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Chapter 1
Everyone was in danger. Even the humans at my party were no longer conscious! What the hell was going on?
The toast for my quinceañera had just happened and now people were dropping like flies around me. My best friend, Robert, also a human, was in a dead faint on the ground, along with most of the guests attending my quince.
“Wolfsbane!” My stepfather, Kyle, a powerwolf alpha werewolf, gasped out.
The pit of my stomach dropped. The drinks had been poisoned. Wolfsbane was dangerous for werewolves. And whatever had been in the drinks was affecting the humans at my party too. But I was not affected. I possessed special regenerative abilities as a powerful witch; it must have prevented me from succumbing to whatever was inside the drinks.
But everyone else was affected! I briefly scanned the crowd, noticing that my biological father, a human like my mother, was not here. I’d met my biological father earlier in the waiting room, wanting to know why he’d been absent from my life for eight entire years. I had specifically reached out to him, wanting him to be part of this very important day. Some of my fondest core memories were of me as a toddler at the park with my biological father, Joel. Those memories were before he’d succumbed to angry drunken rages that made my mama cry. Later, he’d say sorry. He would promise to do better. We’d believe him each time. Until I turned seven and my mama met Kyle, her boss and destined mate. Yes, my mama was the human mate of a powerful alpha werewolf who’d also been the CEO of the company she worked for. They had a beautiful relationship and I yearned for a love like theirs with every fiber of my being.
Papa told me he wanted to be part of my life, but couldn’t. All because my stepfather had used his money and connections to keep him away. My stepfather was an amazing person who loved my mama. And I was grateful that he’d accepted my little sister, Mia, and I as his own. Especially when my own father slinked away from my life.
Did it make me ungrateful for being angry at Kyle over this revelation of him bullying my papa into staying away? Was everyone being punished for my frustrated thoughts? I frantically looked at everyone, wondering how to get help. Should I call 911? But what if I did something to breach the werewolf code of secrecy?
And then I saw him. He entered the hall like an angel of death, his dark brown eyes two pools of malevolence that shone with sinister intent.
A whopping 6’5" living embodiment of unfathomable darkness, the young man ran a hand carelessly through his hair before shooting a silver bullet straight into my Uncle Xavier’s leg. Uncle Xavier was my stepfather’s older brother and he’d shifted into his wolf in an attempt to attack this mystery man. I was sure this harbinger of death had something to do with the poison in everyone’s drinks.
“Keep moving, pendejo and you’ll get another one.” His voice dripped with sinister intent. The heavy accent told me he was not from around here. What was a dangerous hitman from Spain doing in the city of Seattle? Why was he here?He looked at Uncle Xavier threateningly, gun still aimed at his wolf that was crouching on the ground, poised to attack despite his bleeding leg and trembling form. The wolfsbane was going to knock my uncle out sooner rather than later.
The Spaniard stopped short, his ominous gaze going to me. “Ahh…” he looked at the glass in my hand from which I had only taken a few sips. “Seems like you have a tolerance for my witch’s potions.”
I stared at him, realizing this man looked to be not much older than I was. However, despite his seemingly twenty years of age, he definitely had more kills under his belt than years on his person. Even I could tell that much.
“Who are you?” I demanded, wondering if he was here to kidnap me for my abilities.
Tia Mel, a powerful werewolf-witch hybrid, mated to another one of my stepfather’s brothers, had warned me that many bad people might target me if it ever became known what I really was. However, nobody knew the truth about me. Not even my biological father. He was a human and only knew werewolves existed because my mama was mated to Kyle. We had decided to keep my true identity a secret. Everyone thought I was a human girl. The protective bangle I wore on my arm blocked my powers, for now.
Kyle was yelling at me to run. But I was frozen on the spot, terror engulfing me. I felt utterly useless in that moment. I had no idea how to use my powers, not yet anyway. Tia Mel cautioned me that if I tried to use my powers before I turned sixteen, it would be dangerous because a human body couldn’t handle the vast amounts of power I possessed. But I wouldn’t let my loved ones be slaughtered around me. I had to try and do something!
