Then I planted my hands on Gabriella’s shoulders, looked her in the eye, and arched a brow.
“Is there something you want to tell me, little wife?”
She swallowed hard, shook her head, but my phone rang, cutting off my response. Since it was on Do Not Disturb, itcould only be one of two calls. With Gabriella in front of me, I answered with a bark.
“What’s the craic?”
“Boss, there’s trouble,” Connor said rapidly. “Cops raided The Ace of Spades.”
I cursed as he gave me a play-by-play scenario of what happened this morning at one of our gambling dens. We paid the cops well to look the other way, but this wasn’t our guys. Connor explained that someone tipped off the 57th precinct.
“At least it wasn’t the feds,” I muttered.
I was too distracted with the current crisis to realize that my little bird had suddenly gone still.Verystill. She wasn’t trying to avoid the house anymore—she was staring right through the window.
Connor’s voice faded away.
I did a double take.
I’d never seen Gabriella so angry before. Not last night when she killed someone. Not when she recounted her father’s abuse. No, there was something righteous, holy, and all-consuming. My Roman goddess burst into flames, standing before me in all her beauty.
Before I could break the spell, Gabriella moved.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I scanned our surroundings for a threat as Gabriella rushed up the steps to the brownstone. She flung herself to the door—which happened to be unlocked—and disappeared into the interior.
“Connor, get over here! That bleeding house on Flintwood! Bring the lawyer!” I yelled, giving him no moment to respond before dashing after my crazed, psychotic little wife.
The yelling greeted me as I stepped into the tastefully decorated interior. The temperature dropped several degrees, but it wasn’t the AC. The space reeked with an unwelcomingperfume. Curated and posh, it turned up its nose as if to say my kind didn’t belong.
But I didn’t stop to argue.
A baby—the same that had been in the stroller—wailed at the top of its lungs. I rushed into the front sitting room. Gabriella’s voice rose above the whole mess as she pointed an accusatory finger at the mom.
“How dare you put my son in danger?” Gabriella seethed. “And then you yell at him! Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you right now!”
Chapter 48 – Gabriella
Isnapped.
I acted without thinking.
Even now, the rational part of my brain was silent, as if a stone had fallen on it, burying it under layers of instinct. What burst out of my mind, coming through the walls I had put in place to block the pain, was raw and unfiltered.
I was possessed.
That woman had set my nine-month-old son on a couch while she yelled into her phone. And then when the child wriggled off, diving headfirst onto the carpet, she had the audacity to turn around and blame him. She didn’t scoop him into her arms. She didn’t comfort him or check if he was okay. She yelled at the phone, she yelled at the baby, and I’d seen enough.
Now I was standing there, Luca clutched tightly to my chest, glaring daggers at his adopted mom—the lady that the state had deemed capable of taking care of such a beautiful treasure.
“You yelled at him,” I barked, not backing down.
Because if I didn’t latch onto the anger and tear this woman apart from limb to limb, my heart threatened to stop beating.The cracks, the chaos, were too much. I would bleed out if I didn’t act.
“I’m having a bad day,” Linda Carmichael sobbed. “My husband is cheating on me, and I just…I don’t know. I freaked. I—I’m not a bad mom! I swear it! I love him more than life, but…I never meant to hurt him. I just…it’s too much!”
She shoved her hands through her hair. Her Botox face didn’t bend under the weight of her emotions.
I cuddled the baby closer, stroking his impossibly soft hair.
