Curse of the Fallen by Eve Archer

Chapter Fourteen

Dominick

“Ella didn’t tell me you had your own plane.” Sara ran her hands over the buttery leather of the seats after she’d strapped herself in and the plane had rumbled down the tarmac and lifted into the air.

I heard her question, but my mind was too muddled from seeing the image of Gabriel in Ella’s photo to reply.

“We travel a lot for our business,” Rami said, after an uncomfortably long silence. “A private plane makes it easier for us to visit our holdings.”

“Holdings,” Sara muttered, as she peered out the window and then back at Rami. “What exactly is your business, again?”

The flight attendant walked through the cabin with a tray, swooping it down in front of Sara and offering her champagne, which she accepted with a hesitant smile and wide eyes.

“Hospitality,” Rami answered for me, his voice as smooth and slippery as his words.

“Right.” Sara’s tone told me she didn’t quite believe the cagey description. “The Epicurus clubs.”

“And other properties,” Rami added. “Hotels and resorts throughout the world.”

I ignored the champagne flutes on the flight attendant’s tray, plucking up the one rocks glass filled with my favorite single-malt scotch. Taking a gulp, I welcomed the heat from the smooth liquor, even though it churned in my stomach the more I thought about Gabriel.

I leaned forward and pinned Sara with my gaze. “Tell me more about Ella’s godfather.”

Sara swallowed the sip she’d just taken and set her glass down on the seat table. “I pretty much told you everything I know. She’s only mentioned him a few times. Like I said, he was in her life when she was small, but then vanished. Who knows why? I do know Ella asked her mom, and never got a straight answer.” She picked up her glass and took another swig. “Not that she got many straight answers from her mother.”

My curiosity was piqued. Ella hadn’t talked much about her parents, except to say they’d died. Then again, I hadn’t pressed her too much. I’d been much more distracted by my own desire to claim her. I cursed my impatient lust as I gripped the cool rocks glass in my hands. “Meaning?”

Sara shrugged. “Her parents died when we were freshmen in college, so Ella didn’t talk about them much after that. Too painful, I guess, but before that, Ella had complained about her mom dodging questions or giving weird answers.”

“Weird answers?”

Sara huffed out a breath. “She used lots of stupid sayings, instead of giving Ella an actual answer. And lots of religious ones.”

My spine tingled. “Religious?”

Sara swiveled one hand in the air. “Bible verses, proverbs, things like that. If Ella slipped up, her mom would say ‘you reap what you sow’ or if she asked a question, she’d say ‘one who doubts is like a wave in the sea.’”

“Her mother was religious?”

“They weren’t big church goers, which was why it always seemed weird to me that her mom whipped out the Bible talk so often. But everyone’s parents are weird in their own way, so I didn’t think too much about it.”

I sat back in the plush seat, swirling the amber whiskey in my heavy rocks glass. “So, Ella never told you anything else about her godfather?”

Sara shook her head. “Like I told you before, he didn’t come up much, since he wasn’t a part of her life for most of it. She mentioned Gabe a couple of times when she was talking about childhood memories.”

Rami’s head swung to mine as the mention of the name Gabe.

“She called him Gabe?” I asked, the whiskey sour in my stomach.

“From what I gathered; she was named after him.” Sara tossed back the rest of her champagne. “Now that you mention it, I guess it’s weird to be named after someone and then have them vanish without much of an explanation. Ella mentioned that there might have been a falling-out before they moved, but she never knew why.”

“Ella comes from Gabriella,” I whispered, cursing my own blindness. How had I not picked up on her name before? Ella, who carried an angel trace, was named after the archangel Gabriel.

“Dom,” Rami said, his voice low and urgent. “Do you think this means…?”

Sara leaned forward. “Means what?” She slid her gaze between me and Rami. “What’s with all the questions about some rando guy who was barely in her life? Is he the reason she’s in danger?”

