Page 6 of Gabe's Obsession

"Oh no. No fucking way. You all are not blaming this all on me." Mason turned to Gabe. "I'm not the only one who agreed this was a good idea."

Levi stepped between all of them. "No one's blaming anyone. Push come to shove, we all agreed to this.”

“I didn’t agree,” Tori said. “And I’m not so sure I would have. Nina is her own woman. If there is anything I know about her, it's the fact that she can stand on her own two feet. Last week you all agreed that she needed some time to think. Now all of a sudden, you want to gang up on her?" She shook her head. "This family is in turmoil and some shit is still going to hit the fan, but arguing with each other is going to get you exactly nowhere."

Gabe hid the smile that wanted to come out. He'd always liked Tori, but especially now more than ever. He missed her working in the club, as did the customers. She may not have been a true Domme at heart, but she had a gift with people nonetheless.

Gabe cleared his throat. "Why don't we get something to eat, sit down and put our heads together? This isn't just about Nina, is it? What's really at stake?"

All three brothers glanced at each other at his question, an easy tell that there was a lot more to the story to still come out.

"I'm worried about Nina. Do you know where she's going?" The frown across Mason's face made Gabe remember how much worry and stress he carried for his family. Sometimes he wondered if they even realized how much he did for them. Most only saw the hard exterior, but Gabe had spent a lot of time with the man and he knew just how deep his loyalty to family went.

"We should know soon where she's headed," Gabe informed them. Not that he needed confirmation.

"So youarehaving her followed?" Tori asked.

"I'm taking precautions." He didn't feel the need to elaborate beyond that. Yes, they were her family and had a right to be concerned about her, but this was his job now, whether they liked it or not.

She needed someone other than a blood relation to look out for her. Someone who cared about her in different ways.

Fuck that. Not someone. Him.

He'd bided his time for a long fucking time and he was tired of waiting. The call from Tori a few weeks ago about Nina being sloppy drunk and sobbing in her storeroom office had not only been a wakeup call, but a final straw.

He'd taken control. Something he wasn't about to give up now that he had it.

Everyone gathered around the table and picked out seats. Tucker and Maggie at the far end with Levi and Tori down one side and Mason and Rebecca the other. That left the end of the table for him and one other seat to his right for Nina.

He stood back and watched. Did they even realize they were his family, too? Tucker leaned into his wife and whispered something in her ear while his hand protectively cradled her barely there baby bump. Their family would soon grow.

He felt the corners of her lips turn up in a subtle smile. These assholes had somehow managed to turn the most tragic day in his life into the beginning of something new.

His parents had been killed in a car accident back when he was in college on their way to his first football game. A truck driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and crossed over the center line at the precise moment they were about to pass the truck.

All parties involved were killed instantly.

As the only child of two only children who'd waited to start a family until almost middle age, he'd been left with no one.

Except the three men sitting at his table right now.

For some unknown reason, young men he barely knew other than as fellow players on their college football team where he was the low ranking freshman who spent most of his time riding a bench, scooped him up at the morgue that night after he'd been pulled from the game by state highway patrol to identify dead bodies. They never left him alone again.

He'd become a part of their unusual friendship. He'd never quite understood how the three of them had been so close until years later when Mason had revealed to him that the three of them were half-brothers.

At the time, he hadn't elaborated and it had been quite a few more years before he'd discovered their connection was none other than the deceased, but still infamous preacher, Reverend Lewis.

Now, that had made a lot of sense.

It at least explained why they kept their lives so secret.

By then they were all long-time business partners in the Purgatory Club, a goth and fetish night club, with a private membership component that took up the third floor of the building. There, many of the city's elite and often wealthy clientele could indulge in what many would consider sexual deviance.

The brothers had introduced him to kink by including him on some of their weekend excursions into the city, one thing had led to another and now he ran the club for them. Unlike them, he did not need to keep his sexual proclivities quiet. Instead, he'd indulged quite publicly for many years.

And it was precisely those activities that had kept him eternally single.

"Gabe, you going to just stand there and watch us or are you going to join us?" Levi asked.

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