Page 25 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel locked his gaze on the dis­tant sea.

“Gabri?” Raul prod­ded.

“It re­minds me,” Gabriel ground out.

“Of?”

“Ev­ery­thing.” He stopped him­self from touch­ing his ear­lobe. The ter­ror. The pain. His lungs seemed un­able to get enough oxy­gen, as though the moun­tain air had got­ten thin­ner. He forced him­self to breathe in for a count of ten be­fore he ex­haled.

“I told Pa­ter you would hate that damned medal, but he said it was im­por­tant to rec­og­nize ser­vice to our coun­try in a pub­lic way.”

“He told me the same thing.” Gabriel shook his head. “It’s been a year. Yet, all of a sud­den, Mikel has come up with two leads on the kid­nap­pers in the past week. That seems like a strange co­in­ci­dence.”

“It’s not a co­in­ci­dence,” Raul said. “It’s be­cause Mikel hired that Amer­i­can woman to find the peo­ple who ab­ducted you.”

“You mean Quinn Pier­son?” Sur­prise made Gabriel pivot to­ward Raul.

“She’s some kind of com­bi­na­tion of pro­filer and com­puter wiz­ard at track­ing down crim­i­nals. Pa­ter al­lowed Mikel to hire her and go all out on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Now he’s get­ting re­sults.”

Sur­prise ex­ploded into shock. “Wait, why didn’t he go all out on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­fore he hired Quinn? The trail is harder to fol­low the colder it gets.”

“Mierda! I for­got you didn’t know.” Raul scraped his fin­gers through his hair. “Pa­ter wouldn’t al­low Mikel to bring you into the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause he wanted to give you time to re­cover. Psy­cho­log­i­cally. He didn’t want to in­ter­fere with your progress.” He shrugged at Gabriel. “Now he thinks you’re strong enough to han­dle iden­ti­fy­ing the ab­duc­tors.”

Gabriel pushed up from the boul­der, his hands scrap­ing on the rough basalt, and walked to the edge of the over­look, a boil of anger and frus­tra­tion sear­ing through his chest. “We should have started the day I was re­leased.”

“We did start. Mikel in­ter­viewed you for sev­eral days, re­mem­ber? You shut your­self up in your rooms af­ter ev­ery ses­sion and wouldn’t talk to any­one.” Raul walked up to grab his arm and pull Gabriel around to face him. “I banged on your door, but you wouldn’t open it. I thought you were go­ing to kill your­self.”

Gabriel turned his head to­ward the vista to avoid his cousin’s an­guished face. “Why does ev­ery­one think I’m sui­ci­dal?”

“Maybe be­cause the kid­nap­pers ru­ined your life.”

Gabriel’s fury turned cold. He skew­ered Raul with his gaze. “You give them too much credit. My life is not ru­ined.”

“You’re sell­ing your gui­tars. If that doesn’t mean your life is crap, I don’t know what does.”

Gabriel’s fury trans­muted into guilt. He had not con­sid­ered how his be­hav­ior might ap­pear to his fam­ily. With­out his mu­sic, he had drifted un­teth­ered—and of­ten de­spair­ing—as he strug­gled to find some new pur­pose for his life. The burn­ing pas­sion that had driven him to prac­tice for hours had slowly and painfully flick­ered out, leav­ing him with gray ash in his soul.

But he had never truly con­sid­ered end­ing his life. He had obli­ga­tions to the peo­ple and the coun­try that he loved.

The anger flared again. “You know me bet­ter than that, Raul.”

“But you’ve changed. You’re”—Raul searched for the words—“closed up. You don’t let any­one come near you.”

“Af­ter the mu­sic was gone, I was lost.”

“For fuck’s sake, I wanted to help you! We all did!”

Gabriel held up his hand. “Some roads must be walked alone. Only I could de­cide what di­rec­tion my life would take.”

“I thought you were shut­ting me out be­cause on some level you blamed me for what hap­pened.”

“And you’ve never for­given me for tak­ing your place.” Ex­haus­tion set­tled on Gabriel like a sod­den blan­ket.

“I’m sorry,” Raul whis­pered and then cleared his throat. “I hated how I felt, but I couldn’t seem to stop it. Yet you were the one who was the in­jured party.”

“Which made it worse,” Gabriel said.

“Yeah. Guilt piled on top of guilt. That doesn’t ex­cuse it, but”—Raul shrugged—“it turns out be­ing a prince sucks some­times.”

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