Page 1 of Gabriel

Prologue

Gabriel, 10 Years Old

Mom hadn’t been the same since Raphael rescued her from Santiago Tijuana.

The evil man—whoever he was—had broken something inside of her, but I couldn’t understand exactly what. No one would tell me, but I still heard the whispers. I heard her screams at night.

I wanted to fix it, make her feel better, but I didn’t know how. There wasn’t a Band-Aid for her kind of pain that she battled in numb silence.

The moon was high up in the sky, shining on me with Bruno, my French bulldog, on my lap. We kept guard outside Mom’s door, keeping her safe.

“We’ll keep her nightmares away, Bruno,” I murmured, my fingers raking through his short hair. “Raphael keeps Mom safe too, but he isn’t here. So it’s our job to do that. Right?”

Bruno didn’t answer, but he looked at the bedroom door behind which Mom slept. He understood me.

I let out a heavy sigh, wishing Raphael were here. Mom didn’t say why we couldn’t all be together, but he’d tried to explain. Hepromised we’d be a family again, but for now, she needed time to heal, so I had to split my time between the Miami penthouse and Raphael’s island.

Raphael was trying so hard to be okay, but I didn’t think he was. He looked sad, almost as if someone had ripped his heart out of his chest. Almost as if he was unraveling too.

I wanted to be strong for them. I wanted to protect them. But I was also scared. What if Mom never recovered? Maybe she’d never be the way she was: carefree and happy. It hurt to think that we might never see her again, that our family would never be together again.

A single tear slipped down my cheek as a sharp ache clenched in my chest. I didn’t know how to fix this, and what scared me even more was the sinking feeling that no one else did either.

But I vowed that I would learn, and one day, when I was older, I’d do whatever it took to protect my family.

Amara

Revelation wasn’t the kind of place one simply stumbled into—it was the kind of place people flocked to when they were dangerously bored or looking to satisfy their kinks.

My girlfriends and I didn’t fall into either category. At least I didn’t think so.

Penelope had been tight-lipped when it came to explaining how she got us an invitation, only mentioning vaguely that she was meeting a “secret admirer” she was determined to lose her virginity to. Naturally, Skye and I tagged along for support.Andto ensure this man wasn’t a serial killer.

A velvet-draped corridor swallowed us whole the moment we stepped in, the commotion from the busy street falling away.

Inside, the air was heavy, thick enough to get a sense of the kinds of salacious deeds taking place behind the many closed doors we passed.

Whispers slithered through the space like smoke. The soft clink of crystal glasses and the low thrum of jazz created a rhythm not meant for dancing, but for unraveling. Flickering candles lit the path toward the tables surrounding the dance floor, which was where I planned to stick to.

I scanned the room, watching as people seemed to shift as one, their movements indulgent and intimate. Definitely not the kind of dancing I had any interest in exploring.

Skye Leone stood close, her posture deceptively relaxed. Her arms hung loosely down her body and her dark eyes remained vigilant. Being deaf, she was accustomed to tracking our body language and watching for lip movements. We didn’t need to speak words to communicate. Never had.

Penelope, of course, had already vanished with her mystery man. We didn’t follow, confident Penelope could handle herself. D’Arc made sure of that, teaching all its students self-defense skills.

I, on the other hand, had been trained from a young age by my unconventional family. My parents wanted to ensure I was strong and could survive among the Kingpins of the Syndicate, while my mother Liana wanted me and my adoptive siblings—Jetmir and Elira—to be the strongest in the criminal world.

How did I end up with two mothers?

Well, that’s a long story, but here’s the short version. After a one-night stand between my birth mother, Emory DiLustro—Las Vegas Kingpin—and my father, Killian Cullen—the Irish Mafia boss—he left her unexpectedly pregnant. Then, her supposed father, Gio DiLustro, a cruel and ruthless man, found out and ripped me from her life as soon as I was born. That’s how I ended up deep in the heart of the Tijuana Cartel’s territory.

There, Mother Liana—trapped in her own nightmare, married to Santiago Tijuana—adopted me and saved my life. She raised me like her own. For years, it was just the two of us, surviving together in the shadows. Then I got sick. I needed a liver transplant. And just like that, I popped up on the radar of the two people who gave me life but never had the chance to raise me.

Thankfully, my parents and Mother Liana found common ground and we’ve been able to stay in each other’s lives. It was a perfect happy ending for all of us.

A flicker of movement caught my eye and interrupted my reminiscing.

A man, tall and lean, cut through the crowd like he owned the place. His midnight-black hair, artfully tousled to seem careless though I knew it was intentional, was unmistakable. I’d recognize him anywhere, even under the moody, amber lighting that turned everyone else into silhouettes.