Page 53 of The Price of Power

Chapter Seventeen

OLIVIA

Matteo was right

The old books for his new nightclub were a mess. A tangle of bad bookkeeping methods and devious practices. All it took was one glance at the first few columns, and I could tell just how screwed up the rest of the pages would be.

Gabriel’s brother sat next to me for the first few minutes, making me painfully aware of his presence with his critical stare. His gaze was every bit as intense as his twin’s, but even though the eyes and expression were technically the same, their effect on me wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong—he was still scary as hell.

I was starting to think there was no possible way that a D’Angelo could be anything else. But even though his scrutiny made me uncomfortable, it didn’t do anything else.

And that was a more unsettling realization than I was prepared for.

All this time, I’d thought that my reaction to Gabriel had come down to simple physical attraction—nothing more. After all, the man was as hot as Mt. Vesuvius. What woman could resist those dark eyes and sculpted jawline? Any straight woman would be drawn to a body like his.

But if that was true, then surely I should have felt the same pull toward his identical twin. After all, they shared the same features, the same physique.

But I didn’t.

Unlike with Gabriel, there was no heat, no electric sizzle as Matteo’s eyes bored into me. The only thing I felt was nervous. Which meant maybe all these feelings I had for Gabriel were far less superficial than I wanted them to be.

And that was something I really didn’t want to think about.

When I woke up, I wasn’t sure how in the world I would spend the day. My eyes had only been open for a few seconds before the guilt had crashed over me.

Maybe I could have been forgiven for that first time with Gabriel. Without knowing his full name or who he really was, I could have eventually written it off as a wild, one-time fling.

But last night had been different. I couldn’t pretend ignorance. I couldn’t act as if he’d seduced or coerced me. He’d been very careful to lay the truth right out on the table.

We’d fucked because I wanted to.

There was no way to twist that. No way to pretend I was the victim. No way to hide from what I’d done.

Well, that last one wasn’t totally true.

Even before I’d used the excuse of a job offer in Milwaukee to distance myself from my family, I’d been a master of using work as a distraction for personal problems. So, it just felt right to bury myself in the pages Matteo had given me and focus on untangling his convoluted knot of numbers.

For a while, I sat at the kitchen table, sipping tea and making notes. Matteo must have grown bored because when I looked up from the books a little while later, he was gone. After that, I moved back up to Gabriel’s room and continued to poke away at the problem while sitting cross-legged on his bed.

I know for most people, it wouldn’t have been an entertaining afternoon, picking apart row after row of figures of sums, but for me, it was exactly what I needed.

Immersed in a difficult puzzle, time flew by quickly, and before I knew it, the clock on the bedside table read seven o’clock.

Time to get ready to go out again with Gabriel.

I showered, did my hair, picked a black dress from the closet this time, and was just slipping on a pair of heels when the bedroom door opened just as the clock read eight.

“You’re ready,” he said with an approving nod. Apparently, punctuality was something very important to him. “Good.”

“What would have happened if I wasn’t?” I asked.

He shook his head as he offered me his arm. “Fortunately, you don’t have to find out.”

This time, we went to dinner first—an upscale steakhouse with dark wood walls and at least a century’s worth of history hanging on the walls. Like everywhere else, the owners and staff bent over backward to serve him and make him feel welcome, ensuring we were seated at the best table and gifting him their finest bottle of wine.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” I dared as after we had ordered.

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