Page 57 of The Price of Power

On the contrary, everything was too neat and tidy. There were no pads of paper out. No empty coffee cups or piles of pencil shavings. No fresh scratches on the desktop.

The picture it painted made perfect sense to me.

This was the desk of a man who did his work out in the real world. Who talked to people face to face instead of on the phone. Who sat down across from them instead of writing them an email.

When I sat down in the high-backed chair and arranged my work for the day, I was reasonably certain that this wasn’t really Gabriel’s desk. It was his father’s. And probably his grandfather’s before that.

I didn’t know how far back the history of D’Angelos in New York went or if they had always been mafia men. I was sure if I asked Gabriel tonight at dinner, he’d tell me all about it.

Strange that just a couple days into captivity, I was already comfortable enough to sit around brainstorming dinner conversation ideas instead of possible escape plans.

I even found my mind drifting as I began to wrangle the nightclub numbers, floating away on daydreams and memories of last night’s pleasures. So much so that only fifteen minutes in, I pressed down too hard on my pencil and broke the tip.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself, looking over the vast desktop for a sharpener. I didn’t see one, so I started opening drawers.

I was almost disappointed to find Gabriel wasn’t hiding anything scandalous inside. I didn’t find any weapons or a stockpile of drugs, just paper and pens…and one very familiar-looking cell phone.

My cell phone.

My breath hitched in my throat, even though the sight of it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Gabriel had told me he had it, after all. He’d used it to call my family.

Not that they ever called him back.

At least, Gabriel said they never did. But there was only one way to know for sure.

Shooting a glance at the closed door, I quickly picked it up and pressed the power button. My muscles were tense, ready to toss the thing back in the drawer if I heard so much as a floorboard squeak outside.

That wasn’t likely to happen, though, I reminded myself. Both Gabriel and Matteo were out of the house, and even if Letizia did come in, I doubted she’d think there was anything strange about finding me with a phone.

She did think I was a guest, after all.

After a few excruciatingly long seconds, the phone screen lit up.

There were no missed call notifications.

I checked the call log just to be sure.

Nothing.

Just a long list of ongoing calls. Some of them I remembered making the day of that terrible meeting with Gabriel, and some after he’d taken my phone.

So he was telling the truth.

He had called my family. And if that was true, then there was no reason to believe he hadn’t told them the truth. Gabriel wasn’t one to hold back on details, and I was sure he’d explained every last element of the deal we’d made.

My freedom for a temporary reprieve of Theo’s life.

And they still didn’t call back.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but their abandonment stung more than I thought possible. I didn’t want to believe it. There had to be another reason they hadn’t returned either of our calls.

Maybe they were afraid.

It would make sense. My family might be assholes, but they weren’t criminals. Receiving threatening voicemails from a notorious mob boss was probably more than they could take.

Checking the door one more time, I decided to risk calling them myself.

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