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Footsteps approach the villa, rapid and determined, and for a moment, terror grips me anew — what if it’s not Alessandro?
Then, his voice, calling out for me, breaks the spell of fear. “Jess? Jess, where are you?” The relief in his voice upon finding me safe is palpable.
I step out from my makeshift sanctuary, my eyes finding his in the dim light. “Alessandro!” I rush into his arms, the fear and tension of the day melting away in his embrace.
He holds me tight, as if trying to shield me from the world itself.
I’m caught in a torrent of relief and despair, my body shaking with sobs. “I thought I was going to die,” I admit, the words torn from the deepest part of my soul.
He holds me tighter, his presence a solid promise against the chaos. “You’re so strong, Jess. You survived. You did what you had to do,” he reassures me, his words a lifeline in the tumult of my emotions.
But I can’t shake the feeling of weakness, of vulnerability that clings to me like a second skin. “I’m not strong. I was terrified. I’m still terrified,” I confess, the admission a whisper against his chest.
Alessandro pulls back slightly, his eyes searching mine with an intensity that burns. “Listen to me, Jess. You are the strongest person I know. Surviving this, defending yourself when I wasn’t here to protect you—that takes a strength many don’t possess. Never doubt that.”
“I heard him taunt you. I feared the worst when the line cut out.”
“I had to kill him,” I whisper, the gravity of what I’ve done settling in. “I was terrified, Alessandro. But then I remembered what you said about being strong.”
He cups my face in his hands, his gaze intense. “You were right, Jess. About making your own choices, about being your own protector. I should have trusted you more. You killed a man today. A man who was going to hurt you. He had to die. You did the right thing, my tesoro.”
TWENTY
Alessandro
“You ever stayed anywhere less than five stars?” Jess asks, plucking at the peeling wallpaper. “Must be quite the comedown for the billionaire to be in a roach motel like this.”
I lock the bedroom door, then wedge a chair under the handle. “They took cash and accepted the fake names without asking any questions. It’s perfect.”
Her eyes, wide and shadowed with the kind of fear no one should ever know, meet mine. I see the terror still flicking around the edges. It’s my world that’s done this to her, my battles that have drawn her into the line of fire.
But I also see the resolve and strength there. I feel nothing but pride for her. The hitman fired at the spot I told her to hide. If she’d listened to me, she’d be dead. Time I start listening to her.
Jess meets my gaze. “Are you hunting my father?” she asks out of nowhere.
I sit on the edge of the bed. It creaks alarmingly under my weight. “What makes you ask that?”
“Well? Are you?”
“I don’t give a shit about your father. The only time he enters my mind is when I think of him hurting you. Then I want to rip his spine from his body but you told me to leave him alone so I did. I am trying to learn to listen.”
She stares at me without blinking. “You’re sure?”
“Did someone say something to you?”
“He called me. Said he had intel that could put you away and that was why you married me, to find him.”
“When did he tell you this?”
“Just before you left.”
I can’t resist a smile. It’s times like this that her age shows. “I’m the Don of the Rossi family,” I say. “He could have all the evidence in the world, no judge would even open the envelope to look. He knows he’d be dead the same day. Your old man’s bullshitting you.”
She sinks into a chair by the window, looking out at the parking lot. “So who were you beating up?”
“What? When?”
“Dad showed me some footage of you in New York. You had a guy tied to a chair.” Her breath catches. “You were torturing him.”