My eyes went to my mother who was laying in a fetal position on the floor as she tried to fight off the poison. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she lost consciousness.
“Mama!” I yelled, trying to run to her.
However, I was viciously yanked into the hard body of the specter of death responsible for everything going on. My back pressed into his solid chest. One muscular arm went over my chest, pinning me to him. I tried to struggle against him but it was futile. And then I froze as fear lodged itself in my throat upon the sensation of cool dangerous metal at my temple. I bit back a whimper. He was going to kill me.
“The name is Gabriel Rossi,” he murmured against the shell of my ear, his deep voice sending ripples of fear down my spine. “And your papa is going to watch me kill his precious princesa. He took my birthright from me. I’m gonna take something from him too.”
“Rossi’s son!” Kyle choked out, recognition lighting up in his eyes.
I knew my mama headed a company that Kyle had previously acquired from someone named Rossi. I realized that this man was here to kill me in cold blood over some bid for revenge against Kyle. So I had the element of surprise. He had no idea what I really was–a girl born with the powers of one destined to lead the Salem Coven of Witches.
I wondered if I’d be successful in activating my powers. The last time I’d activated them, at the age of seven, I’d nearly died. But I was dead either way. Better to go down fighting, right? So I gathered my courage and with a surprising amount of strength fueled by the sheer terror pumping in my veins, I pulled myself out of Gabriel’s grasp.
He tried to grab my arm, only for his hand to go over the protective bangle that suppressed my magic. I gave another fierce jerk of my body and the bangle broke away, left behind in his hand as I pulled free of his hold. I heard the cocking of his pistol.
I turned to face him, realizing I was going to die. My body trembled with fear but I wouldn’t beg. I briefly wondered if it would be as painful as when my biological father dislocated my shoulder in a fit of rage when I was seven. He’d been sorry about it and apologized profusely. This man would never be sorry for killing me.
My eyes met the feral glowing yellow eyes of my killer, one hundred percent sure I was going to die. Sure that a bullet was very quickly going to lodge itself deep in my heart.
“Mate,” Gabriel Rossi said, staring straight at me, as I was left utterly flabbergasted.
The one word I had yearned to hear from someone…
The one thing I had always wanted…
Spoken from the lips of a man who definitely would sooner throw my body in the ocean for the sharks. I wanted a mate who would treasure me like Kyle treasured my mama. I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything else. And that dream was suddenly incinerated in the face of the fact that I was staring down the barrel of the gun, poised to kill me, held by my fated mate. A lone tear made its way down my cheek.
My bangle not only blocked my powers, it also blocked the mate bond. Only when it broke off my person did our bond click into place.
And it was then that I realized how utterly fucked up my life really was. I wasn’t fit to lead any coven. I wasn’t fit to be some all-powerful witch. My past was filled with traumatic memories of my childhood. I was pathetically pining for scraps of attention from an absent biological father, who I’d begged to be here today despite not having seen him for eight years, and now I had a mate who wanted to kill me!
Before I could even begin to attempt to summon any bit of magic after such a huge shock, Gabriel was retreating, leaving the venue hall with quick purposeful strides. Without a second thought, I ran to my Uncle Xavier who was bleeding profusely. Tears streamed down my eyes and my hands were shaking as I knelt on the ground next to him,not caring that my beautiful gown of silver silk and gossamer net was now stained with blood. There was so much blood and my uncle was passed out. Was he going to die?
“I will be back for you one day,” I heard his ominous words float towards me. But when I looked up, Gabriel was gone.
My eyes searched the hall for any signs of him. I then saw my biological father run into the venue hall with vials in his hands. He’d been noticeably absent for the toast, choosing to hang back in the waiting room.
“I found these,” Papa panted, quickly handing them to me. “I think they are the antidote.” He puffed his chest out proudly. “I risked my life to get these. Saw a woman sneaking out the kitchens and was able to grab these when she was distracted. Pretty sure she’s also the one who helped poisoned everyone,” he added.
I burst into tears, throwing myself into Papa’s arms. I was so scared! And I was so relieved Papa had arrived just in time.
