Page 69 of Corrupted Queen

“Bring my husband back,” she hisses, glaring up at me.

I leave without another word. I am not welcome there, and I do not blame Corie for her vehemence, even though Vito had chosen this life long before he met her.

Back at the house, I make some calls and do some work, but the more the day ticks along, the more my head swims with sluggish, painful thoughts. When I find myself staring at the same point on the wall for a solid ten minutes, I decide that I have done all I can for the day. There is only one place I want to be.

I find Alexis in the nursery, seated on the couch across from the crib. Harry is inside, napping. She watches him with a hawk-like intensity, as if expecting someone to swing through the window and snatch him away.

She looks up when I enter, and the softness in her gaze tells me that somebody has told her the news. She raises a hand toward me, beckoning me closer.

I do not expect this sympathy, nor do I expect how much I want to wrap myself in it until I can no longer see or hear the outside world. I go to her, sliding onto the sofa next to her and then burying my face in her chest. Her arms come around me. Just the touch of her skin on mine sends tendrils of calm through me.

Alexis rubs my back and presses her lips to my head. If I have never felt so much pain before, I have also never felt comfort like this either. Her warmth surrounds me. Encases me like a cocoon.

I do not deserve this woman, but I can never let her go.

25

Alexis

I roll over in bed and drape my arm over Gabriel’s warm, solid form. I snuggle closer and press my face against his muscled back, breathing in his intoxicating scent. I am still not used to waking up beside him. I don’t know whether grief or exhaustion are to account for his sudden inability to leave my bed before dawn. I suppose it’s likely a combination of both.

I don’t mind, of course. In fact, I like waking up with him. I like when he pulls me closer in the morning, half asleep, breaths fanning over the back of my neck. But I’m worried about him. He has been working himself to the bone, coming to bed even later than before. He hasn’t spoken about what happened on the boat since that day, or about what he has been working on since, but he has let me in in another way.

At night, under the cover of darkness, with sleep hanging lazily on the horizon, we talk about Vito. I didn’t know that the two of them had been friends since they were children. All I knew about Vito before he died was that he was Gabriel’s right-hand man and he didn’t suit facial hair but was determined to grow it anyway.

Now I know all sorts of things—how he and Gabriel used to eavesdrop on Mafia meetings when they were kids, and then reenact them in deep voices up in Gabriel’s bedroom. Gabriel would always play the part of Fabrizio, and Vito took on the role of whoever was pissing Fabrizio off the most that day.

When they were twelve, they got drunk in the very club that Gabriel and I first met in because the staff were too afraid not to serve them. They alternated between scotch and beer because they thought those were the manliest drinks, and after Diego dragged them out into the street, Vito vomited all over his Italian leather loafers.

Both boys went to the same private secondary school, the very one that Gabriel wants Harry to go to someday. In their senior year they would skip class at least once a week to smoke in the bathroom, where they talked almost exclusively about whatever girl trouble Vito was having that week. He always had the worst taste in women, according to Gabriel. If he entered a room full of them, he would inevitably single out the craziest one.

When Vito did find a good one, he married her, and he and Gabriel shared a cigarette in the bathroom of his wedding venue even though neither had smoked for years.

All of these stories, told in quiet whispers, paint a picture of a different Gabriel—one who was carefree and full of joy and light. I know he is still there, hidden away somewhere under the stern line of Gabriel’s brow, because I catch glimpses of him from time to time, usually when he’s playing with Harry. I wish I could bring it out of him more.

Gabriel rolls over and pulls me against his chest. “I need to get up,” he murmurs without opening his eyes.

We both do. Vito’s funeral is this morning.

He sighs and tightens his arms on my waist, and I wonder what he is thinking about but daren’t ask. He won’t tell me. Not with daylight pooling through the curtains. Still, I enjoy the feeling of his heavy arms around me, the tickle of his breath against my forehead.

The dock meet is quickly approaching and I have been vacillating between whether or not I should go. On one hand, it feels nice to be this close to Gabriel. I want to explore this side of our relationship, to keep waking up to his adorable bedhead, to offer comfort to him in the night.

On the other hand, people are still dying. The papers are full of reports of junkies found stiff and cold in alleys and parking garage staircases. I am the only person who knows what I know, and who can shine a light on this crisis, maybe even end it.

Gabriel groans and shifts away from me, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I’ll meet you downstairs in an hour,” he says, and then lumbers out of the room without so much as a backwards glance.

I hop out of bed and go to check on Harry, but he’s still asleep. I leave him for a little while longer, grabbing a shower and applying makeup before going through to wake him up and get him ready too. An hour later, we are downstairs, waiting patiently for Gabriel as instructed.

Only he doesn’t show.

Angelo and David are there, having obviously received the same instructions, but the minutes tick by and we are still down one mob boss.

“Can you take Harry for a minute?” I ask Angelo.

“Sure.” He takes Harry and starts bouncing him around the room with a big smile while I mount the stairs.

I find Gabriel in his study. He’s dressed in all black, like he’s supposed to be, but something about the way he’s staring at his computer screen makes it seem like he has forgotten the funeral entirely.

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