Luca’s eyes landed on me. “We assumed that meant they were just coming straight for you.”
That information settled in on me like a leveled building. “Stacy.”
“What?” Luca asked.
“Fuck.” Marco jumped up out of his seat. “Go. You have to go now.”
Molly was rushing towards the door. “I’ll go with you.”
“What? What’s going on?”
Alessandro pulled his gun out of his waistband and tossed it to me. “Put one in their skull if you have to.”
“Stacy is Gabe’s girlfriend,” Molly spat at Luca as he got angrier from confusion.
“How could you do that without telling me about it?” Luca barked. “Did all of you know?”
“Now is not the time!” I bellowed, and Luca recoiled from shock. I’d never once yelled at my eldest brother before. I would have been too afraid before, but Stacy was involved, and that changed everything. “Molly, are you driving?”
She dangled her keys and was out the door a second later. I was hot on her heels as she bolted with my brothers shouting after me. I just dropped Stacy off at home without a second thought, and the Binachis were probably already there. I should have found out what my brothers were so afraid of first. I delivered the love of my life into the hands of killers, and unlike my sisters-in-law, she didn’t have the tools to protect herself.
I jumped into Molly’s Porsche, and she was off moments later. The way she sped through the streets of Philly was going to get us to Stacy’s quickly. I was just praying that the Binachis hadn’t already been and gone.
19
Stacy
It took me a while to come down off the high of my night out with Gabriel, and even when I could feel my feet touch the ground, I still had that weightless feeling like I could take off again at any time. I was bummed that I couldn’t bring Gabriel back for another night together, but it was probably one of the things I had to start getting used to if I truly was going to commit myself to his life.
As soon as his car drove away after dropping me off, I went into the living room, first to clean up the empty buckets of ice cream and the spoons we’d used to consume them. I ducked to grab the items and was consumed by Gabriel’s lingering smell. His voice still licked against my ears and gave me chills. I hoped whatever was going on with his family wasn’t too serious. I might not be able to take waiting too long to get him in my arms again.
I walked into the kitchen, contemplating what else I may have to change about my life to accommodate Gabriel’s. I grabbed a pen and pad to jot down my notes and carried them into the bathroom. I turned the dials above my wide, whirlpool tub and flicked my hand through the rushing water until it was to a temperature I liked. I flipped the metal mechanism that pressed the stopper down into the drain. I added some epsom salt and essential oils and then turned my attention to other things while the water ran. I lit some candles, turned down the lights to a soft glow, and peeled my dress off. I walked it into my bedroom to discard it in my hamper and returned to the bathroom to set my notepad on the small cliff of the tub out of reach of the water, turn the dials off, and then settled myself down into the water’s warm embrace.
I grabbed the notepad, crooking myself at an angle in the tub where I could hold the notepad out over the edge, while I was nearly turned to my stomach in the bath, and set to writing. I started by making myself a t-chart. On the left, I planned to list things I’d have to adapt to, and on the right, I wanted to put the solutions. Things were already stressful for Gabriel, and I didn’t want to add to it by demanding a normal relationship I knew I wouldn’t get. He was worth it, so as long as I went in fully prepared, I should be okay. One could hope, anyway.
Over the next hour, I let the water relax my body while I tried to imagine what my relationship with Gabriel was going to look like. I remembered him mentioning that his sisters-in-law were all pretty strong, and I wanted to make sure I measured up to them. If that was his idea of what women should be like in this world, I wanted to be that
or better.
I made all sorts of notes about the different little things that I thought could frustrate me and justified them with Gabriel’s sweet and undying devotion. All I had to do was tell him I was trying to go vegan, and he was making veggie ravioli and buying vegan ice cream. He’d gone beyond out of his way to prove that he loved me, so any issues that I foresaw I knew would be swallowed up in his attempts to make it up to me. I had to make a note in the margins not to let him get too carried away. It was just a hunch, but after hearing the story about his first girlfriend, I got the sense that he’d spoil me rotten if he could. I wasn’t a material person and was generally much easier to please; I’d need to make sure I mentioned as much.
I’d flipped over the notepad to its fourth page of notes when I heard a dull, distant thud from the first floor. I did a mental scan of my house, trying to imagine what object could have fallen to cause such a noise, but none came to me. It was a modern, newer house, so I didn’t think I’d be dealing with any foundation settling so soon, but when no additional noises found my ears, I wrote it off.
I looked down at the notepad again, but my train of thought was gone. I was doing what my best friend and assistant had accused me of on more than one occasion—being a control freak. I had some born-in notion that I could somehow be prepared for any situation that came my way as long as I considered all the possible outcomes and behaved as if they all had equal probability. I’d been that way since I was young, and my parents had no idea where it came from, given they were people who could accidentally set their house on fire and write it off as a divine message. I was hardwired to want control, and maybe it was because my parents were so free-spirited. I had to make peace with the fact that things with Gabriel weren’t ever going to be in my control. I just had to trust him to take care of me, instead. That thought scared me, but even as it did, I thought of his hand laced into mind and committed myself to the compromise.
I dropped the notepad and flipped back to relax against the built-in backrest, closing my eyes. The sweet vanilla scent from the candles swirled around me while the epsom salt continued to pull my muscles into total relaxation, and I didn’t fight when I started to doze. My body had a pretty good internal understanding of what was good for sleep and what wasn’t, so I trusted it to tell me when it was time to get out and move to my bed.
I’d nearly slipped from consciousness when I heard another thump. That time, it sounded a bit closer. The houses on my block were close, but not so close that I should hear the antics from one lot over. Deciding it was time to investigate, I climbed out of the tub, pulled the silk robe hanging on the back of the door around myself, and slipped from the bathroom.
The bathroom opened up directly into my bedroom, and I could clearly see that nothing was out of place, even with it covered in the shadows of darkness. The light from the kitchen was illuminating the lower floor, so I crept my way down the stairs and into the living room. Everything seemed in place there, as well, and I was already reserving myself to the idea that I was hearing things. I walked into my kitchen, and when I wasn’t met with any unusual sights, I swore at myself for cutting my bath short. Either my mind was giving me ghost sounds in my drowsy stupor or what I was hearing wasn’t in my house.
I turned around, and right when I did, I heard a rapid series of knocks on my door. It made me jump a little, but Gabriel’s voice followed. “Stacy? Stace!” He sounded panicked. “Are you in there?”
“I’m coming!” I called back. I giggled, thinking he was just that starved to get into me after our confession earlier.
I started for the door but stopped behind the couch to undo my robe. If any neighbors were in the right place at the right time, they’d get a show, but that was fine with me. I’d never been shy about my body. I walked over to the door and reached out for the handle. My fingers curled around the silver handle, and then a click sounded off near my right ear, followed by the cold press of steel against my lower back.
“Stacy!” Gabriel bellowed, pounding his hands against the door. “Let me in!”