Teddy set a bottle on the bar. Gabriel twisted the lid, downed half. “I’ve never been shot before. Been stabbed, never shot.”
“Which is worse?” Teddy asked.
Gabriel paused. “Pain is pain, you know?” He raked his hands through his hair.
“Luciano said he’s taking over Santini International, so you gotta run Santini Euro,” Teddy said, bringing them back on point. “Who’s running the wineries?”
“Grapes grow,” Gabriel said. “It’s not like I sit there watching ‘em.”
The brothers started laughing.
“I’m staying, Teddy,” Gabriel said. “I know I told Sin I’m outta here, but I?—”
“If you leave, the Bratva will follow you.”
What the fuck.
“This doesn’t feel like brotherly love,” Gabriel pushed back.
“G—”
Gabriel pushed off the stool and waved Teddy off. “Thanks for pulling the video. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t have faces or names. Now, I got both.”
Teddy strode over. “Don’t do this, G.”
“Help me, don’t help me.” Gabriel pulled to a stop in the middle of the dark restaurant. “I got a job to do. G-pa dominated a huge region in Italy, then it went to hell when he died. I took back our turf and I run it like a Boss. We’re Sicilian. Cosa Nostra is in my blood. I managed the restaurant foryou, Theodore. That’s what we do. We got each other’s backs.”
Frustration sent another jolt of energy thundering through him.
So much for the sex high.
Teddy was still talking when Gabriel returned to the office, collected his gun.
As the anger took hold, he made his way to the front of the restaurant. “Lock the door behind me.”
Into the December night Gabriel went. It was dark, it was cold, but he was burning up. The fury flowed through him like a raging river. Always had. And he used that emotion to his advantage.
He got into his Ferrari, hid his weapon in the center console, and drove out. No matter what, Gabriel could count on Angelo. While Moretti wasn’t blood, he was as much a brother as his biological ones… and hella more loyal. Angelo was Gabriel’s underboss—his second in command—and a damn good one.
Gabriel had gunned down one Bratva. While he didn’t have Teddy’s computer hacking skills, he’d find these thugs and he’d take them out.
One motherfucker at a time.
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK THENEXT MORNING, Gabriel rang the doorbell of the two-story brick-front home in an older Fairfax neighborhood, forty minutes outside DC, his arms loaded down with bags.
A sleepy-looking Angelo opened the door, invited him in. He stood there in shorts, no shirt, his dark hair going in every direction.
“Who’s here?” Gabriel asked before making his way into the compact kitchen and setting the grocery bags and flowers on the counter.
“Everyone. The funeral was yesterday.” Angelo furrowed his brows. “You got a limp. What happened to you?”
“Bratva ambush.”
“You get hit?”
“Yeah, but I’m good.”
“You need my nonno’s walker?” Angelo chuckled.
