“I highly doubt that,” I answer with years of family history backing me up.
“And I can and will get out of this prison.”
I look around the bedroom, then look behind me out into the hall where my men are stationed to keep guard. As good as Camille is at being sneaky and slippery, she’d be hard-pressed to find a way out of here now. “Well, as far as prisons go,” I say as I turn to leave and let her go back to her sulking—this time with the door open—“I’d say you’re in a pretty nice one.”
9
CAMILLE
I feel like a prisoner here. And by all logistical accounts, I am. Even if I’m being treated more like a guest than a captive. When Gabriel leaves, he makes sure to leave my bedroom door open. I quickly get up to close it, but pause when I see one of his men walking toward me with a plate of food. I’m famished, and the food smells divine. So, I reach out and grab it, but he jerks it away from me and shakes his head.
“This can be yours if you don’t lock yourself in your room again. I was told to make you promise.”
“And you believe my word?” I laugh.
“Personally, no,” he says with a chuckle. “But apparently you’ve my boss feeling soft enough toward you that he says he’ll believe your word. So, what’s it going to be?”
I eye the food hungrily, knowing that Gabriel is probably just within earshot somewhere, waiting to hear me “promise” that I’ll be a good girl. The thought of giving in to it makes my skin crawl. But my stomach is growling louder than my pride at the moment. “Fine, Ipromisethat I will notlockmyself in theroomagain,” I say with oozing sarcasm. “Now give me the tray.”
As soon as I have the food, I go sit back down at the little table at the side of the room and devour everything in front of me. It’s all delicious, from the sparkling wine to the fresh salad, to the mascarpone that tastes homemade. Whoever he has doing his cooking is pure genius. It’s definitely not “prisoner food.”
Still, I’m stuck here, and I hate it. I have a life to get back to and things I need to sort out. I can’t do any of that from inside Gabriel Adami’s penthouse condo. But there’s a small part of me that finds something almost primally attractive about Gabriel and the way he seems to have taken control over my protection. I honestly don’t understand it. I would never admit to needing anyone’s help, especially not help from a man, but there’s a small, secret part of me that feels a little weak in the knees every time Gabriel flexes his authoritative muscle. It treads the line between annoyingly dominant and nicely considerate. And it’s a very strange feeling for me to have, since I’ve never let anyone else take the reins before. I’ve always been the only one in charge of the decisions in my life, and I have no intention of changing that and giving up control. But since Gabriel sure seems used to being the one in the driver seat without anyone ever challenging him, he and I are like fire and water.
Never before I have a let a man even come close to feeling as if he could rule over me. But there’s something about Gabriel—a gnawing desire, an insatiable curiosity—that makes me question whether I could and would truly stand up against him if he exerted all of his power upon me. A part of me wants to see what would happen if I didn’t.
Besides, a part of me also wants to see if Gabriel’s theory is right, and if it really is the currentcapoof the Grecoborgatawho’s after us both. It doesn’t make sense to me; but then again, I was foolish enough to take the set-up job to begin with. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to follow his lead on this one to fruition, if not to prove who it is, then at least to prove who it isn’t.
So, between my burning curiosity and my actual continuing hunger for more of that delicious food, I wait until late in the middle of the night, and then sneak back out of my room again. The two soldiers are still there at opposite ends of the hall, but it isn’t hard to wait until one of them has their back turned in order to sneak down an adjacent corridor. I’ve done enough jobs to know that when people get tired, security gets lax. The penthouse is silent, and I’m assuming that Gabriel and whoever else he has staying here are sound asleep, minus perhaps a skeleton crew probably slacking off while their boss is at rest. Unlike mostcaposI know, Gabriel doesn’t seem to have a full live-in staff. Sure, he has a few men guarding the place, and probably a daytime chef who prepared that food for me earlier. But the place looks pretty empty right now, and there doesn’t appear to be enough bedrooms to house a lot of people. I’m not sure why he thinks this place is so safe and secure, unless he has a whole army stationed outside the building.