“Mija, I’m here now, don’t worry,” Papa breathed into the crown of my head as he patted my back comfortingly. “I’m going to make sure nothing bad happens. Your old man still has some good left in him, despite what other people might think.”
I nodded as he pulled back and looked at me with a smile. I sniffled, realizing that my poor papa was just misunderstood. Maybe he’d been an angry, bitter person before. But now he was trying to turn over a new leaf. And I hoped it stayed that way. Here he was, risking his life to help save everyone. He’d made mistakes in his life. But he regretted them.
He really wasn’t the absent-father I’d thought him to be. He still loved me. He was still the man I remembered as a toddler. But what did that say about Kyle? Kyle who’d provided the funds for this lavish extravaganza where everyone was now teetering near death.
“Evie, you have a new family, a new father with more money than your old man. I’m all alone now, but I’ll always be here for you,” Papa muttered as we worked together.
Why did those words make it feel like I had to pick between loving my stepfather and loving my biological father?
I shook my head, realizing now was not the time to think about such things. I quickly did as Papa directed and began to help administer the antidote to everyone at the party.
However, as I administered the antidote to my little brother Rafel, born to my mother and Kyle a year after they’d gotten together and I was eight, I couldn’t help but think about the final words of Gabriel Rossi.
“I’ll be back for you one day.”
My fifteenth birthday party ended with everyone poisoned while I tried frantically to save their lives as those ominous words echoed in my head.
—
Present day.
Seven Years Later.
For years, I’ve been fleeing from two inescapable truths: my legacy as a formidable witch, destined to lead my coven, and the chilling memory of my mate, who held a gun to my head. And yet I couldn’t help but feel a dangerous allure to his malevolence—to his promise that one day, he’d come for me. It was like a magnetic force that gripped me relentlessly. It terrified me to my core. I knew deep down that if he ever caught me, I would be consumed by his intensity, like a moth drawn inexorably to a flame, only to be reduced to mere ashes scattered by the wind.
Which is why, at twenty-two, I found myself engaged to my childhood best friend, Robert. We were to be married within the year. But deep down, I knew that Robert could never be the one to set my soul on fire or make my heart race with excitement. He was the steady flame that burned with predictability, but he could never compare to the wild inferno of love that I yearned for, a flame that could only be ignited by someone who held the key to my heart.
However, it was a fervent hope that through marrying Robert, Gabriel Rossi would become nothing but a bitter memory. My destined mate was everything that I knew I had to stay away from.
Unfortunately, on the day he showed up at the apartment that I shared with my fiance, I realized that you can run from Gabriel Rossi....but you can’t hide.
Author Note: dear wonderful reader, if you're just joining us on this journey...well hang on tight. You will hate Gabe and then fall for him. I have so much commissioned art for this story and would like to invite you to join ruby's reading room to get a peak at them and stay up to date on my latest writing projects.
Chapter 2
Seven years later...
**Gabriel's POV**
I wiped my bloodied knuckles, my expression stoic as I stared at the man tied up in the chair before me. Nonchalantly, I tossed the once pristine white towel, now spotted with deep crimson stains, to the floor. This was becoming tiresome. If only I could kill him and be done with it. However, on the off-chance he had some vital information, I had to keep this chingado alive. Hell. I really wanted to just kill him.
“I’m going to ask you one last time,” I clipped the words out ominously, reaching for the silver pistol always tucked away on my person.
The silver metal lightly singed the skin of my palms, but it could have been worse had I not built up a tolerance to the metal lethal for wolves. As a babe, my mother, who’d been an alpha-female, had gone so far as to lace my milk with silver, refusing to stop even after her actions caused me to be hospitalized multiple times.
The body is strong. A powerful alpha will adapt.
That’s what she always said to my father, a weak wolf with beta blood in him. So weak he’d nearly sent us into poverty when he lost half our drug business to some stupid American alpha business tycoon. However, I was strong. I was not like my pathetic sire. Gabriel Rossi rose from the ashes and built everything back. Thanks to my hard work, we thrived now, and were doing better than before. Mamma died happy. She might have lived longer had she not rejected my old-man out of spite. Her wolf never recovered. The mate-bond was too strong to deny. Which is why I knew there was no fighting it. Unfortunately. I shook my head to rid myself of thoughts of the past and leveled my gaze on the man before me.
