On a Roll by Beth Bolden (free ebook novel .txt) 📗

same as Luca. Every single time Luca assumed he was, he wanted to kill his older brother slowly. Painfully. Or maybe just so spectacularly that Luca never made the same mistake again.

“I wasn’t playing around,” Gabriel said, hating the defensive tone he heard in his own voice. “I was serious. I took it seriously. I even came up with a new name. Registered it and everything. But it’s complicated. I couldn’t just . . . I couldn’t just do it, not like that.”

“Not like what?” Luca said in a hard voice. “Not like the smart, intelligent businessman I know you’re capable of being?”

It hurt. It always hurt. The biggest reason that Gabriel had left Napa was that there was never any wiggle room. You were either a clone of Luca—and his brother Marco was on his way there—or you were nothing.

Gabriel had been so sick of being nothing.

But even being nothing didn’t hurt as much as Sean’s voice, breaking through the red haze in his head. “You had a new name?”

Gabriel looked up and wanted to punch his brother more than he’d ever wanted to in his whole life. Because the betrayal on Sean’s face cut deep. “You had a new name,” he repeated, “and you didn’t bother changing it? Not all this time?”

It was the last thing that Gabe had ever wanted Sean to find out. That he could have circumvented this whole problem, almost from the very beginning.

But without the problem, he’d always reasoned, what purpose would there be for Sean to talk to him? To bicker with him? They’d go back to being passing acquaintances, and Gabriel had never known how to face that. Which was why, instead of doing something about it, he’d let the situation fester for so long. Why the paperwork had sat, unused, in his desk drawer.

“I . . .” Gabriel didn’t know what to say. How to say it. He’d imagined this going so differently. He’d imagined telling Sean that he loved him, that he wanted to be with him, and that, hey, by the way, on a completely unrelated note, he’d decided to rebrand his own truck.

But now Sean was staring at him, anger blooming in his expression, and Luca was staring aghast at both of them.

It was terrible.

“I was right all along,” Sean said unsteadily, “you were just . . . you’re just the selfish asshole I always thought you were.” He turned and stalked off, almost certainly satisfied that his parting bomb had hit Gabriel with as much destructive force as possible.

Because Sean knew him now, and he had to know that the thing he dreaded most, the person he tried so hard not to be, was the selfish asshole. Was Luca.

“Good,” Luca said, straightening. “Then you will change your name and put all this behind you.”

Gabriel just gaped at him. “No,” he said. “This conversation is over. I don’t care where you came from, hell maybe, but I’m done talking to you about this.”

Luca’s brow furrowed. “What? You can’t . . .”

“I can.” Through the hurt, Gabriel at least felt a strength of purpose. He’d messed up with Sean, maybe forever. But he could still tell Luca to fuck off. Save a tiny fraction of self-respect.

“I still . . .”

Gabriel didn’t let him finish. “I’ve got the money in the bank to pay your investment off. I’ll write you a check today.”

“But I don’t . . .” Luca trailed off. For a moment, for only a split second, he actually looked human. Like he might care. Like he might actually give a shit about Gabriel, the person, his brother, and not just what Gabriel might bring to the family name. But then that all disappeared, and that cold, hard asshole mask was back in place. “Fine,” he said. “Fine, if that will make you happy, I will take the money and go. I was just trying to protect the family. You know that.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Someday,” he said, “you’re going to wake up and it’s gonna be a real bad day for you, because you’ll realize that the only one who’s ever failed to protect the family is you.”

Chapter Thirteen

Gabriel waited all day to go find Sean.

It helped, a little, that they were crazy busy, just as he’d told Luca they would be.

It had helped, a little more, to give Luca that check and send him on his way with a very final fuck off.

It had helped, even more, that Luca had clearly been unhappy about it.

But even still, Gabriel had spent the day barely able to keep from staring across the way, at Sean’s truck. He’d had a line more than once, and Gabriel had hoped he was selling as many of the new wraps as they were.

Ren had had to make another batch of glaze, and by the end of the day, they were running low on both the prepped vegetables that Sean had sent over, and the nuts that they’d finished together last night.

“Well,” Ren said, stretching his back with a little moan. “That was hardly your beautiful day.”

“I don’t know, telling Luca to fuck off felt pretty beautiful to me,” Gabriel said, even though he didn’t feel quite as confident about it as he sounded.

Luca might be mean and more than a little controlling, but he was undeniably great at this. What if all the success Gabriel had experienced over the years was because of him?

“I wish I could’ve seen it,” Ren said.

“If you hadn’t run away, you would have,” Gabriel teased him.

“I just didn’t want to get caught up in the crossfire of your Moretti bullshit,” Ren said practically. “It’s always safer to be far away when the two of you face off.”

“We’re not that bad,” Gabriel said, but he knew that they could be, sometimes. And after this, the likelihood of their relationship improving was not likely.

“You’re just too much the same,” Ren said.

“What?” Gabriel couldn’t believe that Ren honestly thought that. “We’re nothing alike.”

“You’re exactly alike,” Ren said, leaning against the