member into his daughter’s school, or had that been part of his plan all along? Why else would a Don allow his eldest, most marriageable daughter to fly the coop unless he had a spy keeping watch? I’d bet my life he planned on marrying her to the Russians in exchange for a piece of the pie.