Page 6 of One Night with the Don

Gabriel climbs over me as I lay my back against the bed and wrap my legs behind his waist to pull him closer. My fingers trail over the muscles in his back, tracing him as if he’s a work of art and letting out an involuntary gasp as his throbbing heat pushes between my thighs. With a slow and steady thrust that fills my body with pleasure, I give into the utopian sensation.

Each movement inside of me sends me closer to the edge, and I struggle to hold onto myself simply because I don’t want it to end. His mouth breathes against mine as he works to pleasure me, and my hands grip the backs of his shoulders tightly to ensure he doesn’t stop. He’s every bit as powerful as they say, but in ways I didn’t even think to entertain before.

Finally, when I can hold on no longer, he tips me over the brink of pleasure, and I erupt into a fit of tremors that renders my whole body out of control. Gabriel follows, his muscles tensing and quaking with me as he erupts.

For a few moments afterward, he lays over me as we both catch our breath, then he carefully slides out of me and lays beside me on the bed. I lift my head to lay against his chest and listen to his heart race out of control, finally starting to calm into a slower rhythm after a while. He is spent—I can hear it in his labored breathing and the heavy sigh he releases, as he wraps an arm around my shoulder to press me against his side.

We lay there in silence for a while, satiated and tired, toying with the idea of falling into a well-earned sleep. But then he asks me what I can only imagine to be a burning question that has been in the background of his mind this whole time. “Why didn’t you kill me?” he asks. His voice is even-tempered, not angry. He sounds curious, not accusatory.

It’s a simple question actually, but it’s not a simple answer. The truth of the matter is that I don’t really know why I didn’t kill him. I knew I needed to. I knew I would become the target if I didn’t do the job. But as soon as I saw him, I couldn’t do it. I can’t tell him that, though. It’s a sign of weakness. What am I supposed to say—that I took one look at him and suddenly felt all my brutal resolve melt into a fantastical longing instead? Obviously, I can’t tell him the whole truth.

So, I tell him a smaller truth instead. “I’ve never killed anyone before,” I say. Itisthe truth. It’s just not the reason I didn’t pull the trigger on Gabriel.

He tilts his chin down toward me and for a moment, he looks temporarily concerned. I know it’s unusual to be my age, in the mafia, and never have fired a gun before. But it’s not unusual for a female in the mafia not to have killed before. Most of my jobs involve drug running, extortion threats, or trafficking stolen goods. None of them involved murder before now.

“We need to remedy that,” he says as he slides out from under me and gets up from the bed.

“Huh? Remedy what?” I sit up, holding the sheet to my chest and letting my hair fall down around me, as I stare up at him and wonder what he’s talking about.

But before I can get him to elaborate on what he means, I hear the front door of his apartment open, and then a familiar voice. “Gabriel? Camille?” Leo’s voice bellows through the apartment.

I look over at Gabriel, panicked about Leo finding me naked in his older brother’s bedroom, but see Gabriel simply shaking his head. “I knew I’d regret giving him a copy of my apartment key,” he sighs. “Get dressed and I’ll go deal with my little brother.”

I scramble to put my clothes on quickly as Gabriel pulls a pair of cotton joggers over his hips. He walks out in nothing but that, and I find myself wishing we had more time alone together to continue the pleasurable activities for longer. When I step out of the bedroom, now fully dressed in clothes that aren’t mine, I pause in the hallway to listen as Gabriel acts like nothing at all has happened between us.

“Camille!” Leo says when he sees me walk out into the room. He rushes up to give me a hug and I almost feel guilty, as if I’ve committed some sort of crime or cardinal sin, as I look over his shoulder at Gabriel standing there. “What happened? Are you okay? Whose clothes are these? You never wear colors.”

I don’t even know where to start in terms of an explanation, so I’m glad when Gabriel intervenes. “She’s not safe, Leo,” he says. “She took a job that was supposed to be a hit on me, and she didn’t complete it. Now she’s in danger. And she needs to learn how to handle a gun better before she gets herself killed.”

Leo looks fifty shades of confused as he stands there staring at his brother. “Wait, what?” he asks in shock. “Why didn’t she kill you?”

“Uh, Iamright here,” I say, as the two continue to talk to each other like I’m not in the room. “And why would you even ask it like that? Aren’t you glad that I failed and didn’t kill your brother?”

“Yes, of course. But now you’re in danger.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And how did you end up back here at Gabriel’s place?” Leo asks as he eyes us both suspiciously.

“Look, Camille can explain everything to you on your way back to her apartment. I’ve got a car down in the garage that’ll take you back. It’s safer than walking the streets.” Gabriel tries to dismiss us both from his apartment quickly. I can tell he’s trying to avoid drama from breaking out, but I don’t want to leave yet.

“Come on, then,” Leo says as he takes my hand and starts heading toward the elevator to the parking garage below. “Let’s get you home and you can fill me in about everything.” He turns and offers his brother a quick thanks for having come to my aid, even though I tried to kill him, and then walks away. I don’t turn around to say anything at all to Gabriel, because a simple “thanks” sounds very wrong, considering everything the two of us have experienced together in the past few hours. So I just follow Leo silently to the car.

“Okay, tell me everything,” he says as soon as we’re on our way. “You can start by how the hell you wound up being rescued by my brother.”

I can see that Leo isn’t going to let this go, so I answer his questions simply without any elaboration. The less elaboration, the less chance for fucking it up. “The job I took went sideways and Gabriel helped me out of it. There really isn’t anything more to it than that.”

It’s not a lie; it’s just also not the complete truth. Regardless, I am now back to having to deal with the reality that I left a job unfinished, and that means I need to lay low for a while. If only I could shut my brain off so that it would stop thinking about Gabriel.

6

GABRIEL

I try to forget about Camille. It’s best for everyone if I do. My little brother has always been a bit jealous of me, and if he finds out that I’ve slept with his best friend, the rift between us is sure to turn into a giant, gaping chasm. Camille might need protection, but she’s better off finding it with Leo or someone else than with me. I’m too busy running aborgatato devote my undivided attention to a woman. And now I need to try and figure out who put the hit on me to begin with.

Now that Camille has left my apartment, I start digging around. I have more than a few enemies. But like I told Camille, I think this was a job meant to kill two birds with one stone—assassinate me and also put Camille on the chopping block. The question is, what common enemy could we possibly have between us? I’m a prominent figure in Tribeca, well-known, wealthy in accordance with my public identity as the owner of a prominent real estate company, which recently broke the billion-dollar mark in transactions in a single year, and with a violent enough track record that no one really wants to fuck with me without good reason. So, what’s the reason?

Sure, I’ve slept with a married woman or two, but that sort of thing doesn’t usually warrant a hit. Mafia bosses tend to keep our personal vendettas and business transactions distinctly separate if at all possible. And I don’t know anycapoin the city who would risk crossing me simply because my cock wandered into their woman. “I don’t know, Nick, it just doesn’t make sense,” I say as myconsiglierecomes to sit down with me. Nick Pappi has been myconsigliereever since I becamecapo, and I trust him as much as I trust my own brother. “I’ve never spent any significant amount of time around Camille Greco. She and I have nothing in common, aside from both having a connection to my brother. He’s my confidante and right-hand man, but as you well know, he’s as innocuous about our activities as it gets.” Nick nods in agreement.

---