“Who was the informant?” I queried, eyes glaring with calculation at the poor fool trembling as if he might piss his pants.
If the smell was any indication, he probably already had. How bothersome. A dead body covered in piss was a hassle to dispose of.
The capo in charge of the American division of my money laundering mafia looked at the gun, fear skittering through his features. I could count off on one hand how many people had survived this gun. He knew his days were numbered now.
“Please...!” He begged for mercy, eyes wide and pleading.
I cocked the pistol.
This pendejo was already beaten into a bloody pulp, and still wouldn’t cave. It only meant one thing. He’d been a part of it. If I'd been debating about him letting him live before, well let's just say now my mind was made up. Nobody betrayed Gabriel Rossi.
“Please...please...Gabe…” he pleaded, his thick Mexican accent spilling out. He grimaced in pain and spat out a tooth that I had knocked loose when roughing this bastard up. “Be reasonable. I had no idea—”
The deafening roar of the pistol going off drowned out his pathetic pleadings. The sound seemed to echo endlessly, filling the surrounding space with a cacophony of explosive force, leaving nothing but a dead man hanging from the chair he’d been tied to.
“Wrong answer,” I muttered, throwing my pistol aside and looking towards my beta and underboss, Vin, who was sitting at a desk on the far left. The beta was completely immersed in his task as he clicked away on the keyboard before him.
“I guess we’re going to America,” I informed Vin with a resigned sigh. “I hate that place.”
And not just because a certain mate of mine resided there. A human mate. Of all the sick twisted jokes fate had played on me, this was the worst. However, I knew eventually a mating with her was inevitable. I could only ever truly be the strong alpha I was meant to be if I had my mate by my side. But it didn’t mean I’d have to enjoy it. It would just be one of those undesirable tasks, like consuming silver. I had to do it if I wanted to stay strong, to be better than those who wished to bring me down. Being the Don of the Cosa Nostra in Spain brought with it too many enemies. Too many people who wanted me dead.
Briefly, I recalled how my human mate wore a protective talisman around her arm that made it nearly impossible to track her. It had most likely been given to her by her witch aunt for protection. I'd done my research. My mate's stepfather was an alpha wolf mated to her human mother. He was the same alpha wolf that had stolen half my family business. I'd held a gun to my mate's head, ready to shoot her brains out as revenge. But then...I felt it. The bond. There was no way I could kill my mate, so I left.
Stupid little mate. Didn’t she know I had other means of keeping an eye on her? My people were still following her even as I stood in this very room murdering the mole who was behind the recent drug bust at the border in Texas. I had lost count of how many times my men kept my naïve mate from being mugged on the streets of New York. It didn't help that she was playing house in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of the city. Evelina could have her fun for now. But eventually, I would come for her. She knew that much.
Vin suddenly froze, stark fear etched across his face as he looked up at me. His reaction to my words made me give pause. Vin had seen many a man die in this very interrogation room; had killed and tortured a majority of them himself. It was as though an unseen force had gripped his very soul, sending a surge of panic coursing through him, all triggered by the ominous revelation that flickered to life on the laptop screen before him.
“What is it?” I demanded sharply.
Such a visceral reaction was uncalled for. Vin stumbled out of the chair, his eyes wide with fear, and looked at me as if I was going to kill him.
My hands reached for the laptop, ignoring the splatters of blood staining the cuffs of my crisp white dress-shirt. If you’re going to kill, always kill dressed in your finest. That’s what Mamma always said.
In one deft move, I flipped the laptop to face me. My eyes, sharp and penetrating, glinted with dangerous intensity as I took in exactly what had sent Vin skittering out of this room. Smart man. I would have killed him if he’d been in here. My wolf growled low, thirsting for blood. I thirsted for death.
White hot anger settled over me as I stared intently at the screen. With each passing second, my blood lust heightened, an aura of barely contained fury and malevolence radiating off my body in waves. The flickering screen went blank and now I stared at my reflection in the dark LCD. The expression staring back at me spoke volumes without uttering a single word—a silent warning of the storm that raged within me, ready to be unleashed at a moment’s notice.
