“One. ONE! ENOUGH! ONE!” One of the other monkeys yelled, coming over to us and pointing his gun at me. “Both of you on the ground and shut up, or I swear, we will shoot you.”
I glared at him. It was because Gabriel grabbed on to me and pulled me down that I even got back on the ground. They kept their guns on us as they moved back behind the teller counter.
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“Where the hell did you get these guys? They’re morons,” I whispered to him.
BANG!
It happened so quickly that it took me a second to realize one of the other prisoners had tried to make a run for the door. Now he was lying face down on the ground, just a few feet from freedom, a bullet in his spine.
“WE AREN’T FUCKIN’ AROUND HERE! SIT DOWN! SHUT UP!” It was then that we could all hear the sirens outside. “SHIT!”
I looked to Gabriel and he just stared at the teen’s body before looking over to me, his eyes cold, deadly, as he said, “These aren’t my guys.”
“What?” My mind started to work overtime as I replayed the last ten minutes in my head. If they weren’t his and they weren’t mine, then they were real bank robbers. But what were the odds of them robbing the same bank as his on the same day…wait. His words from earlier coming to mind.
He’d said, “Don’t fight them…”
He had known they were coming. But he wasn’t working with them.
I looked at him again but his head was down, his hand on his arm. Anyone would think he was hunched over from pain. But since I was so close, I could see the wicked grin on his face.
He’s robbing a bank while it’s being robbed. They were his Trojan horses.
He must have known I was looking because he lifted his head slightly to look at me. The grin on his face widened. “I’m one-eighth Greek and the hotel is not mine. It’s yours. A wedding gift. And when this is over, we’ll rest there for the night.”
“You’re telling me this why?”
“Because you’re smiling and it isn’t fake, and so I’m glad.”
I paused. Reaching up to touch my cheeks… I was smiling. I didn’t know when that had happened. It didn’t matter because I couldn’t look away… Part of me was once again in shock, knowing this wouldn’t be the only the last time I was Gabriel surprised me. But knowing that made my heart race.
What was going to happen next with him?
NINETEEN
“It’s not exactly love at first sight.
It is more like soul recognition.”
~ Lynette Simeone
DONATELLA
The great poet Virgil once said, “Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.” As I stood on the balcony of the tallest building in Chicago, my building apparently, I wondered if I should be at least one-eighth concerned about this gift and the man gifting it to me.
“Hello, big brother, how are you this evening?” I asked, lifting the phone to my ear, not looking away from the city lights.
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” Ethan stated.
“You may not have noticed, but I was held hostage in a bank robbery,” I said cheerfully.
“We noticed,” Wyatt’s voice came on the line. “What happened? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. The S.W.A.T team took out two of the three men, and the only hostage shot is apparently recovering—”
“What happened with Gabriel, Dona?” Ethan questioned much more directly.