Page 35 of Love At the Gates of Hell (The Seven Sinners Trilogy #1)

twenty-two

Gideon

The drive back to Torretta’s estate was quiet.

Gideon sat beside Benny in the backseat of the car, their bodies covered in a mixture of blood and viscera.

He was exhausted, stiff, pain stemming from his shoulders and his side.

He pressed at his temple, the skin tender and taut to the touch, his fingers sticky with what looked to be blood.

His own, probably, from the gash at his forehead.

It was a hell of a way to spend a Saturday.

But then Benny curled up against him, letting her head rest on his shoulder and he knew he’d take a hundred tackles from some dickhead demon if it kept her from harm’s way.

He reached up to brush her hair back without thinking, his thumb grazing against her forehead.

He knew he shouldn’t. He just didn’t have it in him to care.

It was agonizing not to touch her. Especially now.

She drew something out of him he hadn’t expected, a deep-seated hope that he had been content to lock away.

Someone who wouldn’t flinch at the parts of him that were unsavory. Someone who wouldn’t run when things got hard. Someone who saw him. All of him. And still wanted to stick around.

Because tonight, when he thought Christian had his card, Benny made the whole goddamn room light up in an effort to protect him. She ran right into the fray. For him.

She had saved his life.

Benny leaned into his touch, and he dared a glance in her direction, brow furrowing as he noticed her hands.

They were wringing in her lap, leaving traces of ash against the fabric of her T-shirt.

It was something he had only briefly noticed that night at the docks.

The way the tips of her fingers resembled the wick of a candle.

Almost like she dipped them in soot. But he had been too absorbed in making sure the strange woman who fainted in his arms was going to last the car ride home to really think too much about it.

It was amazing what could change in just a couple of weeks.

He watched as she flexed her fingers in her lap, her body still rattling with adrenaline.

He couldn’t help but worry that she was going to slip into some kind of post-traumatic-stress-induced breakdown after what happened.

She killed Christian. Or whoever— whatever —that fucking guy was.

Gideon didn’t want to judge. He didn’t want to pull a “kick her while she’s down” kind of thing, but Jesus fucking Christ, what a douchebag.

He had gone into the room hating him on principle.

But the absolute fucking rage he felt for him now?

Well, he certainly wasn’t upset to see the guy-demon-whatever blown up into literal pieces.

Even if this was his second suit to go to shit in the same amount of weeks.

The transformation had been a hell of a shock.

Like something out of his worst nightmares.

He didn’t have a lot of experience with interrogations.

That wasn’t his line of work. But he knew that they didn’t usually result in demon transformations and explosions.

So this was definitely competing to be one of the most chaotic days he’d had in a long while.

And he’d once taken on a gang of vampires while his brother died in another room.

Gideon reached for her hands, gently stilling their fidgeting.

She looked up, a quiet breath passing through her lips as her eyes met his. There was a softness to her smile, an almost shy quality to it. It was so unlike her that he hardly noticed how tightly she was holding onto his hand.

She had been in complete control in the interrogation room.

It was a side of her he hadn’t seen before. He liked it.

The crunch of the gravel underneath the tires seemed to signal something in Benny. She straightened slowly, giving his hand one more squeeze before she leaned toward her father in the driver’s seat. She said something in Italian, he assumed, the words almost familiar but not quite.

Torretta nodded silently as they pulled up in front of the house.

If the man had seen the way they were sitting in the backseat, if he had seen how tangled up in each other they had been back at the warehouse, Torretta said nothing.

But Gideon remembered the long look the older man had given him before the interrogation.

The strict rule Benny had mentioned that the men in his crew were to stay away from her.

Did he count?

He sighed inwardly.

Whatever his feelings for Benny, he was pretty sure Torretta had not been betting on it.

Well, join the fucking club.

Luke twisted in his seat and let out a low whistle as they pulled into the driveway.

“Dude, you look like shit.”

“Do I, Lucas? Thank you.”

The car doors all slammed shut as they stepped from their respective spots, Torretta very quickly helping Benny from her side of the car.

Gideon followed Luke to the Mustang, needing to grab one of his go-bags from the trunk.

They had planned to spend a night, tops, at the compound but there was no way any of them were driving back to Philly now.

He kept Benny in his peripheral, finding it hard not to keep an eye on her as she walked into the house with her father.

Torretta wrapped his arm around his daughter and tugged her into his side, the two of them talking in low hushed tones as they reached the front door.

She turned back to look at Gideon, concern flickering across her features before she followed her father inside.

Luke chuckled as he popped the trunk. “You’re so fucked.”

“Shut up, Luke.”

His younger brother only laughed as he tossed Gideon a leather duffle bag.

“Is that like, demon guts?” his brother said, leaning in closer. Disgust flashed across his face. “Jesus, what is that?”

