147
He stepped into the living room with all the casual swagger of someone who had no idea he’d just walked into a minefield. I turned, chest tightening, muscles stiffening, every nerve on edge, but what stopped me wasn’t a threat. It was him.
Tall. Taller than Dominic even, by maybe an inch. Maybe more. Broad in the chest and narrow at the hips, all golden-brown skin that looked sun-warmed and smooth. His thick black curls were messy, like he’d just rolled out of bed, or just finished doing something in one. His face held the same sharp features as Isabella: high cheekbones, a proud nose, full lips. But while Isabella was beautiful in a tired, aged sort of way, this man was gorgeous. Ethereal. Like some long-lost god had decided to wander into our disaster wearing nothing but low-slung gray sweatpants.
Tina, barely clinging to consciousness on the couch, raised her head just long enough to whistle, actually whistle, before she grinned and muttered, “Dio mio, who gave the Greek statue legs?” Then her head flopped back down against the cushions.
The man froze as soon as he saw us. His dark eyes, soft brown, flecked with hazel, widened like a deer caught in headlights. He tugged his pants higher, clearly realizing just how criminally low they were hanging on his hips. Tattoos littered his torso in sharp, elegant lines and bold symbols. Across his chest, over the ridges of his abs, down one ribcage, and curling across his obliques like constellations only a select few were allowed to read. There were none on his neck. None on his arms. Like he’d chosen only the most intimate places for ink, the parts people had to earn the right to see.
My face hardened. My spine locked up straight.
“Who—” I began.
“—the hell are you?” he asked at the same time.
We both froze, talking over each other. His eyes flicked between me and Tina on the couch like he was trying to do the math and failing.
Before I could launch into what would’ve been a very well-earned interrogation, Isabella rushed in from the hallway.
She looked… mortified.
Behind her, Dominic stepped in with Adam still curled in his arms. The boy had gone quiet again, thumb half in his mouth, eyes wary but dry now. I wondered why Dominic kept carrying and treating him like he were a toddler when he was literally ten.
Isabella stepped between us with her hand up like she was defusing a bomb. “This is my cousin,” she said quickly, glancing nervously between us all. “Gael. He’s staying here for the week, his apartment’s being fumigated, again, because of the rats. He’s no trouble, I promise .”
Gael shoved a hand through his curls, clearly trying to play it cool but looking utterly out of place. “I didn’t know there’d be company,” he mumbled, his accent rich and rolling, like honey spiced with something sharp.
I narrowed my eyes. The resemblance was obvious, yes, but I still didn’t like it.
“Gael,” I repeated, like I was committing it to memory in case I had to tell the police later. Not like I could, as I was a fugitive, but maybe. “Right.”
He gave a small shrug. “Sorry for, uh, the shirtless thing. I was just…” He gestured vaguely behind him. “Looking for a lighter.”
Tina groaned from the couch, her voice barely a whisper but still managing to drip with sarcasm. One finger lifted lazily toward Gael. “Keep not finding it,” she mumbled, lips curling in a half-smile. “Looks better this way.”
The room stilled for a beat as Gael flushed, a deep, unmistakable bloom of red that crept from the base of his neck to the high ridges of his cheekbones. It was almost absurd, that something so innocent could strike such a hard contrast to the walking sex magnet standing half-naked in the middle of Isabella’s living room.
And God help me, Gael was fucking beautiful.
The kind of beautiful you could choke on.
Realistically, at least six-foot-three, maybe four—he was all lean muscle and golden skin, tanned like he’d been carved under a Mediterranean sun and polished with oil. His abs were sculpted into stone-cut perfection, eight defined plates sloping down into a mouthwatering V that dipped below his dangerously low gray sweatpants. Those pants were hanging on by a thread, clinging to his hips like they’d been bribed to stay up, and as he moved just the shift of weight from one leg to another, they inched a little lower. Just enough to flash the sharp angle of his hip bones and the teasing promise of something darker below the waistband. His arms were thick and veiny, every movement sending waves of flexing muscle under bronze skin. The kind of arms you’d want around your throat, or your thighs.
Not me for sure.
But just saying.
And those curls, dark, thick, wild, were a tangle of sin, still damp and tousled like he’d just rolled out of someone’s bed.
But what really made him dangerous weren’t his looks. It was the flicker in his eyes when they landed on me: cool, calculating, alert.
That was when I realized he wasn’t dumb.
And neither was I.
My heart hammered hard beneath my ribs, and not because of his looks. No, it was the way his gaze kept shifting, first to Isabella, then to Dominic behind me, then to me, subtle and quick. He knew something. Or worse, he suspected. And that made him a threat.
I wasn’t comfortable around him. I didn’t trust him. He looked just old enough to be someone who kept up with the news, someone who would’ve seen my face plastered across screens, alongside Dominic’s. And while his expression tried to play casual, I could see the gears turning behind those long lashes.
He was trying to figure out how to not look too suspicious… while deciding when to rat us the fuck out. And how to do so without hinting to us that he was about to do just that.
Dominic didn’t like this. The moment our eyes met, I saw it.
Discomfort.
That thick, tightening silence of a man assessing a threat.
Dominic’s eyes dropped to Gael, scanning from his head down to the waistband of those dangerously low pants, where the very top of his pelvis and a trail of dark hair had started to peek out. Gael tugged them up half-heartedly, but it did nothing. If anything, the movement made things worse, drawing attention to the smooth, hard lines of his abs, the dusting of hair beneath his navel, the smug, beautiful sin of his body.
Dominic’s jaw clenched.
Mine did too.
But my rage wasn’t for Gael.
No, it was all for Isabella.
I turned to her smoothly, heat radiating off my skin, my fingers curling into fists at my sides. I was trying—failing—to keep the fury down, to not explode.
“Why didn’t you mention it?” I hissed, my voice low but shaking, “when we were at the door.”
Isabella’s eyes widened, her lips parting with a breathy inhale like I’d slapped her.
“I was going to tell you—”
“I didn’t think it was—”
They both started speaking at once, her voice shrill and breathless, his lower, trying to explain.
“Shut up.” The words snapped from me, venomous.
Isabella snapped her hand out, silencing Gael immediately. He clamped his lips shut, jaw flexing as he exhaled through his nose.
“He’s no trouble, I promise,” she rushed out. “Gael. He’s a good boy. He moved to New York after med school. He’s…he’s a surgeon, okay? He’s not involved in anything. I swear, Eleanor. He works crazy hours. I didn’t think—”
“Surgeon?” Dominic’s voice cut through the air like a scalpel. Clean. Cold.
We all turned to look at him.
He stepped forward, slowly. Calm. But there was something in the way his shoulders squared, in the way his hand casually slipped behind his back.
“Which hospital?” he asked, eyes flicking from Isabella to Gael.
Isabella opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked like a deer in headlights. She had no answer.
Gael cleared his throat, shifting slightly on his bare feet. “Mount Sinai,” he said. “Trauma unit. I do rotations in ER. Certified in vascular and orthopedic.”
His voice was low, confident, but I could see the flicker behind it, the subtle tension tightening his jaw, the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed.
Something had changed.
His gaze moved, swept past Dominic. To Tina. To me. Then to the small figure pressed against Dominic’s chest.
Adam.
He saw him.
And his whole body went still.
His eyes widened.
He knew.
And then, he didn’t think, he moved.
It happened fast.
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