Fucking sonafabitch. Someone was going to die tonight. And every single day following, until I finally got my revenge.
Within the next moment, the laptop was snapped shut. I wanted to hurl it across the room.
“I think it’s time I pay Evelina a little visit,” I spoke ominously, my whispered words rupturing the silence with the force of thunder in a serene sky.
It was time to remind Evelina who she belonged to.
Chapter 3
**Evelina's POV **
“Hey!” I exclaimed, turning to yell at the man who’d just groped my ass in the subway.
Fucking New York. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.
“You pervert!” I yelled, watching the strange man disappear into the crowd.
“Temper Evie,” Robert intoned, grabbing my arm and pulling me along. “It’s late, we need to get home.”
Muttering expletives in Spanish that Robert couldn’t understand, I trudged along begrudgingly. My mama was Peruvian and my biological papa was from Mexico. So of course, I was putting my knowledge of various curse words to good use.
Emerging from the New York underground, I allowed the winter night’s air to help cool my flushed face and my ire.
“This is why I always tell you to stick close to me,” Robert murmured impatiently once we got closer to home and I'd stopped cursing.
“You aren’t honestly trying to say it’s my fault?” I challenged, casting him a withering look.
“Of course not Evie,” Robert replied quickly. “It’s just that according to statistics, this usually happens to women who men think are alone on the subway. Sticking close to me is a deterrent.”
I raised an eyebrow challengingly. “I think ripping his hands off would be a good deterrent.”
“Now you’re just being volatile.” Robert unlocked the door to our tiny apartment in a not-so-nice part of the Bronx. It was a far cry from the huge L-shaped mansion I’d grown up in. But it was ours. A home we’d both worked hard to make.
“They fixed the leak!” Robert crowed gleefully, washing his hands in the sink. “I don’t know why our neighbors are always complaining about leaky faucets. The plumber for this place always services our apartment promptly. A perfect end to a perfect day.”
That was Robert all right. A fixed leak was the epitome of your life going just marvelously.
“Stop!” I rushed to grab my favorite pink towels with the hand-embroidered white floral patterns on them. Robert had tried drying his hands with my pretty towels. “How many times do I have to tell you that these are for decoration? You’re not supposed to actually use them!”
Robert rolled his eyes, muttering something about women’s logic. I stuck my tongue out at him when he wasn’t looking. O.K. so I was a little obsessive about the way things should be. It was my own personal way of claiming agency over a life that was literally one step away from spiraling out of control. If only this man knew the truth. But he didn’t. He was human and blissfully ignorant. Sometimes I was jealous of exactly how clueless Robert truly was.
“Sweetheart, we’re out of eggs. I’ve asked you three times already to grab them when you go to the grocery store, but you keep forgetting.” Robert looked at me, chuckling affectionately.
I cringed. Yeah. Actually…it wasn’t an accident that I kept forgetting. The truth was, I abhorred the scent of eggs cooking first thing in the morning without the tangy smell of salsa. It made me want to puke and totally ruined my appetite. I wisely withheld that bit of information from Robert, however. I could not begrudge him his fried eggs, sunny-side up.
“I’ll remember for tomorrow when I go out.” My hands flew over the sticky post-it notepad resting on my white tiled countertops.
I wrote down ‘eggs’ in my neat loopy handwriting.
“Perfect.” He gave me a perfunctory kiss on the forehead before going to sit on the couch to watch a docu-series on Netflix.
Like clockwork, I already knew, at some point he would get up to make a cup of green tea, drink it, rinse it off, put the mug in the dishwasher and then come to bed where he’d place a kiss on my shoulder before falling asleep. That was Robert. Perfectly predictable.
***
“Yes Kyle, I remembered to hook the pepper spray onto my keychain. It arrived earlier this morning,” I assured, talking to the man who had adopted me when I’d been seven years old.
It was the next day, and I’d just been getting ready to leave the apartment I lived in with Robert.
“All right Evie, I was just making sure.” Kyle’s reassuring voice wafted through the speakerphone as I cleaned up the kitchen. “Your mama was asking when you planned to come visit?”
