GABRIEL The bastard just logged off, leaving me with a mountain of questions. How does he know Gianna or that she was missing? Does it matter? I grabbed my stuff and packed my bags in haste, not caring what went where which is far from my usual style. I called Pop on my way out the door and didn't even take the time to tell Sal that I was leaving. "Pop, we have to leave right now." "Why what's happened?" "It's Gianna, I think, I don't know, but I think she may have been found. I'll meet you at the plane." Where is she? And who the hell is he? How did he find her when I couldn't? Memnon, I'm almost certain now that it's either him or someone he knows. What had the hacker said that first day? I heard you're smart. I heard someone else had told him, so it's definitely not Mem. But I'm leaning towards someone he knows. ANONYMOUS is known for finding people, but I know if any one of my fellow hackers could find her, so could I. But the organization Mem works with is even better, mor
GABRIEL "We're here!" Pop's voice broke through the fog of my inner musings. "What are you thinking?" He was asking this because I hadn't moved. "I'm trying to figure out if we're walking into a trap." "It's not a trap; I met this Mancini guy; he's on the up and up." "Mancini, thanks." "Dammit, Gabe." I just smiled and grabbed my stuff before following him off the plane. I pretended to forget something, but what I was really doing was getting info from the pilot. Now I had two names to look into. Mancini and Andros, I'm betting that Memnon knew one or both of them at this point. While Pop was taking his eight-hour nap earlier, I was busy thinking in between watching over him. He looked tired. I only now realize how much stress he's been under because of me. I caught up to him in the car, where he was already on the phone with someone though it's only a five-minute drive from the private airstrip to the house. "Let's go by Gianna's house." I was sure she wouldn't be there;
GABRIEL "Gianna, what did you do?" I got down on one knee, not quite believing my eyes. I couldn't breathe around the lump in my throat and had to swallow twice before I could find my voice. There was nothing I could do about the moisture gathering in my eyes as I looked over the little one from head to toe just as I'd done with her mother and had to fight back the tears. I had to clear my throat a couple of times and must've looked like a fish when I kept opening my mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come. She just stared at me, this kid, with no fear. "What's your name, sweetheart?" I cupped her little face so much like mine; in fact, not so much; it was my face. How fickle is the heart? How can it hold so many different emotions? One minute dark and the next, the next filled with a love that's so instantaneous it's all-consuming. "My name is Gaby. I'm two." She held up two fingers. I looked up at her mother before getting to my feet. "You kept my child from me? You? Yo
GABRIEL "What are their names? My sons?" "Um, Gabriel and Gianni." I looked in the rearview mirror at the three very quiet kids in the back who were busy looking at each other. The twins used to do that, still do, in fact. It's one of the ways they communicate. I'm trying to remember if they started as young as this, but it's too far back to recall. "Gabriel, I can't go with you; I have to go back. I…." "Go back where? To him? You want this guy to die? Tell me; you say he's never been around my kids; how was he planning to marry a mother of three without ever meeting her kids?" "Does it really matter?" She recoiled against the door from the look I gave her. "I'm trying really hard here, Gianna." I wasn't about to have this conversation in front of my kids. In fact, I'm trying really hard to see things from her perspective and cut her some slack and was sure that once things settled down and I no longer had the fear of what-if playing around in my head, like what if I
GABRIEL The place was a madhouse. Ma moved everyone over to the main house, and there were more hands than were needed to help with the babies. Lancelot and the twins were already fighting over who got to carry who, but my daughter settled the argument by choosing her uncle. Since I don't know much about kids, there was a lot that I wasn't sure about, but the kids seemed quieter than I would expect. But it wasn't so much their silence that caught my attention, but their attentiveness. The three of them sometimes seemed to be in a world of their own, and the boys especially kept their mother in their sights at all times. Gabriella, on the other hand, was like a social butterfly; she had her grandfather wrapped around her little finger in ten seconds flat. I realized after five minutes, when my uncle and his wife came over from next door, that there were a few people missing. "Ma, where are Natalia and Jr.?" "They'll be here soon. There was an incident, so your grandparents took
GABRIEL Why the hell is she upset? Isn't she the one with a fiancé? I know she doesn't believe me that Natalia is my sister since she keeps shooting daggers at the girl with her eyes, and I'm not fairing any better. I almost wish I was the type to try to make her jealous, but I'm not. I have no time for games like that. But maybe it's good that she feels that burn; see how it feels to be the one on the receiving end. Of course, she's not marrying anyone, not as long as I'm alive, so I'm not even a little bit worried about that. But just the thought that she even considered it makes me mental. I don't know what world she's living in where she thought it would be acceptable to marry another man and have him raise Gabriel Russo's kids. Somehow, I don't see her being that delusional no matter what the hell has gone on in these last two years of separation. And to bring him here of all places, did she really think she was going to shack up with some guy just around the corner a
GIANNA I'm not going to lie; I wanted to run. Forget cousin Colton's game plan. Forget everything else; just take the kids and high tail it back to Alaska. The look in his eyes when he said that did not bode well for me. I was caught in the midst of too many emotions to tackle them all at once, and the funny thing is, I haven't even had time to focus on any one thing since I opened the door to him earlier. Things have not at all gone the way I'd imagined them in my head. I don't know what made me think that Gabriel would be rational, maybe because the boy I left here almost three years ago had been so blissfully calm and wise, even though he had a streak of the vengeful in him. But that had never been turned against me. I was the one he protected and cossetted. I've never felt anything but safe in his presence, knowing that even if the rest of the world had to be wary of him, that would never be me. Now I'm not so sure. There was no real inflection in his voice when he made the t
GIANNA Gabriel!" His name crossed my lips as little more than a silent whisper, or was it a plea? It was a cross between surprise and pleasure. He started moving in and out of me, and I could do nothing more than hold onto the wall. The fact that he hadn't said anything, that there was no sound except for my loud breathing, and the slapping of our bodies coming together under the water heightened my senses and his hand constantly closing around my throat made my whole body tremble. My heart felt full to bursting, and the butterflies in my stomach seemed to multiply and take flight, all landing on my clit, which was now on fire and throbbing with need. My mind couldn't hold on to any one thing as he used my body to bring us both pleasure. I was literally consumed with lust and desire, love. When I relived our times together, alone at night with our kids sleeping in the next room, they were always these dreamlike encounters with lots of soft touches and romance. I used to think tha