Page 52 of Vow of Darkness
Gabriel grabs my hand and places the knife over Mark’s chest. “It’s easy. Give in to the darkness.”
“Do you truly want me to? Are you happy in the darkness, Gabriel? You don’t have to be.”
“It’s all I’ve ever known.”
“Because of Giovanni? Because of what he did to your family? What did he do exactly?”
Gabriel’s hand tightens over mine. “Are you going to kill him or not? It’s your choice.”
“I’m not a monster like you are.”
“No. But you did let this monster eat you out just now.”
I blush. He’s not wrong and I hate it. I force myself to look into Gabriel’s eyes. “I can’t kill this man but I can’t make myself leave. Not until I know the full truth.”
Gabriel and I stand there, looking at each other, neither one wanting to give in to the other.
We both let our guards down and that’s when Mark attacks.
He manages to wriggle his arm free from one of the binds and grabs the knife from me, slashing it across my arm, cutting me… deeply. Right across the wrist. I gasp, stumbling back, clutching my wrist to my arm. It’s bleeding fast.
Gabriel only looks stunned for a moment before he grabs the knife back from Mark and jams it into his heart, killing him instantly.
“Aurora?” Gabriel rushes to my side and grabs my wrist. “Fuck. You’re bleeding. Bad.”
“I feel… woozy.” I slump against him as more of my blood leaves me.
“I got you. I got you.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Gabriel sound this… scared. But he couldn’t possibly be scared for me. He doesn’t love me. Doesn’t care for me because a person who cares for someone doesn’t treat them the way Gabriel does.
He carries me upstairs and into the kitchen. It’s late at night so the staff have already gone to bed. He scrambles through a drawer until he finds gauze and wraps it around my wrist.
“I need to get you to the hospital. You’re going to bleed out otherwise. Why the fuck were you down there? If you hadn’t gone down there, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt. Damn it, Aurora.” He’s speaking so fast, I can barely keep up. None of what he says makes any sense to me.
Gabriel carries me to his car and quickly drives us away from the house. I can feel myself getting more and more lightheaded by the second. The gauze around my wrist has quickly turned from white to red. It’s completely soaked.
I don’t want to die. I have to fight for my father.
But I can feel the fight leaving me.
“You can’t die,” Gabriel says. I can barely hear him. “You can’t die. I’m not going to lose you like my family.”
I frown. What does he mean by that? But I’m too tired to ask. I have no more energy inside of me.
It barely dawns on me when Gabriel parks the car and carries me to a building. A hospital, I realize. The bright lights help zap me awake for just a moment as I’m placed on a gurney and wheeled away from Gabriel by nurses and doctors.
The last thing I see is the worry etched on Gabriel’s face.
Chapter Thirteen
Gabriel
Ihave to wait for hours for news of Aurora.
And it’s torture.
Almost as bad as when Giovanni tortured me.
After he killed my family and I went to him when I was older and he helped raise me up in the mafia, I knew it was time to kill him.
