After the Fire
Gabriella
By the time the doctor pulled the glass from Gabriella’s leg, she had stopped asking whether her mother and brother were dead.
Not because she believed they were alive.
Because nobody would answer her.
The room was too small for that much silence.
A converted office behind what looked like a closed laundromat, one metal table, one cracked sink, fluorescent lights that hummed loudly enough to make her teeth hurt.
Leo stood near the door with dried blood at his collar.
Niccolo leaned against the opposite wall while the doctor stitched the cut in Gabriella’s thigh.
No one looked at her for very long.
That was answer enough.
“Done,” the doctor said.
Gabriella stared at the strip of bloody gauze in his hand. “Can I walk?”
“With help.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
His eyes flicked toward Niccolo.
Gabriella laughed once. It sounded wrong.
“Don’t look at him. I’m the one asking.”
The doctor cleared his throat. “You can put weight on it, but you shouldn’t. You hit your head too. I want someone watching you overnight.”
“Great.”
“Gabby.”
Niccolo’s voice was low.
She looked at him.
He had blood dried along one temple, soot across his cheek, and a tear in the shoulder of his shirt.
He looked like shit.
She probably did too.
Neither of them had changed since the explosion.
For some reason, that irritated her.
“You said no hospitals,” she reminded him.
“And we’re not at one.”
“Then stop looking at me like I’m gonna die.”
His jaw tightened. “You got thrown by a fucking explosion.”
“So did you.”
“Yeah. I’m aware.”
The doctor started packing his supplies. “Wake her every two hours. If she vomits repeatedly, becomes confused, loses consciousness—”
“I know,” Niccolo snapped.
The man froze.
Niccolo rubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry. Just—leave the instructions.”
The apology was so unlike him Gabriella almost looked away.
Almost.
Instead, she watched the doctor leave and waited until the door clicked shut.
Then she asked again.
“Did they find bodies?”
Leo’s shoulders shifted.
Niccolo closed his eyes.
There it was.
Gabriella’s pulse slowed instead of speeding up.
“No,” Niccolo said.
Hope came so fast it hurt.
Then he ruined it.
“They haven’t been able to search the whole structure.”
“How long?”
“Fire crews are still there.”
“How long?”
“Gabby—”
“How long until they know?”
Niccolo pushed away from the wall. “I don’t know.”
She hated those words.
She had heard them too many times.
Nobody knew who had attacked Angelo.
Nobody knew what Diego wanted until it was too late.
Nobody knew who had sold the wedding schedule.
Nobody knew whether the safe house had been compromised.
Now nobody knew whether Mia and Santi were under several tons of concrete.
Gabriella slid off the table.
Pain tore through her thigh.
Niccolo crossed the room before she could fall.
“Don’t.”
She shoved his hands away.
His expression hardened. “You can barely stand.”
“I said don’t.”
He released her immediately.
That should have mattered.
It didn’t.
Gabriella braced both hands against the edge of the table and waited for the room to stop tilting.
“Where are we?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Where?”
“Temporary medical site Francesco uses.”
Her head lifted.
Francesco.
The name landed badly.
“He knew the location.”
Niccolo’s face changed.
Leo looked between them.
Gabriella straightened despite the pain. “He knew where they were going.”
“Yes.”
“His men moved them.”
“Yes.”
“His property exploded.”
Niccolo’s voice dropped. “Gabby.”
“What?”
“We don’t know he did it.”
“I didn’t say he did.”
“You were thinking it.”
“Of course I was fucking thinking it.”
She limped toward the sink, ripped paper towels from the dispenser, wet them, and started scrubbing at the blood on her hands.
Some of it was hers.
Some of it might have been Niccolo’s.
Some of it belonged to nobody she could name anymore.
“There were three cars,” she said. “Two disappear. The third reaches a building that explodes. At the exact same time someone gives us a fake Diego trail.”
Leo nodded once. “That wasn’t random.”
“No shit.”
Niccolo shot him a look.
“What?” Leo asked. “She’s right.”
Gabriella kept scrubbing.
The water ran pink, then clear.
Her hands still looked dirty.
“Who knew everything?”
Niccolo didn’t answer.
She turned.
“Who?”
“Francesco knew the location and the final route. Martin knew the destination once they were moving. His transfer team had partial pieces. I knew.”
“Leo?”
“Not the exact property.”
“Vincent?”
“No.”
“Caterina?”
“No.”
“Diego?”
“We don’t know.”
“Then somebody told him.”
“Maybe.”
“Stop saying maybe.”
Niccolo’s expression went hard. “You want me to invent certainty because you’re angry?”
“I want one fucking thing to be clear.”
“It isn’t.”
Gabriella stared at him.
That was Niccolo. Brutal enough to hurt her with the truth even when a lie would have been easier.
She used to hate him for that.
Right now, she needed it.
“Fine,” she said. “Then tell me what we know.”
Leo moved closer to the table. “The SUV we followed was a decoy. Plate was cloned. Driver ditched it and vanished before we could close in.”
“So somebody wanted us away from the move.”
“Yes.”
“The transfer cars?”
“Two are still missing.”
“Martin?”
“No response since the warning.”
“Santi’s doctor?”
“Missing with them.”
Gabriella swallowed.
“And the building?”
Niccolo answered this time. “Registered to a holding company Francesco controls through two layers.”