Sometimes I wonder if perhaps Gabriel doesn’t have a god complex, thinking that no one will dare to touch him or that if they do, they won’t get far. I listen as I hear the two men stationed in the hall say goodnight and then leave the building. If my instincts are correct, which they usually are, that means it’s only Gabriel and I left alone in here now. I suppose that makes this the perfect time for trying to escape, if that’s still what I want to do. But first, I have some searching around to do, and a still growling stomach to take care of.
When I find the kitchen, I help myself to a sandwich and a glass of white wine from a half-opened bottle on the table. It’s not quite as good as the plate of food I was given before, but it’ll do. The wine tastes especially crisp and makes me think about the cash back in my apartment, and how I can probably now afford a good bottle. That is, if I live long enough to be able to drink it.
I finish eating, and then decide to snoop around a little bit. I’ve gotten exceptionally good at moving about silently, like a cat on quiet paws without even making the wooden floorboards creak. I pause as I walk past the front door. Gabriel’s two guards are still standing outside, talking with each other, and I know that even if I did want to try and escape right now, I’d likely get caught. For a few minutes, I stand there listening to what they’re saying, but it seems like they’re just talking about random things not related to mafia business. One guy talks about his new girlfriend and the other about a Chinese restaurant down the street. Sometimes I forget that facets of life still do exist outside of the criminal underworld.
I move on from the door, not too disappointed that my escape route is blocked, because I’ve decided I intend to stay for a while and find out answers to some of my mounting questions. The first room I stumble upon luckily looks like an office. There’s enough light streaming through the window to illuminate the dimly lit space without needing to turn anything on that might alert people to my presence here.
I head to the desk first but find that all the drawers are locked. “Of course they are,” I whisper to myself. Gabriel seems like just the kind of control freak who would make sure everything is secure. But what’s this? Sitting on the top of the chair behind his desk is a small, pocket-sized notebook. Small enough that it looks like it could have fallen out of a folder or wallet and not have been seen sitting there. Inside, there’s a handwritten roster of names and telephone numbers. Who even handwrites phone numbers anymore? Nowadays, everything is under contacts on a cell phone. I couldn’t even recite my best friend’s phone number from memory if I tried. Who keeps a handwritten record of things?
That’s when it dawns on me—only someone who’s afraid of being digitally tracked. It’s like a peek inside of Gabriel’s mind to see something as old-school as this. He’s either paranoid or smart as hell.
I flip through the pages and see some names I recognize—city officials, prominent politicians, a few of the upper elite in Manhattan. There’s even a police chief or two, and a couple of big business owners. I’m guessing that Gabriel has some questionable relationships with some pretty heavy hitters, especially since many of the names on here are females. I wonder if this is his “I’ve fucked them” list, or his list of who he can buy off or pull favors from. Regardless, he seems to have personal contact information for an impressive list of people.
I root around some more, finding almost everything locked. There’s a safe in the office behind a bookshelf that’s locked tight with a combination lock the size of my head. A file cabinet—also locked. And a few random boxes that appear to hold empty files.
Being the persistent sleuth I pride myself on, I lift all the files out of the box to look underneath. I’m rewarded when I find an old bank statement. Gabriel sure does like his hardcopies. It’s old, dated over a year ago, but it’s not the date that has my eyes bulging nearly out of their sockets. It’s the amount in the bank accounts. “Holy fuck,” I whisper. Lots of thecaposare wealthy, but he’s beyond wealthy. He’s upper echelon, top-tier elite. Which leads me to the same question I keep asking myself—why is he wasting his time and resources on me?
My head is spinning because I’m really not sure what to do with the information I’ve managed to uncover, but just as I’m about to walk out of the office and head to another room, something else catches my eye. Hanging on the back of the door is a jacket I saw Gabriel wearing earlier. And shining through the front pocket is the all-too-familiar light of a cell phone silently going off with a barrage of messages.
I walk over, reach inside the pocket, and take out the phone to look at. Since it’s password and facial recognition locked, I can’t open it. But that doesn’t prevent me from reading the snippets of the banner texts that are coming through—all of them from Leo.
You are an asshole.
You can’t take everything just because you’re older. Give her back.
I always knew our parents made a mistake leaving you as capo.
Why they left it to someone who didn’t even want to be in charge is beyond me.
