Page 150 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“You know this is my sanc­tu­ary?” Gabriel re­peated in shock. “How?”

Lorenzo looked away and then back, the cor­ners of his mouth curled down­ward in sor­row. “Be­cause you came here af­ter the kid­nap­ping. To heal, your mother said. She told me to al­low you your pri­vacy.”

Gabriel rocked back on his heels. His fa­ther had wanted to come here to see him af­ter the ab­duc­tion? “I… Yes, I find it eases my spirit.”

“It is ter­ri­ble that you must once again come here. My heart grieves for that.” His fa­ther searched Gabriel’s face. “Yet I feel you have hap­pi­ness to look for­ward to with your mu­sic and the fes­ti­val.”

His par­ents didn’t know about his breakup with Quinn. He’d told them a bull­shit story about Quinn dash­ing away at the air­port be­cause she’d had to speak with Mikel about some­thing ur­gent. They thought his grim mood was about his brush with death. It was strange how that af­fected him far less than los­ing Quinn.

Then he had forced him­self to share the good news about Redda and Marisela. His par­ents had been ju­bi­lant…and re­lieved.

Now his fa­ther thought he could be happy again, when all Gabriel saw was the empty space where Quinn should be.

“Yes, I have a lot to look for­ward to,” Gabriel said with­out en­thu­si­asm.

“I want to apol­o­gize for some­thing I did to you.”

Shock jerked Gabriel’s at­ten­tion away from his des­o­late vi­sion of the fu­ture.

His fa­ther stared down at the soil. “I know noth­ing about mu­sic. You got your tal­ent from your mother’s side. But I in­sisted on bring­ing An­to­nio de la Cueva here to be your teacher. He had such a bril­liant rep­u­ta­tion for train­ing younger mu­si­cians. Now I un­der­stand he was too old, too rigid.”

Gabriel made a sound of protest, but Lorenzo shook his head and con­tin­ued. “He was so wrong about you. He did such dam­age. I am proud that you found the strength to ig­nore his ver­dict. And so sorry you were forced to fight that bat­tle when you had more than enough other strug­gles to deal with.”

Gabriel sud­denly re­al­ized that his proud fa­ther was kneel­ing in front of him, his head bowed. The wrong­ness of it punched him in the chest.

“Papa, stop.” Gabriel dusted off his hand against his jeans be­fore he held it out to his fa­ther. “I think we should fin­ish this con­ver­sa­tion stand­ing.”

Lorenzo grasped Gabriel’s hand and, with a sigh of re­lief, al­lowed Gabriel to pull him to his feet. Lorenzo’s mouth twitched into a somber smile. “I felt I should do penance on my knees, but it isn’t so easy at my age. Gra­cias.”

Gabriel glanced around, wish­ing there was some­place to sit, but the lilies spread out around them all the way to the cliffs. Maybe it was bet­ter, though, for him and his fa­ther to stand face-to-face now. He turned back to Lorenzo. “I have a con­fes­sion to make to you.”

His fa­ther’s eye­brows lifted in sur­prise.

“Not so long ago, I would have agreed with you about An­to­nio. I was bit­ter about what he said to me when I needed his sup­port,” Gabriel ad­mit­ted. “But I have learned a valu­able les­son from that ex­pe­ri­ence, one I would not have wanted to miss.”

“And that les­son is?”

“A true artist plays for the love of the mu­sic. Noth­ing else mat­ters.” Quinn had taught him that. His heart wrenched painfully.

His fa­ther nod­ded, drops of sweat drip­ping from his fore­head with the mo­tion. “Few peo­ple un­der­stand that.”

“I didn’t un­til re­cently,” Gabriel said. “But An­to­nio con­trib­uted pos­i­tive gifts too. Now that I am push­ing past his bound­aries, I re­al­ize that he helped me build a strong foun­da­tion in tech­nique. It makes me brave with mu­sic I wouldn’t have dared to ap­proach be­fore. He gave me con­fi­dence in my fin­gers. Now I am learn­ing to go be­yond just play­ing the notes cor­rectly.” He flung out his arms as the mem­ory of the duet with Marisela surged through him. For a mo­ment, he was happy again. “It is ex­hil­a­rat­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing.”

“Thank you for the ab­so­lu­tion.” His fa­ther’s voice shook. “It re­lieves me to know my ac­tions did not cause ir­repara­ble dam­age.” He cleared his throat. “Do you wish to talk about what hap­pened in New York? I will lis­ten, if it will help.”

Gabriel would have to tell his par­ents about Quinn soon, so why not get it done now?

“I am not out here be­cause of the sniper.” He rubbed his palms against his jeans again. “It’s Quinn. She did not need to talk with Mikel at the air­port. She left be­cause she no longer wishes to be with me.”

“Ah.” His fa­ther looked thought­ful. “I won­dered why such a charm­ing and con­sid­er­ate young woman did not stop to greet us af­ter such a trau­matic event. I thought per­haps she wished to al­low us pri­vate time with you.”

Gabriel al­most snorted at his fa­ther’s de­scrip­tion of Quinn. She wouldn’t rec­og­nize her­self in it. Then a nee­dle of pain jabbed him as he re­al­ized he wouldn’t be able to laugh about it with her.

He also re­al­ized that his fa­ther did not look thank­ful that his son was no longer dat­ing an Amer­i­can felon. In fact, he looked con­cerned. Who was this man he had thought he knew?

Maybe it was the shock, but Gabriel found he needed to talk. “I pushed her too hard. When it hit me that the sniper could have killed her—that I could have lost her—I re­al­ized I never wanted to be with­out her. For the rest of my life.” He spread his hands in help­less­ness. “I told her how I felt. You saw how quickly she ran off the plane.”

“Per­haps she was run­ning from her own feel­ings too,” his fa­ther of­fered.

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