Page 17 of His Wicked Wants (West Coast Mobsters #6)

CHAPTER 15

NERO

I had hoped to transition from dull collections and protections into the much more fun work of annoying Gabriel Carstairs daily, but there is, as they say, no rest for the wicked. I get a call later that morning from a number I don’t recognize, and when I answer, wondering who is suicidal enough to call me without introduction, I’m taken aback to hear the rusty tones of Legs Liggari on the other side.

“I sent Ventura around to pick you up,” he says with no introductions. It takes me a moment to place the voice, and it’s only the mention of Ray that does it. “You gotta get round the neighborhood and see what’s going on. Word is there was a fire at the Chinese restaurant last night, and if the fucking Triads are tryna move in again, we’ll have some trouble on our hands.”

“The Boss has assigned me security duty at Redwood,” I tell him smoothly, but it doesn’t work.

“The Boss told you to fit that shit in around working for me,” Legs growls back, and I take a moment to be irrationally furious at Sandro for communicating that fact to his Capo. It feels like another humiliation. “Get in the fucking car with Ray and do what you’re told. And no more picking fights. That’s not the way we do business here.”

Now I really do know Sandro has had a word with Liggari, because that phrase— not the way we do business here —is straight from Sandro’s lips. So instead of looking forward to my lunch with Gabriel and making him squirm, I shower, dress, and head up to the main house to wait for Ray.

Do I send a message to Gabriel via one of the house guards, or do I simply not show up? I know which would annoy him more. But on the way around the corner of the Manor I catch sight of the object of my obsession disappearing into the hedge maze. Ray can wait. I head into the maze after Gabriel, wondering if he’s really considering Roxy’s demand from yesterday to re-situate the maze.

But too quickly I lose all sense of direction. The sun is almost directly overhead, making it difficult to tell north from south, and when I stop and listen for rustling leaves or the sound of digging, I hear nothing. It’s almost unnaturally quiet in here and the hedges are high enough that I have no chance of seeing over them. I stop and take stock of my surroundings as an uncommon feeling rises up in my chest.

Unease.

It makes no sense. If I am hopelessly lost, I can simply call out, and I know someone will hear me eventually. But it’s not the fear of being lost that is making me uneasy. It’s quite a different sense—the sense of being watched.

Stalked, even.

I am a predator. I don’t fear other predators; I overcome them. But this strange sense of prickling at the back of my neck is not like anything I have felt before.

I’m not alone in this maze.

Of course you’re not alone , I scold myself. I came in here after Gabriel, after all. But Gabriel’s gentle presence is at odds with this sensation.

And I’m willing to admit when I’m beaten, or at least willing to take advantage of a kind heart. “Gabriel?”

There’s no response. If anything, it seems that the air gets quieter.

I move through the maze, senses heightened. I am not among friends, after all. At any moment, Sandro could declare me a traitor, have me removed. His mother would not like it, and he knows that…but I don’t think it would stop him.

I glance down, watching for any loose twigs that I might stand on to give away my presence, and that’s when I see it. Signs of digging—a large, grassless rectangle in the path of the maze.

It’s not an unfamiliar shape, and about the regulation size, so that for a moment I wonder if it’s a grave. But then I glance to my right where the hedges reach an intersection, and I see that the width of the hedges here matches the width of the repacked dirt in the ground.

Someone has removed a hedge from one place and replanted it in another. And now that I’m noticing it, this hedge is slightly higher than the others, as though the earth has not yet settled underneath it.

The layout of the maze has been changed.

And why shouldn’t it be? Perhaps the hedges here became unstable and required moving. But something tells me that’s not the case, because as I move further through the maze, I see more evidence of the walls being shifted, the path rerouted.

Just yesterday, Gabriel shut down Roxy’s idea of moving the hedges around the fountain. He said it couldn’t be done.

But apparently it can.

I come to a dead end and stand staring at the hedge wall in front of me, wondering for a moment if I should just try to thrust myself through, make a path to the outside. I start to part the fronds, but the plants are so dense that not even an iota of light comes through from the other?—

“What are you doing in here?”

I am not a man with many anxieties, but my heart gives a jump at the sudden human voice, an intrusion into the deadened silence.

I whirl around to see Gabriel Carstairs glaring at me—as usual—but he has his shirt off, chest gleaming with sweat. His muscles are defined, his skin sun-kissed, and his work pants ride low on his hips so that I can see the Adonis belt leading down to the promised land.

“I was looking for you,” I tell him, not bothering to disguise my hungry gaze. Let him see how much I want him. Let him flush under my scrutiny.

But Gabriel is not in a flushing mood. “Why?” he asks bluntly.

“To let you know that I will be out today and cannot meet you for lunch. Perhaps we could have dinner tonight to discuss some of the security aspects I?—”

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he blurts out. “It’s not safe. The hedges are fragile, so we’re doing a lot of renovation work.”

“Yes, I noticed. You are rearranging entire walls of the maze. May I ask why?”

For a long moment, Gabriel simply looks at me. Then he turns and stalks away, leaving me to hurry if I want to catch up with him. And at the very least, I would rather not be alone in here any longer. It really is the most disconcerting place.

Gabriel leads me with unerring navigation to the middle of the maze, where I’m greeted by a large open area, bordered with flowering bushes, and a large, ornate gazebo in the middle for weary travelers to take a seat while they contemplate never escaping the maze.

“Julian wanted a much larger centerpiece for the maze,” Gabriel says flatly, waving a hand toward the gazebo. “The size of it required a few structural changes to the maze itself, which I have overseen in conjunction with the gardeners. Happy?”

