Chapter 10 - The Calm Before the Slaughter
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Thursday night was the longest night of my life.
The rain had stopped, leaving behind a biting November frost that coated the windows in intricate ice feathers.
In the small kitchen, Leo was field-stripping an automatic rifle, his movements rhythmic and mechanical.
Gabriel stood by the back door, smoking an unfiltered cigarette, the red tip glowing in the darkness.
I sat at the wooden table, staring at an ivory satin dress hanging from the doorway.
It was a high-end designer gown Leo had procured through a black-market contact on Michigan Avenue.
"You look like you're staring at an executioner's noose," Gabriel’s deep voice broke my trance.
He walked over, exhaling a thin ribbon of blue smoke toward the ceiling.
"I've spent my whole life being invisible, Gabriel," I whispered, running my fingers over the expensive silk.
"I wore gray dresses, tied my hair back, and kept my eyes on the floor."
"Tomorrow, you want me to walk into a room of murderers wearing five thousand dollars' worth of silk."
Gabriel set his cigarette in an ashtray and pulled a wooden chair opposite mine.
He reached across the table, taking both of my hands into his.
His hands were warm, calloused, and covered in faint scars from a lifetime of violence.
"When you walked into my kitchen three years ago," Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a tender register I had never heard him use with anyone else, "you thought you were invisible."
"You thought I didn't see you."
I blinked, looking up at him in surprise. "You barely spoke to me."
"Because if I spoke to you, my enemies would have seen what you meant to me," he answered softly.
The revelation hit me like a physical blow.
"I watched you every morning," Gabriel confessed, his dark eyes searching mine with raw honesty.
"I watched how gently you watered the orchids in the library."
"I watched how you refused to step on the ants on the terrace, gently sweeping them into the garden instead."
"In a world where everyone was trying to take something from me, you were the only thing that was pure."
My breath hitched in my throat, my heart pounding against my ribs.
"Gabriel..."
"When Carmine tripped you that afternoon," Gabriel continued, his jaw tightening at the memory, "I wanted to butcher him right there on the marble floor."
"The only reason he lived that day was because I saw the terror in your eyes."
He lifted my right hand to his lips, pressing a slow, burning kiss against my knuckles.
"Tomorrow night, you will not be invisible, Matilda."
"You will walk into that ballroom like a queen."
"And when the lights go out, and the traitors pay for what they did, you will stand beside me."
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, but they were no longer tears of fear.
They were tears of an awakening fire.
I leaned forward, my face inches from his, drawn by a gravity I had fought against for years.
"If I wear this dress, Gabriel," I whispered, "there is no going back to the old life."
"There is no old life," he replied, his hand moving to cup the back of my neck, pulling me gently toward him.
"There is only the empire we take back tomorrow."
When his lips touched mine, the world outside ceased to exist.
The kiss was slow, fierce, and filled with the dark promise of blood and redemption.
His mouth tasted of coffee, smoke, and dangerous devotion.
When he finally pulled away, his eyes were blazing with an unstoppable certainty.
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"Get some rest, Matilda," he whispered against my lips.
"Tomorrow, Chicago learns that the king never died."
