Page 128 of Gabriel

Anya and Gabriel were the best of our family, and now one was missing and the other might never see again.

I was going to kill someone for that. I just hadn’t decided who.

The hallway door creaked open and Kian stepped in from one of the other rooms, flanked by Elira Volkov.

She walked in like she expected a fight. I stared her down, weighing my options. Maybe she should pay for her brother’ssins. To her credit, she didn’t flinch. She just lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes at me. Volkov blood through and through.

“Raphael,” Sailor muttered under her breath, elbow brushing mine. “Enough with the staring contest.”

She had that polite, unreadable smile on her face, but I could feel the tension in her body. Like me, she didn’t trust the girl.

Amara was with Gabriel inside the hospital room. She was another fire I hadn’t figured out how to extinguish.

She was a damn wildfire of a woman. Dangerous. Defiant. And apparently in love with Gabriel.

I couldn’t decide if I respected her or wanted her gone.

Maybe both.

Gabriel probably felt the same.

But when Amara dropped the bomb—the kind that rearranged the atmosphere—everything stopped.

She was pregnant. And Gabriel was the father.

Silence had followed her announcement. Kian looked like he’d been hit in the gut. Sailor went still and I forgot how to breathe.

A man like me shouldn’t be easy to shock. But that… that took the wind right out of me.

My brother had gotten his captor pregnant.

Jesus.

I needed to talk to Gabriel. Now.

The door to his private room creaked open and Amara stepped out.

I tried to read the girl, but her poker face was perfect. Too perfect. She walked out of the room like a queen descending from her throne. Technically, I guess she was mafia royalty, but who gave a damn?

“Gabriel’s ready for you,” she said calmly.

I exchanged a look with Sailor and we stepped inside.

The scent of antiseptic hit again, harder this time. So did the reality of it all.

My brother lay in the hospital bed, gauze over his eyes and his arm strapped in a sling. But he smiled. That same lopsided, infuriating smile he’d worn since I met him as a young boy.

“Hey, you two,” he greeted. “I’m assuming there are two of you—Raphael and Sailor?”

He chuckled at his own blind joke.

But all I felt was grief. And fury. And love.

Because nothing hurt worse than seeing someone you loved try to smile through hell.

Gabriel

The stillness in the room stretched like a rubber band pulled too tight, and frustration coiled in my chest like a live wire. Or maybe that was fury rolling off Raphael, I couldn’t really tell.