Treachery

Luca

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a curse on my life.

Maybe my entire family.

Who knows?

Everything had been wonderful up through my last year of undergrad. My mother got sick that year, her cancer caught early, and although the incident had been stressful, she beat the disease and went into remission by the time I was finishing my first year at Yale.

Even then, I didn’t believe in bad karma, or that a screwed-up fate had befallen us. Mom had lived. She recovered. I was still on a path to becoming a successful attorney and my father’s business was still doing well enough to supplement the small scholarship I’d earned that landed me at an Ivy League school.

Then second year happened, and it all came crumbling down.

I’ve seen enough movies about family curses. Have read fiction books about them. Have learned about them while reading non-fiction tales of the woes that befall a single family.

It happened to the Ke

The Getty family.

The Romanovs.

And a ton of others.

There’s nothing saying it couldn’t, and hasn’t, happened to mine.

No, what happened with my parents and me hasn’t lasted centuries. If anything, each generation has improved on the next, a successful lineage started from the meager and humble begi

But maybe something happened in our past that just now caught up to us. A secret crime. A bitter feud. An evil-eyed hatred that took time before it took hold.

I’m the last one left of my family line. My father was an only child like his father before him and his father before him. In that time, distant cousins have been lost, our family tree whittled down to just one weak branch.

And now my life is in jeopardy. At the ripe old age of twenty-six. I haven’t even started to live yet, and I’m already looking at death.

I don’t understand how I went from a blessed life lived in the sunshine and under the breeze of slow moving porch fans, to this fucked up existence in a bad part of town, in a city I can’t stand, where the only thing that follows me are heavy storm clouds filled with the threat of white-hot lightning.

And to top it all off - because fate is a cruel whore with a fucked-up sense of humor - the only person I have to turn to for help is a man that has been making my life a living hell.

Still, I can’t deny it didn’t feel good when Ta

Ta

His presence helped me relax when my body was shaking from anger and fear. It soothed me when I felt like I was falling apart. And I’d be a liar to claim my heart hadn’t squeezed in my chest the minute his arms wrapped around me as he tugged me close.

As much as I continue fighting the truth of what I feel, my heart has softened to a man that has the cu

I can’t help it, though. Not when I see the softer side to him, not when a bit of the humanity he fights to hide behind his alpha male attitude problems and caustic, bully demeanor bleeds out to prove he’s not as horrible as he wants people to think.

In many ways, I admire Ta

I can’t deny my body responds to him. That much has been clear since the day we met.  Even now, I’m glancing up every so often to survey the different people wandering through the house with the hope I’ll catch a glimpse of his face.

Only because he has an effect on me I’ve never felt before. One I’m afraid I won’t feel again when he’s gone and out of my life.

How fucked up is that? I’m falling for my bully.

My tormentor.

The only person in the world who can piss me off as much as he does.

I should have my head examined for it. A full psychological study. Because I’ve never been the type of girl who melts to the ground under the stare of an arrogant man.

Yet, I melt for him.

Every time he touches me.

Every time those moss green eyes pin me in place and his mouth crooks with a devious smirk at the corner.

“How are you doing, love? You look lonely sitting all by yourself.”

Gabriel drops his weight on the couch next to me, one ankle crossing over a knee as his arm stretches over the backrest behind me.

I side-eye him.

“Are you sure you want to sit like that? Ta

Gri

Ha. I highly doubt Ta

“Where is he? I haven’t seen him around since your family meeting ended.”

His mouth quirks, and he cocks a brow.

“It almost sounds like you miss him.”

Maybe...

I won’t admit it, though.

“No. I’m just wondering what he’s doing that will make me hate him in the next twenty-four hours.”

Low laughter shakes the cushions beneath us.

“He left to go talk to the mechanic that wrecked your car. Given what happened at your apartment, Ta

My eyes close, heart hammering as I drag in a steadying breath.

“I would have been killed if I’d tried to leave the state. Thank God my battery was dead. It probably saved my life.”

My hands are shaking at the thought of what could have happened. It wasn’t too long ago that my dad was killed in a car accident.

Investigators blamed it on operator error and high speeds, the car so mangled when they found it that it was difficult to assess whether there had been a mechanical problem.

Both my parents were cremated, so I brought their remains here and had them set in a vault in the cemetery. I know it’s not their home state, but at the time, I thought I’d be here forever, married to a shitty man.

Maybe I’ll have them moved back to Georgia when this is all over. I never wanted to be here in the first place. They shouldn’t have to spend their eternal rest here either.

“He’s really worried about this, isn’t he?”

Gabriel wraps his hand around my shoulder to tug me sideways against him.

“We all are. Which is why you need to stay here where we can keep an eye on you.”

None of it makes sense. “Why would somebody want to hurt me? I haven’t done anything.”

He’s quiet for a second, his thumb slowly rubbing up and down my shoulder.

“That’s what we hope to find out. But for now, just promise me you won’t do anything stupid like leaving here if Ta