Tempted By The Mafia Boss

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Charlotte

“I’m so sorry. Gabe I’m so sorry,” I cry. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop crying.

I’m so glad he’s here, that he found me and I’m with him and he knows about the baby. I’m so glad but guilt is sweeping through me like a raging storm for the shit I’ve landed us in.

I step back and reach up to cup his face. “I choose you, Gabriel. I choose you and all I want is to be with you. that was all I ever wanted for the last ten years. Tobias got to me at the event last night and threatened to kill you and my family if I didn’t come to him today. I thought I was protecting you. I love you so much and I’m sorry I screwed up.”

He holds me and places a kiss on my forehead. “Goddess, I love you too. I get it and it’s not something to apologize for.” The love in his eyes fills me with hope, but then his face takes on a serious edge, hardening with it. “Baby, we have to get out of here. There’s a bomb.”

Fuck… Tobias really is fucked up.

“A bomb?” I gasp.

“Yeah. I don’t know where it is but was meant for me. It’s set to blow in twenty minutes. I came this way and I’m guessing I wasn’t supposed to find you. How did you get in here?”

“He brought me here unconscious, but I saw you through the glass window earlier.” I point to it and he sees the outside area with the rocky path.

“You saw me?”

“Yes, just there. It’s one of those one way windows where you can’t see in, but we can see out.”

“That’s near the entrance to the mine,” he tells me.

Mine… so that’s where we are. A mine.

We both look out to the rocky path on the other side of the glass as a group of men come into view.

Shit, this isn’t good. It gets worse when they start firing at the window and it smashes.

“Change of plan. We can’t go that way.” Gabe takes my hand and we start running.

I scream when we get to the bodies again. The sight is so gruesome.

Gabe throws me over his shoulder cave man style and pounds forwards so that within seconds we’ve gone past the whole area.

It’s a small triumph, but nothing to celebrate because there’s a host of men coming for us.

I hear them now and then I see them .

Gabe sets me down and whirls around to start shooting.

“Go on ahead of me baby!” he orders.

“No, I won’t leave you.”

“Goooo! Charlotte go,” he cries and I run.

I run and hear him shooting. When I glance back I see him running behind me and he catches up. We turn down a section that leads out to the mine shaft. It’s all old again and we take a dirt path with a rail track. There’s a lot of broken rails and it’s dark again. We keep running and the men don’t stop. They’re behind us.

Gabe holds my hand and we verge on to another rocky path. Up ahead there’s a rusty metal door.

We go through it and Gabe closes it. he pulls down the lever bar that secures it .

We’re in a wide spaced area that looks like a working mine. There are carts that still have coal and rocks, what I see too on a table in the center is most assuredly a bomb.

Jesus. I’m… looking at a bomb. An actual bomb.

It’s a big square block attached to dynamite, bounded together with wire. It has a flashing timer counting down on the center of it that says we have sixteen minutes before it blows.

Gabe sees it too. He sees it and we stop in our tracks.

“Fucking hell,” he swears, kicking at the dirt.

“What should we do?” I ask. I look around and the path seems to go up. The men are pounding on the door we just came through and shooting at it so they can get in.

Gabe looks around and focuses on one of those old style manual elevators attached to a pulley. It’s on the further side and I see now that it goes up about thirty feet into the air and there’s sunlight beaming down from the roof in an opening.

“There. That’s where we’ll go.” Gabe grabs me and we make a run for it again.

“Noooooo.” Wails a bone chilling voice I always here in my nightmares.

Tobias. I hear him and it’s not through the intercom.

He’s running across the platform three levels above us on the other side of the area.

“You can’t take her from me.” He bellows, sounding like a wild animal.

Gabe doesn’t slow to give him any form of regard. He keeps going with me until we reach the elevator.

It has a cage section around it that Gabe pulls open. It creaks as he does so. It looks like no one has used it in years. It’s so rusty.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

He puts me in first, then he runs to another set of large metal doors shutting them. They have the same lever like the other one we came through. He secures it shut so Tobias can’t come in.

I glance at the bomb and see we have fourteen minutes.

Gabe rushes back to me and looks over the controls. There’s a panel on the side with a button he switches on and something clicks.

The series of gun shots though firing at the door he just closed snaps our attention back over there. Tobias must have a shot gun or something powerful to make such a blast.

Gabe looks at the ropes attached to the pully and checks them. “I hope like fuck this holds. I really do.”

He takes one step in and a shot takes out part of the rusty door. Another and Tobias will be inside. He’ll be in here and I don’t know if we’ll have enough time to escape.

He won’t allow us to escape.

Gabe stares on ahead at the door. When he looks back to me something flashes deep in his eyes. It’s a sheen of purpose the brightens when his gaze drops to my stomach then up to the opening in the roof.

As he looks back to me I know what he’s going to do even before he says it.

My lips part to say something but he steals my breath away with a kiss.

A kiss that feels like the first time he kissed me and he felt like mine.

“I love you,” he says with the deepest fervency , cupping my face. “Goddess I love you.”

“I love you too. Gabe let’s get out of here.” I shriek as another bullets sounds. I’m surprised the door is holding.

“You’re going up, baby. You go up and get far away from the mine. My brothers are parked between the hill and the boardwalk. There’s a little bridge. Go to them.”

“No!” I cry and my insides cave and crumble as I process what he’s truly telling me and what he means to do. “No Gabriel. No.”

He touches the edge of my cheek and nods. “Baby, I’m staying to finish this. If we both leave this will continue. Tobias won’t stop. It won’t end here. It won’t end here and I won’t allow you to live in fear. I couldn’t save you before but I’m doing it now.”

“No.” I shake my head and tears fall down my cheeks. “No.”

“Baby we don’t have time to argue. You go up and if there’s a way out I’ll find it. Not before I kill him though.”

I take a step toward him but he pushes me back in and slams the door shut locking it. I pull against the lock but he holds it shut with his hands.

“Charlotte, you will do this. We have a baby to think of. Promise me you will get as far away from here as possible.”

“Gabe!’ I scream.

“Charlotte, fuck, please doll… please. Promise me.”

I’m shaking and trembling and my chest is so constricted I can’t breathe. I can’t do this. I can’t leave him.

“Charlotte, please, go and take care of my child.” He says with more insistence.

His child. Our baby.

I cover my mouth to keep the tears in and I find myself nodding when another bullet fires on the door and it gives.

“I promise,” I say, nodding more vigorously and he releases his hold on the door.

“Good girl.” He smiles. “Good. Baby, if I don’t make it, make sure my kid knows I was crazy about you both. Ten years passed and there wasn’t a minute when I didn’t think about you.” He smirks his trademark cocky smile and pushes down hard on the button.

“I love you,” I tell him and the tears come harder.

“And I have always loved you. Charlotte Revello, do not fade away.”

The elevator goes up and I reach for him.

I’m screaming for him as I go up and up. Up into the roof and he’s below me looking up, staring.

Gabe is below me, the bomb a few feet away and Tobias screaming on the other side of the rusty door. Another shot shakes it and it feels like death.

Death is coming and it feels like I never told Gabe enough how much I love him. It feels like I haven’t done enough to show him how much I do.

It feels like I made so many mistakes when I was just trying to do the right thing.

It all went to hell.

Everything I did, every choice I made, all of it went to hell.

I’m crying so much I can’t see.

I don’t need to see however, to know there’s only one way this can end.

There’s only one way this can end and it’s doom and death.

Darkness.