“I don’t know.” Gideon sighed. He was trying not to think about it. “I need to shower.”

“Benny’s got some real shit taste in men, huh?”

Whether Benny’s taste extended to Gideon remained to be seen. But he knew what Luke was getting at. “You’re very funny.”

“Did that guy look familiar to you?” Luke asked, slamming the trunk shut. “I mean, I know the crime circles can run small here, but I feel like we’ve worked with him before.”

They had worked with dozens of men over the years, between the crew that worked for Markos and their own connections. But Gideon would have remembered Christian, he thought. Dick heads like that were hard to forget.

“If we ran a job with him before, I’d remember,” he said. “He’d have been on the no fly list.”

The ‘We’re Never Working With These Morons Ever Again’ list.

It was so much longer than the ‘Competent People List’ they had.

“Spoken like a true Taurus, brother.”

“Oh, no, fuck no,” Gideon shook his head. “Don’t tell me you’re into that shit now.”

“What?” Luke asked. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading on astrological signs recently. You’d be surprised how much it influences some of these rituals—”

“Nope. I’m good.”

His brother laughed again as they reached the front door.

“What?”

“Capricorn moon.”

“I’m gonna kill you.”

“We should do Benny’s birth chart.”

“Leave Benny’s birth chart alone,” Gideon said.

“She’s a Pisces, isn’t she?” Luke wondered aloud. “You know that’s not bad—”

The house was quiet as they entered. Benny must’ve gone upstairs and Torretta’s men were still at the warehouse cleaning up.

Where that left Torretta, Gideon had no idea.

He was fine with not running into the old man.

He ran his hand across his face, his body craving a very long, hot shower and about fifteen hours of sleep.

But he wanted to find Benny. To make sure she was alright.

To thank her.

For saving his life.

“You.”

Torretta lingered in the pass-through to the kitchen, his hand bracing against the jamb.

“Let’s talk,” he said, gesturing to Gideon.

Luke gave his brother a two-fingered salute before making some comment about catching the rest of the basketball game and took off toward the den. Gideon watched after him, muttering a curse under his breath. Traitor .

“Let’s talk,” Gideon mimicked, following him into the kitchen.

There was a bottle of bourbon and two tumblers on the table.

Torretta wordlessly filled them with generous pours, sliding one in Gideon’s direction as he sank into a seat at the head of the table.

Gideon followed, hanging his suit jacket on the back of his chair before sitting in the chair catty-corner.

Even the simple act of bending felt like an effort.

But he said nothing, only nodded his thanks as he picked up his glass.

“ Salute ,” Torretta said.

The bourbon was warm, with hints of vanilla and it felt good on Gideon’s throat.

“My kid, she’s tough,” Torretta said after a moment. “But I had no idea she was capable of that kind of magic. That was…”

“I know,” Gideon said. “She’s been working really hard to get it under control.”

Torretta leaned back, tapping the edge of the glass against the table.

“I’ve been hard on her,” he said. “Since her mother died, the idea of someone finding out about her had me all twisted up. I didn’t want to lose her, too, you know?”

Gideon understood it, to an extent. She was too precious to lose. But he saw the effects that had on Benny, how fraught her relationship with him was. The way her face fell whenever her father alluded to her magic and how little he cared for her practice.

“But I almost did anyway,” Torretta continued. “So where the fuck did that get me?”

“You’ve still got her,” Gideon said. “You’ve just gotta let her be .

The person you described when you hired us, that’s only part of who she is.

She’s capable and smart. She’s funny. I mean, she really knows how to bust your balls.

And when she’s practicing her magic, I’ve never see someone happier in my life.

I would never want to take that away from her. ”

Torretta pursed his lips, his hand swirling the tumbler, sloshing the remaining liquid in the glass as he leaned forward.

He rested his forearms on the table, a look that was hard to read flickering across the old man’s face, thick brows narrowing.

Gideon might’ve over-stepped. Might’ve said too much.

But he couldn’t take it back. He didn’t want to.

Everything he said about Benny was true.

“You two have gotten close,” Torretta said, finally.

He wanted to say yes. A part of him knew it to be true.

They’d spent every single day together since they’d found her on the docks.

Day and night in the same space, you get to know someone.

The way they take their coffee, their favorite foods, their inability to stay quiet during a movie, the little bits and pieces that made a person whole.

But the way he felt about her…

Did she feel the same? What she’d done for him at the warehouse, wouldn’t she do that for everyone? She’d said as much at the quarry, she’d put her life on the line for any of them. As much as he wanted her to be his, what could he give her in return? Not a life above the line.

He drained the rest of his glass.

“I should shower.”

Torretta huffed a breath.

“Yeah, you really do look like shit.”