I chuckle. “Well, you wouldn’t be Boris otherwise.”
“So, what do you need? I don’t have all day. Ivana is going to kill me if I don’t get this paperwork done.”
I shake my head. Boris is old school, loving his paper and pen. “I need you to take someone in to train. They have trained before, have a good swing, and can be unpredictable. She needs to learn discipline, and also when to give up. She wants to learn self-defense to be ready when the real danger is present.”
“She?” He raises a questioning brow.
“Yes. My wife.”
His brows shoot to his hairline, and he leans back in his chair and bursts into laughter.
“So, you ended up marrying a girl who can punch and has no discipline. Oh, I like her already.”
twenty-two
Valentina
“Where are we going?” I ask and slide into the passenger seat.
“It’s a surprise.” Gabriel revs the car, and I watch him, my expression thoughtful.
I look at his smirking face. “Can you at least give me some clues?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. What kind of surprise?”
He chuckles. “I promise you’ll like it.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Why not?”
“When you promise something, you need to stick to it. Otherwise, you lose the trust of the person. And I may be your wife, but I’m not sure if I can trust you. Can I trust you?”
“How about you decide for yourself in ten minutes?”
“Ha, clue number one. It’s ten minutes away.”
Gabriel shakes his head and smiles as we stop in a traffic jam.
“We should have taken my bike,” I murmur.
“A car is safer. It’s bulletproof.”
I turn to him. “Why would someone want to kill us in front of all these people? If they wanted, they could do it from anywhere, even when you exit the car. And they could still aim at your tires. You would lose control and crash.”
He shrugs. “Tell that to Salvatore.”
“Oh, right, I heard about the attack.” Just a few days after their wedding, Salvatore and his wife were ambushed. Chased down in their car while bullets shredded the night. They walked away alive, but the message was clear. That attack was one of the key triggers that forced Cosa Nostra and the Camorra into an alliance. The cars in front of us start to move, and Gabriel takes the next exit to the right.
“How is Isabella?” I ask, remembering how, a few days ago, I found her broken on the floor in the bathroom. Gabriel took me to their house to show my respect for the wife of the don, and what I saw made my insides hurt. My decision to be stronger grew even more.
“She left.”
I turn my head toward him. “Where did she go?”
“Back to Italy. Salvatore is going ape-shit and is doing my work and his. So, this gave me an opportunity to do something.”