“Explosives?”
“Too early.”
“Bodies?”
“Too early.”
Everything was too early.
Except grief.
Apparently grief had excellent fucking timing.
Gabriella grabbed the edge of the sink when another wave of dizziness hit.
Niccolo stepped forward.
She glared at him.
He stopped.
For a second they stayed like that.
Then he asked, “Can I?”
Her throat tightened.
She nodded once.
He crossed the space and put one hand around her waist, careful of her leg.
Gabriella hated how quickly her body leaned into him.
“I want to go back,” she said.
“No.”
Her fingers curled into his shirt.
“I need to see it.”
“You saw it.”
“I need to know.”
“And if there’s nothing to know yet?”
“I’ll wait.”
“At the fucking crime scene?”
“If I have to.”
“No.”
She jerked away. “You asked before touching me, but apparently we’re done with choices now?”
Niccolo’s eyes flashed. “Choice doesn’t mean I help you walk into a burning building.”
“It isn’t burning forever.”
“And when cops start asking why Gabriella Conticello, whose face has been attached to half the shit happening in this city, is standing outside a blown-up safe house?”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“There it is again.”
“What?”
“You caring like it fixes anything.”
The words hit him.
She saw it.
For one horrible second, she wanted them to.
Then she hated herself.
Niccolo looked away.
“I know it doesn’t.”
Gabriella’s anger collapsed beneath the answer.
She sat heavily on the edge of the table.
“I told her I’d try.”
Niccolo didn’t ask who.
He knew.
“She told me I was coming with them when this was over.” Gabriella stared at the floor. “I couldn’t even promise her. I said I’d try.”
“Gabby.”
“And Santi made jokes. He was worried about me.” Her laugh cracked. “He’s the one with a fucking stab wound and he was worried about me.”
Niccolo crouched in front of her.
She didn’t stop him this time.
“I should’ve gone with them.”
“No.”
“If I had—”
“No.”
“They were there because of me.”
“Stop.”
“They were hiding because of me. Moving because of me. Santi got stabbed because—”
Niccolo gripped the edge of the table beside her thighs.
“Do you wanna know what happens if you keep doing this?”
Gabriella blinked.
“You make yourself the center of every shitty choice somebody else made. Diego chooses to hurt your family, somehow that becomes you. A guard sells information, somehow that becomes you. Whoever rigged that building, somehow that becomes you.”
His voice stayed controlled.
That was worse than shouting.
“You want blame? Fine. Take yours. You kept digging when people told you not to. You made deals. You walked into danger. You shot a tied man yesterday because you wanted answers faster.”
Gabriella flinched.
Niccolo didn’t soften it.
“But you did not wire that building.”
Silence.
“You don’t get to steal that from whoever did.”
Her eyes burned.
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Nothing tonight.”
“I can’t do nothing.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“No.”
“You’re concussed, stitched up, and running on adrenaline. Tonight you stay alive.”
“And tomorrow?”
Niccolo looked at her for a long moment.
“Tomorrow we find out who knew.”
Gabriella wiped at her face.
“When we find them?”
“We get proof.”
She laughed bitterly. “Proof.”
“Yes.”
“You suddenly believe in due process?”
“No. I believe in killing the right fucking person.”
There he was.
Some small, vicious part of her relaxed.
She looked toward Leo. “Angelo’s journal.”
Niccolo’s expression tightened. “What about it?”
“We go through every name connected to Diego. Every payment. Every route. Every person who ever crossed Isabella, Angelo, or him.”
“Gabby—”
“No more reading it like it’s history.”
She pulled away from Niccolo and stood.
Her leg screamed.
She stayed upright.
“It’s a map.”
Leo watched her carefully. “To what?”
Gabriella met his eyes.
“Everyone who might have helped kill my family.”
Niccolo stood too.
“And then?”
She looked at him.
Smoke still lived in her hair.
Blood was drying beneath her fingernails.
Somewhere across the city, firefighters were digging through a building where her mother and brother might be dead.
Might.
She clung to that word because it was the only merciful one left.
“We start with names.”
Niccolo’s face went unreadable.
Gabriella reached for the journal on the table where Leo had placed it beside her ruined jacket.
The black cover was scorched along one edge.
She opened it.
Page after page of secrets.
Judges.
Cops.
Accounts.
Families.
Men who had spent decades deciding what other people’s lives were worth.
Gabriella turned to the first page marked with Diego’s symbol.
Then she picked up a pen.
Niccolo watched her draw a line beneath the first name.
“Gabby.”
She didn’t look up.
“What?”
“You said we find out who did it.”
“We will.”
“That isn’t what I’m worried about.”
Now she met his gaze.
Niccolo looked at the journal.
Then at her.
Gabriella understood.
He wasn’t afraid she wouldn’t find the people responsible.
He was afraid of what she would do once she did.
Good.
So was she.
She underlined the next name.
“Then you better keep up.”
Such a bummer he became a lackey even if it was to save her family. Wish they would work together to get out of this mess. She's always blaming him for everything and moping around, poor me. She can't be broken now. We need feisty Gabby.
love this series, I blew through the first two now patiently waiting for this one :) do you have an update schedule?!
Very sad and frustrated their entire life since meeting and connecting has been a downward spiral.....thank you for the series, just waiting on it to turn around for them!