Chapter 3: GABRIEL

I studied her for way too long before looking away. I walked to the window and looked out at nothing as I tried to regroup. I'm not in the habit of going soft over a pretty face, but there was something about her. Maybe it was my knowing what had been done to her, mixed with that look of innocence I'd just seen in her eyes.

No, that's not it. Something in her seemed to speak to me, something that I've heard of before but never thought made sense. I tried to recall if anything like this had ever happened before and drew a blank. This was a first, and because I wasn't prepared, I'm flustered. I don't do flustered. My mind grabbed onto the one thing that might explain this shit.

I've always been a sucker for a damsel in distress, though I've learned how to choose those who were really in need from the ones who only wanted to get close to me. I can't stand to see any woman in her position, least of all one so young. Now my mind was replaying all the horror stories I'd heard of what her father had done to her over the years. That has got to be it. There's no other explanation for my uncharacteristic reaction.

I had to unscramble my thoughts, separate my questions about what exactly just happened between her and I from those of what to do about her safety going forward. I'd already had her looked at while she waited and had already received confirmation that she was going to be okay from the medic I have in my entourage.

It was his description of what had been done to her eye that had sent me over the edge and ousted her old man from the town. Ideally, I didn't want to lose any more of the men my dad had left here. Not yet anyway, at least, not until I'd done what I came here for.

It was still too early in the game to point fingers though I had my own thoughts on that. Some assholes were just glaringly obvious, and Sam's penchant for terrorizing the weak put him high on my list. If I didn't have things to do, I would've done worse, but time is of the essence.

I dragged my mind back to the issue at hand, pleased to note that my erratic breathing was once again under control, and I no longer felt that pull towards her. I'll wait until I'm alone to dissect that shit. Right now, I need to get her, and her mom squared away.

"Mrs. Clemens?" I addressed her mother and ignored her for now without turning back to the room. I'll decide what was to be done with her later. Besides, after what she'd been through, she didn't need me ogling her, which is all I seem capable of at the moment.

It's the oddest damn thing. I'm usually the one at the receiving end of that shit while myself never finding anything worth that kind of attention until now. Get your shit together Gabe, now is not the time. "Yes?" The woman finally answered.

"I sent your husband away; he won't be coming back this time." The relief was written plainly on her face when I looked back over my shoulder at her, and I questioned how dad had let this shit go on for so long. He had to have known, and the man I came from couldn't possibly condone such fiendish behavior. If he had, I wouldn't be here no matter what ties we shared by blood.

I hadn't seen him in years, not since I was seven or eight, and mom had grown tired of his shit and left him, taking me with her halfway across the country. I hadn't exactly forgotten him, but I'd not thought of him for some time. Until I got the call that he was dying.

By then, I was a grown man, thirty-one years old, and my life had taken a completely different path to the one it would've had I stayed here all those years ago. Mom had seen to that.

She'd married someone else two years after we left, a man that was the complete opposite of her first husband, the man who fathered me. Where dad had been a rough and tumble biker, John is a scholar.

He was older than mom by about ten years and from a very good family. Mom met him when she was serving tables at a hole in the wall in New York City, struggling to make ends meet for her and her son since she refused to accept any help from my father, who she'd come to resent. Or so I'd always believed.

My life had changed then, and I'd become the man I am now; well, partly anyway. John had never treated me as anything but a son; it was he who had encouraged me to come here when I was so against it in the beginning. I didn't owe James anything, as far as I was concerned. So his cry for help at the end of his life would've gone unanswered by me if not for my stepfather.

I didn't hate him. Mom never said much about him, neither bad nor good. He'd just never been a part of our lives after we left. I didn't know until he called that they had kept in touch. That he had sent her money to help with my care all my life, or that each birthday he'd sent a gift.

I was pissed and still am at her when I first heard. She'd chosen then to tell me all about him when it was too late. She'd left because she believed he'd cheated on her. They weren't married, these biker types don't seem to have much faith in that institution, but they were in love.

She left one night when he was out of town and never told him where we were until two years later after she'd met John. Although I was a grown man, I didn't understand that shit. This whole time I'd believed that he must've been a horrible man to make her pick up and leave without looking back. And the worse part, it was all a mistake.

In fact, the woman she'd accused him of having an affair with had been the lover of a friend, someone he was trying to help. He told me this on his deathbed, and she corroborated when confronted. My mother, almost more than anyone else in this world, knows how I hate to be deceived. The shit he revealed could've put a rift between us had my love for her not been as strong as it is. Still, she knows I don't condone that shit, and at some point in time, we're gonna have words about the fucked up shit she did.

I had to put all that aside, though, to focus on the greater good. Dad hadn't asked me back here to take over his bike crew; he knew I had no interest in that shit. It's for what and who I am that he asked me to take the seat at the head of the table once he was gone. His asking and the reasons he'd given were more than enough to convince me that he had indeed wanted me in his life.

Something not many know, and for good reason, is who I really am. After university, I found a real interest in the security of my country. Recent events like the nine eleven attack and subsequent conflicts had lit a fire in me, and I decided to put the ready-made career my stepfather had mapped out for me on hold and go to the front line.

Basic training was a walk in the park. Maybe I'd inherited dad's love for the physical because I've always been into strength training and any form of arm-to-arm combat, Krav Maga being my favorite. Mom fought really hard to get me to take an administrative combatant, but I wasn't joining the marines to sit behind a desk.

Sure my brain was sharp and more than a couple of grades above my fellow recruits, but by the end of training, I was sent right into the thick of the action, which is what I wanted. After my time in the field, I was recruited once again for an arm of the government that's not too well known before going off on my own three years later. Now my stepfather's business is a nice cover, so it all worked out in the end.