Page 87 of Wolf.e
PB
Sean says only a few more weeks and life can go back to normal.
I grimace at my phone. It sort of pisses me off that Layla knows a timeline but Gabriel hasn’t told me anything yet. I bring my lip between my teeth and bite down.
I’ve been in this house for two days and haven’t fully snooped through it yet. I begin to walk toward the bedroom. Gabriel is gone and I have no idea where.Club business, he said.
I pull his drawers open one by one, everything is neat, organized. Black boxers upon black boxers. Same with his t-shirts and jeans.
It’s all perfect. Too perfect.
I push open his closet door and run my fingers along the soft flannels that hang there. Carhartt. In blacks and grays, you would think he had shares in the company. As I get to the back a small wooden box with an oval inlay catches my eye.
By the time I pick it up I’m convinced that it’s probably knives or something demented but when I open it, I see different compartments. I pull each one out. The top one is full of medals and articles pulled from some sort of magazine. It’s about a mission the E-12 Marines carried out to neutralize a warlord, but during the attack the enemy bombed their own village. I look away when I flip the page over. There are photos on it. One is a village with people everywhere. Dead people. Another just like it, a car blown to bits. No wonder he has no belief in God or the Devil. No wonder his faith in people is nonexistent. How can one see this sort of carnage and come out the other side with faith?
I pull the next two compartments out and they’re filled with photos. Old ones. I instantly recognize him in the sea of kids. Big and strong even when he was young. He seems to be about ten, standing with his mother. Her beauty overwhelms me. Long dark hair, pretty features, and a beautiful smile—Gabriel’s smile. There are other photos with the club, I see the man who must be his uncle with the president patch, him and another kid on bikes. Maybe Sean?
There’s another of Gabriel in his teen years, arms folded across his chest. What hits me the most is it’s the first picture I’ve found where his eyes have the same hollow and emotionless look as they do now. I glance back at the first photos, the ones where his eyes have a mischievous light. I run my finger across them and smile. That’s the Gabriel I wish I could’ve seen, before life jaded him.
I pull another compartment out and squint. I don’t know what these are. I pick one up. It’s small, the size of a quarter and it has the Apple logo on it. I flip it over and read the back. AirTag.Can be tracked miles away, or even in a different country, provided it is within Bluetooth range of an Apple device on the Find My network.
Is heactuallytracking my car? I pick one up and put it in my pocket, tidying up this mess as best I can.
I make my way down the stairs and out the front door. Pulling the device out, I look at it again and decide he’d probably put it inside. I open my door and begin my search, feeling down the cracks and crevices in between seats, under the dash, but it isn’t until I get on my hands and knees that I see it, stuck to the underside of the driver’s seat.
Motherfucker.
He makes me stay here every minute of every day while he comes and goes as he pleases? I make a promise here and now, no more. From now on, I’ll be making him tell meeverything.And this little tracker?
Well, two can play at that game.
Chapter 44
Brinley
Over three weeks later
“Fuck you!” I spit out obscenities I wouldn’t even have been comfortable with two months ago but now the sound of my voice echoes through the space.
All my clothing sticks to me with sweat. We’re on hour two of this little routine we’ve got going. We’ve been at it every day and I’m about to go crazy. Always an hour at the shooting range, then hours in the gym. I’ve learned over the last few weeks that every plane of Gabriel’s body is an integral part of the weapon he is. He’s all rippling muscle, hard lines and simmering just below the surface is all his power and rage. It never ceases to both piss me off and turn me the fuck on to watch him hardly break a sweat in training with me.
“Ican’tdo it…you’re too goddamn heavy,” I bite out. “And we’re both already bleeding.”
He could go on like this for weeks and I’m panting after thefirst forty-five minutes. At least this last week I’ve made it forty-five before panting, so I guess that’s progress.
“Yes, you can, just get fucking angrier.” Gabriel chuckles as I struggle to get out of his hold. I’m pinned below him; we’ve been working on this particular move for days. My lip is still bleeding from ten minutes ago when I tried to push him off of me from my stomach and he forced me back down. My teeth met the nice plush middle of my bottom lip, which in turn made me claw at his neck deep enough to draw blood.
“You’re never more alive than when you’re bleeding,” Gabriel grunts as he holds me, trading between looking like he’s either going to tighten his hold on me or kiss me, or both.
“If I gave up when I saw my blood in that cave I wouldn’t be here. Every drop I bled meant I was still living.”
I stare up at him as a new piece of his sadistic mind is revealed to me.
Gabriel leans down even closer, that cruel light in his eye glints as he holds me. “And I like the look of my blood on you, hummingbird,” he says, his voice low and even. “It’s when I feel the most alive. Now, secure your position and fuckingfight me!”
I do my best to remember the steps while his forearm is currently cutting off my air supply.
“Come on!” he snarls. “Knee to my stomach, foot on my hip.”
