Celine nodded at her once more, her smile still lingering.
Then she departed, walking quickly to the driverless car, keeping her head down, before sliding inside.
The moment she was in, the car sped away…and then Valerie was alone outside, in the dark alleyway leading towards the brothel.
She took in a deep breath, tilting her head back to the night sky, at the projection of the moons—two tonight—and of the stars, fake, ancient constellations she’d only ever read about.
What just happened?she wondered, still in disbelief.
To reassure herself, she fished out the heavy card that Celine had written on, reading the address listed there, the docking bay number, and Celine’s personal patch number until she had it memorized.
Suddenly, a soft, angry voice came from the entrance of the alleyway.
“Was that mymother?”
Valerie froze.
A dark figure approached her, stumbling slightly, but the voice was easily recognizable.
Gabriel.
A very drunk Gabriel at that, Valerie thought, when his reddened face and bleary eyes finally came into view.
Damn.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What are you doing here, Gabriel?” Valerie asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“What,” he snapped, continuing his approach, “is my mother doing at afuckingbrothel?”
So he knew what this place was and where it was located. She wondered if Madame Allegria had let that information slip during their pillow talk.
“You’re drunk,” Valerie said, recognizing the tone she used as the one she usually used with visiting clients. Polite, calm, yet sterile. “Let me call you a car and—”
A gasp left her when Gabriel grabbed her arm, tugging her forward.
He must’ve been at Restaurant Row, which was the street just behind them, because she could smell the liquor on his breath, sour and pungent.
His grip on her was rough and though her heart began to race, realizing that they were alone in a darkened alley and he was very angry and very drunk, her tone never changed as she said, “Let me go, Gabriel. You’re hurting me.”
If anything, his grip tightened as Valerie struggled against him.
All her breath left her when he shoved her up against the alleyway wall, his eyes flashing in the darkness.
“What was my mother doing here?” he roared in her face, shaking her, her back pressing painfully into the wall.
“Gabriel, calm down,” she said, though her tone sounded a little higher in pitch than it had before. “She just came to see me. To talk…about the w-wedding.”
“Do you think I’m a fool?” he hissed, his brows furrowing, growing more and more angry by the second. “I’ll have her head for this.”
Whose? His mother’s? Or did he mean Madame Allegria’s?
The thought of Gabriel, as rich and powerful as his family was, going up against her aunt made her want to laugh. Perhaps it was because this situation was growing more and more worrisome.
“Tell me what you’re doing here,” Valerie said, trying to calm him down, even as she tried to edge out from underneath his grip. Her back was digging into the brick façade of the opposite building.
Thanks to the scar tissue there, however, she didn’t feel much. Just an uncomfortable pressure. If anything, the shoulder where her tracker was hurt the most. He’d slammed her into the wall hard. She swore the tracker pushed deeper into her shoulder.
