Everyone Had a Key but Me novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Gabriele

Claire's POV

I found the first aid kit in the bathroom, under a stack of hotel towels with the family crest on them.

Gabe sat on the edge of the bed with his hands on his knees.

Dario had taken the doorman to a room two floors down with two men outside the door.

Then he had gone out into the night to trace every Pellegrino van that moved after the safe was emptied.

It was nearly midnight.

"Give me your hand," I said.

"It's fine."

"It's split to the bone, and you've bled on the Santangelo crest."

He gave me his hand.

I knelt on the carpet in front of him and cleaned his knuckles with cotton and a bottle of the hotel's whiskey.

He hissed once and then held still.

His skin was hot, and the pulse in his wrist was loud under my thumb.

"You frightened me today," I said.

"I know."

"I don't mean the bakery."

"I know that too."

I wound the bandage twice and tied it.

For three years I had waited in rooms he had paid for, and I had never once seen him afraid.

He was afraid now, and he was trying to hide it behind a sleeve.

I stood between his knees and put my hands on either side of his face.

"Look at me."

He looked.

His grey eyes were red at the rims.

"Gabriele," I said.

He went still.

In three years I had called him Gabe, and sweetheart, and once in anger Mr. Santangelo.

I had never said the name his mother used.

"Say it again," he said, rough.

"Gabriele."

He pulled me down onto his lap.

His mouth found mine, and there was nothing angry in it this time.

He kissed me slowly, in no hurry at all.

I opened for him, and he made a low sound in his chest that I felt in my knees.

"You said not in your bed," he murmured against my lip.

"I changed my mind."

"When?"

"In a bakery in Brooklyn."

He laughed, shaky, and I pushed his shirt off his shoulders and kissed the scar through his eyebrow.

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