I sighed. Not this again. I didn’t go home often. Ever really. Mama didn’t approve of me rushing into my marriage with Robert. In Robert, I found solace in the predictability of his character—a man whose actions were as consistent as the rising sun. Yet, for all his virtues, Robert lacked the spark of passion that ignited my soul. He was the embodiment of safety, a harbor in a stormy sea. Our relationship was based on practicality rather than passion. Which is just what I needed.
“I’ll think about it,” I hedged.
“Do you need any money? Should I transfer—”
“No Kyle,” I cut in brusquely. “I don’t need money.” I really didn’t. I made a comfortable amount working remotely in the I.T. field.
There was a pause as my stepfather took this in.
“All right well…I just want to make sure you’re all right. You know we don’t approve of the neighborhood you live in. “
I rolled my eyes. Our miniscule apartment in the Bronx might not be a mansion. But I was proud of what Robert and I had built together. Right down to the pretty pink towels we fought over, hanging from the oven railing.
“I know but that’s really not your decision to make for me,” I retorted evenly, crossing my arms in ire.
“I just worry about you, Evie,” Kyle’s gentle voice replied. “I wish you weren’t so far away. I remember when you were a little girl promising to always be here…with us. And now you’ve grown up and I know I’m supposed to let you find your own path in life. That’s my job as a parent. But I can’t help but worry,” he ended mournfully, helplessly even.
In many ways, my stepfather was more protective of me than even my own biological parents. Guilt pinged my heart. Thinking of Kyle as my stepfather really wasn’t right. He was more a father to me than my biological father. However, ever since my biological father told me that Kyle had purposefully used his money and influence to keep my papa away from me, I had become a little bitter.
For all my biological dad’s faults, he was still my papa. He was the man I had my first memories with. They were good memories. Happy memories. I loved him. He loved me too. So why did Kyle try to keep us apart? It hurt to find that out. I knew I should have just asked Kyle, but I also felt guilty stirring the pot. Kyle had done so much for my mama. For me. For my little sister Mia.
“We miss you.” Kyle’s voice was full of the love he had for me.
I loved him too.
“I miss you too,” I assured. “I’ll talk to Robert and we can plan a visit. But no Aunt Mel,” I warned.
“Deal. I’ll be waiting to hear back from you. Your mama will be so happy when I tell her you’re coming home,” Kyle responded enthusiastically before we mutually ended the call.
Home. Where mama would bug me about my decision to marry Robert and Aunt Mel would constantly drop in to remind me that I was supposed to take over her coven. I was a witch. And not just any witch. I was a powerful elemental witch, able to store vast amounts of energy within my body. There were only 13 of us registered within the entire world. We went by many names. In America, we were called Earth Witches. In Spanish speaking countries, we were called Tierranians. In Europe, people referred to us as Elementairias. However, no matter what we were called, we were special. Stronger than the average witch.
I almost died when my powers unleashed at the age of 7. My cousin David had fallen from a tree and somehow, my powers had activated to suspend him mid-fall. However, a witch's powers only manifested upon her sixteenth birthday and mine had manifested too early. My organs had nearly shut down in response to so much power flowing through the body of a seven-year-old. It's why my Aunt Mel had given me a protective talisman to wear that repressed my magic as long as I wore it. Since then, I’d learned to control my powers. My Aunt Mel had trained me well during the summers I went to visit her. However, I kept my arm bangle on to remain untraceable and to keep my powers locked away.
My existence was kept a secret. Nobody expected the daughter of a human woman to be born an immensely powerful witch. It was all thanks to my grandmother, the Dark Witch Sybl, Tia Mel’s mother. She’d been an evil woman and had been hell bent on Tia Mel joining the Dark Coven. But Tia Mel refused and went up against Sybl when she tried to summon a demon.
My mama was the product of Sybl’s experiments to create an army of powerful witches. Mama was carried by a surrogate, my Abuelita who’d helped raise me, and was the product of Sybl’s eggs and a random sperm donor. However, the balance demanded an Earth Witch, always the first born daughter of a first born daughter, in the next generation of the bloodline. Tia Mel only had sons. Magic always found a way to keep the balance. And that balance was found in me
But I never asked for this. I didn’t want to be in charge of a coven of witches. I wanted to be normal. I did not want to use magic and went out of my way to avoid using it.
