Page 12 of The Mob and his Messenger

But now I have to force all of that away as I walk back into Gabriel’s penthouse and toward the crowd gathered in the middle of the room.

“What is it?” I say, keeping my voice cold despite the anxiety thrumming through me.

I push through the crowd, my men and their wives knowing to drift aside as I move closer to the man on the floor.

I stare down at him, rage gripping me and the desire to bash more than a few heads together coming over me.

One of the younger men, Nathan, is lying on his back with a stupid drunken expression on his face. As I watch, he blinks and sits up, looking around in surprise at all the people crowded around him. I glance at the woman who screamed, a thin woman in a thinner dress, his wife, his girl, whatever, screaming melodramatically because he slipped on an hors d'oeuvre.

“Wha—goin’—on?” he slurs drunkenly.

“Stupid motherfucker,” Gabriel snaps, leaning down and grabbing him by his shirtfront. “The fuck’s the matter with you? You got half the place thinking you’ve been shot or poisoned, you dumb prick.”

I see anger rise in Nathan’s young face. He looks like he might snap at this man rudely accosting him, but then his eyes come into some sort of focus and he sees that it’s Gabriel Smith.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. “Fuck, sorry.”

He looks up at me and his lips begin to tremble. I know his name, but we’ve never spoken. I’ve never had a need to.

“Boss, please, forgive me.”

I sigh grimly. “Go home and sober up,” I tell him. “And don’t cause such a scene next time.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I’m sorry. Shit. I’m so sorry.”

I watch as he stumbles toward the exit, leaning on the arm of his plus-one. Julio is standing in the corner, hands crossed over his middle, and when I nod at him he silently glides from the room after Nathan. He’ll drive him home and make sure he doesn’t get into any more trouble. I wish more of my men were like Julio.

“Fucking idiot,” Gabriel grumbles, walking over to me as the crowd disperses and the festivities recommence. “All that fuss over a goddamn prawn or whatever the fuck it was. Shows you how tense people are, though, don’t it?”

“We’re at war,” I say. “They’re right to be tense.”

We drift over to the corner of the room, sitting down and letting our men and their women fill the room around us. I catch sight of Dallas moving across the room, one hand on the back of Poppet’s head. The way she’s leaning down to touch her dog causes the hem of her dress to lift slightly, giving me a glance at more of her thigh, that luscious thigh I could spend hours exploring, licking, biting.

I keep my face composed. This is wrong. Gabriel is sitting right fucking here.

“Skip,” he says, keeping his voice quiet so the other men don’t hear him use his childhood nickname for me.

“Yes?”

“Am I going crazy, or did I see you holding Dallas’s dog out there? And I could swear I saw her howling.”

I feel like a traitor, like a fucking rat, as I sit here, my friend having no idea that a thousand sultry thoughts about his daughter are cascading through my mind. I have to be strong. I have to fight this. I can’t let my desire for her consume me, not now, not ever.

“I was just keeping her company,” I mutter. “Or, rather, I was just escaping the party, the same way she was.”

Gabriel nods, unsuspicious.

He trusts you. That’s why he doesn’t suspect you. You piece of shit.

“Never was one for parties, Dallas,” he says.

“No?” I say, and then immediately regret it.

What I should be doing is pushing any thought of Dallas from my mind, definitely not asking my consigliere for – for what? – for inside tips about his daughter.

Gabriel, tell me how to seduce your daughter, tell me all her quirks and character traits.

But Gabriel just takes it as a question between friends, because he has no reason not to. He has no reason to suspect this searing, compulsive need that’s burning through me like the wildest of forest fires, scorching everything up, my reason, my willpower, until all that’s left is her.

And she’s mine.

She fucking belongs to me.

“She’s always been the bookish type,” he says. “Every time she’d come to visit me as a kid – and you know how much Samantha resented letting her come down here – but anyway, she’d always just hole up with a book. Sometimes she’d sit there for twelve hours straight, picking up a new one when the old one was finished.”

“Hmm,” I mutter noncommittally, my eyes roaming over the party as I wish for this conversation to take a bullet to the head.

But then Gabriel laughs in a way I know well, a laugh of reminiscence. And Gabriel is one of those people who all but screams, Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m laughing about? I can feel him looking at me in this way, the same way he has for over two decades.

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