Why, I wonder, is he being so unlike his usual self? Most of the time, Gabriel Carstairs would simply snap at me, have left me there in the maze alone, would certainly not have bothered to take me here to show me his work. And he knows his way unerringly through this maze. He could just as easily have led me to the exit.

“So Ms. Rochford’s request to move the maze would not be impossible to do?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

“It would be impossible,” Gabriel says flatly. “Moving the plants in such a way as to avoid damaging the root system—it required months of planning, and we’ve been lucky that none of them died. This maze has stood here for almost a century. I will not risk it for the whims of one woman.”

“But you would risk it for the whims of Julian Castellani?”

“He owns the estate. He can do what he likes. Ms. Rochford needs to learn that she can’t always get her way just because she’s needed by the Castellanis.”

“It is Julian’s brother who owns the estate,” I say softly, wondering once more where this Gabriel Carstairs came from, that he sees so easily through Roxanne Rochford, understands so clearly her ties to the Castellani Family. “You would do well to remember who actually pays your salary, little gardener.”

“Can you find your way out? Or do you need me to show you?” is all he says in response.

But I’m already walking around the flowering bushes piled up around the sides of the gazebo, drawn by their heady scent. Gabriel watches me for a moment, then moves over to where he must have been working, a wheelbarrow and shovel in place. I’m about to ask him about the flowers, since he seems to care about them so much, but he’s crouching down to stare into the bushes with a smile. I come closer and see that his gaze is fixed on something on one of the flowers. “Look,” he says softly. “These butterflies are endangered here in LA. I was hoping with the right plants we might encourage them to populate the grounds, but this is the first one I’ve seen.”

I find myself as mesmerized by Gabriel as he is by the butterfly. I glance at it as he gestures, and it’s a pretty thing, golden-winged and delicate. And as I take a step closer it takes flight, and Gabriel watches it go. And then, in a cloud of gilded velvet, a score more rise up around him.

Gabriel laughs in delight, turning his head here and there to watch them as they flutter away, dizzying and deranged in the afternoon sunshine.

But I cannot take my eyes from him.

I understand now why he dislikes me so much. He is utterly a creature of the sunshine. And no matter how much I might lie out there by the pool sunning myself, I exist in the darkness. I work in shadows, a shadow myself to Alessandro Castellani, and I will never be more than that.

Gabriel Carstairs was not meant for me.

And yet, knowing this makes me want him all the more. He’s so unlike my back-alley liaisons in Rome, Naples, so unlike the few men I enjoyed here in LA before I caught sight of him and fell into this obsession that I just can’t shake.

I wish I could, because there’s something about him that threatens me. Not the man himself, but the effect that he has on me—a buffing down of my hard edges, the very thing that keeps me alive. I feel a softness as I look at him surrounded by golden butterflies, laughing in wonder, his hands gently outstretched as the golden wings flutter around him.

I can’t go soft, not like Sandro. But I can’t help smiling back at Gabriel, not when he’s beaming at me.

“This is amazing,” he says, entranced. “I never thought they would populate this quickly.”

But the butterflies are already moving on, some of them to other flowers, some of them dancing up over the hedges. Gabriel watches them go so anxiously, I have to laugh. “Don’t look so worried,” I tell him. “If a grown man can’t find his way out of this maze, I’m not sure a butterfly has much more chance. They’ll be back.”

He laughs with me, and for the first time, I have the pleasure of hearing his laugh untainted by the cynicism and irony and bitterness that has colored our interactions up until now.

And I find myself enjoying it.

“I need to get out of here,” I say abruptly. “Which way is the exit?”

Is it my imagination, or does he seem disappointed? “I’ll walk you out. The maze was initially designed as an intuitive process, but the changes we’ve been forced to make have, unfortunately, destroyed that sense.”

We walk through the maze in silence, but I find myself glad of his company, especially because I still can’t shake the sense that I’m being watched. I glance up at the house. “Is it possible to see people in the maze from the manor?”

“No. It’s the wrong angle; the hedges are too high.”

But there are eyes on me. I know it. Unfriendly eyes.

“I will call on you when I return from work,” I tell him, as we reach the entrance once more. I’m not sure what prompts me to use such formal English, but Gabriel is already shaking his head anyway.

“My workday will be done long before yours, and I don’t plan on waiting up late for you, Andretti. We can meet tomorrow.”

Something in me writhes in protest, wants to demand he buckle to my whims…but he’s right. I have no idea what time I’ll be back. Yet I can’t stop myself from saying spitefully, “You seem to have no problem staying up all night for the purpose of planting.”

“I haven’t forgotten you’re holding that over me, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says coldly. His easy laugh, the crinkles around his eyes, have disappeared along with the sun as a cloud high above drifts over.

It’s a long time since I let anything cloud my judgment. “Fine. Meet me on the patio for lunch tomorrow.”

He doesn’t even acknowledge me, just turns and heads back into the maze.

Something in me wants to call out to him, to warn him of some unknown danger. But I keep quiet. Gabriel Carstairs clearly knows how to navigate this particular labyrinth.

It only makes me more curious about the man, as I head around the house and hold up a hand in greeting to Ray, who has parked the car at the front of the house. He’s chatting with the guards, who are friendly enough with him, though they fall quiet at my approach.

How did Gabriel Carstairs come to work at a place like this? I hope La Contessa will be able to tell me.

In the meantime, I need to discover what Legs Liggari has in store for me today.