My childhood had been filled with enough complications. Up until I was 7, I’d watched my father constantly screaming at my mama that she was a worthless good for nothing. She’d cry herself to sleep most nights. What neither of them had realized was that he might be calling my mama useless…but I was the one absorbing those words, the feeling that they had always been directed at me was something I’d never been able to completely shake off. Mama told me papa was sick. And I constantly prayed for him to get better because he was the only father figure I had known.
Not to mention the fact that when I’d been an idiotic three-year-old, I’d been too clueless to let my mother leave papa. Instead, I’d begged her to stay with him because he promised me we’d be a happy family. A person like me, didn’t deserve to lead anyone. Nop. A perfectly normal life was the best way to keep myself from screwing more shit up. I still loved my papa, and I wanted him to be a better person. I wanted him to be part of my life. I could still love Papa but accept the fact that my mama was happier with Kyle. But at time…I felt completely caught in the middle. Especially with the way Papa always talked bad about Kyle. And I couldn’t blame him when Kyle had bullied him into staying away from his children. Both were at fault and I didn’t want to pick sides. So the best recourse was to just minus myself from the equation entirely and live this mundane life.
My phone went off. It was Robert. He wanted to remind me to grab the eggs from the grocery store since we were out.
“This is the fifth day in a row that I haven’t had two fried eggs with buttered toast.” Robert’s voice was tinged with borderline panic.
For a man who stuck to a routine, I could see how this might be an existential crisis. The hustle and bustle of his office in the background reached my ears. He was probably sitting in his cubicle, about to have a panic attack over eggs.
“I’ll get them today on my way home from yoga class.” I really didn’t want to. But five days was a big deal for this man.
My eyes flickered to the clock. It was time for some yoga. As I left my apartment, the maintenance man greeted me with a cordial smile. He was always hanging out in this hallway, fixing one thing or another. The apartment complex really was quite old. Something always needed repair.
A sudden prickle of awareness shot through me as I stepped outside. Turning to look around, I discovered no one was there. The last time I’d felt this way was when Gabriel Rossi showed up at my university when I was a junior. I’d been 20, he’d been 25.
I shivered, recalling the event. He’d stood there beneath a tree, a cigar clamped between his teeth. Waiting for me…
Flashback
“You look different,” his eyes trailed my form.
I had never been so grateful for the crush of students on campus than I was today. He couldn’t kill me in front of everyone in broad daylight.
RIGHT?
“Little Evelina is all grown up,” Gabriel sneered. “Make no mistake Bella-”
My heart thudded against my ribcage, the word spoken so carelessly impacted me in more ways than he could ever imagine.
“-you are mine. One day…I will come for you,” he ended resolutely before turning to leave.
I sank into the grass, breathing erratically, willing myself to believe it was just a mere coincidence this dangerous man had shown up today of all days. The very day after I’d lost my virginity to Robert. Sweet kind Robert who Gabriel would not think twice about skewering.
It suddenly struck me that last night, when we’d made love, I had taken off my arm bangle and had forgotten to put it back on. Son.of.a.b.i.t.ch had tracked me. I knew he had some witch. And he was my mate. I’d done enough training with Aunt Mel to know that without the talisman, this man could track me. I had to get better at hiding my tracks. I had to keep running from this man.
End of flashback
Up until now, I was firmly confident in the fact that Gabriel Rossi had no clue where I was.
There was no way the formidable Alpha Don could have found me. Not here. Pulling the hood of my jacket more firmly around my head, I strode forward towards the subway, trying to ignore the biting chill of the November air. Eggs. I had to remember the eggs. Robert would get home before me, so I shot him a message as a reminder that he couldn’t touch my damn kitchen towels.
Robert always forgot and soiled them. One of the few pet peeves of his that annoyed me. With a resigned sigh, I tried to reassure myself that at least Robert didn’t kill people left and right like a certain mate of mine.
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