Neither Rami nor I spoke. Gabriel was not the reason Ella was in danger. At least, I didn’t think he was. I stared into my drink, my mind spinning with possibilities, all of them impossible.

“As far as we know, this does not have to do with Ella’s godfather,” Rami said after a long pause. “Dominick is merely trying to learn more about his new girlfriend.”

Sara snorted out a laugh, eyeing me without hesitation. “You aren’t the kind of guy who wants to learn about your girlfriend’s childhood.”

I lifted my gaze to her, smiling in spite of myself. “And you don’t have many unexpressed thoughts, do you?”

She gave me a crooked grin. “Nope.” She flopped back in the seat, waving a hand at her bright clothing and bejeweled hair. “What you see is what you get. I don’t believe in secrets or bullshit.”

“How refreshing,” I deadpanned.

“You still haven’t given me a good explanation for what happened between you and my best friend.”

“Nothing happened,” I said, regaining my sense of equilibrium. “We met on the rooftop of one of my hotels, and I found her to be charming. I asked her to join me in traveling around Europe for the rest of the summer, and she graciously agreed.”

Sara looked at me like she clearly didn’t buy it. “Mmmhmm. That’s the same story Ella gave me.” She shifted her eyes to Rami. “What about you, Tonto? Is that your story, too?”

Rami cocked an eyebrow at Sara. In all the millennia he’d served as my top deputy, he’d certainly never been called Tonto before. I’d never witnessed a woman who wasn’t instantly weak-kneed by my friend’s charms, but Sara appeared to prefer veiled insults to fluttering her lashes at him.

“Dominick Vicario does not need to coerce women into spending time with him,” I said before Rami could reply.

Sara frowned. “I guess not, but that still doesn’t explain how you got separated by multiple countries.”

I drained the last of my whiskey in a single gulp, twitching my head from the sharp burn. “I’ll be honest with you. As a businessman, I’ve acquired enemies. Some of these enemies wish me harm or wish to gain leverage over me.”

Sara’s face paled. “And one of these enemies has something to do with Ella being in Marrakesh?”

“I believe so. Despite the bodyguards I had with her, I believe someone got to her to get to me.”

Sara’s mouth fell open, and her gaze pinballed between me and Rami. “Bodyguards? What the hell kind of hotel owner has bodyguards and business rivals who kidnap their girlfriends?”

“Very powerful ones,” I said.

Sara unclipped her seatbelt and stood quickly. “Holy fuck! You’re part of the mob, aren’t you? I thought you were too sophisticated and young to be a mob boss, not to mention the fact that Ella would never in a million years get involved with some mafia guy, but that’s what you are, right?”

Rami joined her in standing, reaching a hand out to her that she slapped away. “Dominick is the head of our legitimate business organization.”

I peered up at her. “Since you don’t believe in bullshit, I will be honest with you, Sara. The business world in which I’m involved is connected to what you might call the mafia, although my businesses are now all legitimate enterprises.”

She swung her head to take in the plane, mumbling under her breath. “I’m flying with the fucking godfather and his consiglieri.”

I chuckled. “No one calls me godfather, and the new underworld is nothing like the movies.”

“I’m going to fucking kill Ella,” Sara said as she backed away from us and stumbled back toward the bathrooms.

“I’ll go try to talk to her,” Rami said.

“I have seen the way you comfort women.” I gave him a serious look. “Ella’s friend cannot be another conquest.”

He pressed his lips together as if biting back a sharp response, then followed her to the back of the plane. I twisted my head to look out the window as the plane flew above the clouds, the sunlight making the tops of the white puffs glow pink. I wasn’t worried about Sara and her outburst. Rami was more than capable of handling the woman. No, my thoughts were caught up in the archangel Gabriel, and why he would concern himself with a human.

I swallowed hard. Unless he was the one who marked her.

It was one thing to carry an angelic mark. It was another matter altogether to be marked by the archangel Gabriel.