Chapter 45
GABRIEL
When I discovered Sofia was gone, my first thought was to run after her (after giving her a few hours to sleep and meet her grandfather because she must be tired after everything that happened between us), then bring her back home (after drugging her if she doesn’t come voluntarily), and then chain her to my bed if insists on running away again. She can be mad in front of me.
All those plans went into the trash when I returned home after instructing my right hand man to take care of things at work for a few days more, asking the good–for–nothing Peter to give me hourly updates of things happening at work, and was on my way to ask the driver to pull out the car because I was going back to my wife’s hometown to get her stubborn ass back to me, when my door bell rang.
I opened the door myself, eyebrows knit.
I never got visitors, and a part of me hoped it was my wife who came back.
It wasn’t.
The man on the other side was nowhere near the woman I wished would be.
The six foot something hunk just stared at me, looking more muscled than the last time I saw him, more inks lining the skin of his arm visible because of his rolled up white shirt, and a smug smile on his lips when he stepped inside my house uninvited as if he owns it.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I growled at him, partially in disbelief, partially in anger.
“I was offended when I wasn’t invited to the wedding.” The same smile lined his lips, only getting more lopsided.
“And I was offended when I heard you changed your last name and went off grid.” I was a cold person, but never short tempered, but there was something about the man standing in front of me that made me want to punch his face off.
“Well, you know, Whitlock was too long and didn’t sound as powerful.” He seemed unfazed by my burning glare. “King however… seems more fit.”
I felt like punching him, so I did. I stepped ahead and connected my fist to his jaw, his face turning aside. He let me punch him, even though I knew the bastard saw it coming.
The smirk didn’t leave his lips even as the cut on lower lip bled when he looked back at me. “I missed you too, big bro.”
And then, I punched him again
Damien King was the most well kept secret of the Whitlock family.
My parents stumbled across him when I wasn’t even three. He was a one year old child then who had held my mother and wouldn’t let her go. So, he was adopted into our family.
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The social worker had very little information about his family, only that they were all dead becaus
middle of their blood at three months old.
Damien Whitlock became my brother. While I was logical, he was strategic. While I was cold, he was ruthless. While I learned under my grandfather how to create in his company, all Damien learnt was to destroy- anything and everything in his path.
I provided for him. I protected him. I took the blame for him. But three “accidental” fires in school when he didn’t want to attend class later, my parents and grandparents recognised him for what he was- a psychopath, and shipped him off to boarding school.
It was later when we got to know he was following down a path even I couldn’t bring him back from, and then we lost him completely when he just turned an adult. His existence became a secret in front of the world. His calls became few, visits even fewer, and he went off the grid two years ago. Even the best personal investigations brought back the same results- he had changed his last name, he didn’t want to be found.
Damien Whitlock climbed the ranks of mafia. Damien King was leading it at just twenty six.
I was wary of the man that turned on my footstep demanding to meet my wife, and I was even warier about helping him when he said, “I need your help.” There was no please. No begging. No requests.
I had sighed, wanting to blatantly refuse him. But I couldn’t.
He was my brother. He always will be. So the only condition I kept was that he would stay in touch after this, absolutely rubbishing his theory that he stays away to protect me.
The second mistake I made was agreeing to help Damien. The first definitely was letting Freckles leave in the first place. I left my wife in her hometown with her fucker of an ex or ex best friend or whoever he was for five days. Five f**king days. “So, you know, when you picked me from my house without saying anything and were planning to take me for a week, a heads up
would’ve been great.” Zach commented dryly just when he thought he was asleep, “Anna worries.”
“I didn’t need you.” Damien replied, uninterested. “But it looks like I’m not enough company for my brother.”
“I didn’t trust you enough to not murder me and throw me in a ditch,” I joked while twisting the glass of whiskey in my hand when we were returning from Italy on the sixth f**king day.
Damien blinked. “I’m hurt you think so low of me.”
“I think lower.”
A chuckle escapes my adopted brother’s lips. “Since when did you develop a habit of drinking?”
Since you t
took me to Italy and I had to leave my wife with her fucker of an ex.” I glared.
I
This time, his chuckle turned into laughter when he passed his hand through his black, messy hair, turning to Zach. “If I am ever this messed up for a girl, f**king throw a toaster at my head.”
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“Don’t talk to that fucker,” I point at Zach, eyes still on Damien. “He’s a goner for his wife.”
“You fuckers are lame.” Damien leaned back on his chair on the little bar in my jet. “Do I get to meet her?”
“My Freckles?” My eyebrows furrowed. “No way”
“Too scared she’ll fall for my charms?*
“Nah,” I smirk, “Just want your bloody hands away from her.”
He shakes his head. “She’s my sister–in–law. She deserves to know about my existence.”
“She isn’t your sister–in–law for long. Barely three and a half months more.” Zach teased raising his sleeping mask.
“f**ker: I throw one of the metal drink mixers at him and he barely ducks on time, flipping me off.
As if
As if I’d let her go.
As if I’d not search the world, and then glue her ass where it belongs- by my side
