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“My, you have been working overtime.”
“I’m not kidding with this. I don’t care that you’re an attorney or how many other attorneys in your firm will ensure you don’t stay in jail, I will arrest you and do everything in my power to keep you there as long as possible if you lie or fuck with me. Do you understand?”
The moment I wrapped my hand around her throat, her eyes flashed with anger and desire, exactly as I’d seen before. “While I admire your verve and work ethic, Sabrina, do not threaten me with incarceration or anything else. I won’t respond the way you’d like.” I lowered my head, enjoying the moment dominating her. When she closed her eyes, shutting me down, my longing for her only increased.
Using both hands she shoved me away, taking two giant strides backwards. “To hell with you, Diego. I’m going to get that warrant.” She tried to skirt around me, retreating to the room but I grabbed her arm, yanking her against me.
“Carlos Desposito disappeared years ago, thought to be dead. I assure you that his sudden appearance and the issue with his nephew’s murder is just as disturbing to me as it is to you. A game is being played with my family and the empire my brother and I run. However, there are too many players that could be responsible for hiring the Death Squad to be able to narrow down the candidates at this point. What I do believe is that this group was hired to do as much damage as possible. That could include eliminating anyone who gets in their way. I suggest you begin to worry about your reporter friend as she’s bringing light to the organization that they won’t like.”
She chewed on her inner cheek, a sign she was nervous, but I doubted it had anything to do with our tryst or even being in my presence. “What I said stands, Diego. What we shared can’t happen again and won’t. Is that understood?”
I laughed softly as I eased a stray strand of hair from her cheek, brushing the tips of my fingers down her face to her chin. While she flinched, she didn’t try to break free as she’d done before. It was time to help her understand and embrace our connection. “You’re truly an amazing and very strong woman, Sabrina. You remind me of a young girl I met in a dark alley in South Los Angeles years ago, her resolve something I’d admired and wanted to protect.”
There was no denying the connection or the recognition of the memory we shared. She was dumbfounded, her lower lip quivering.
“Just as I did on that horrible night, protecting the poor girl unfortunate enough to be in the presence of monsters, I will do the same for you. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Nothing.”
When she said nothing, refusing to give in to the memory or the reason for our connection, I broke my hold, backing away. In those few seconds as we locked eyes, there was a sense of knowing shared, another of longing, yet we understood that our two worlds were colliding in the worst way.
However, she would soon learn that she couldn’t break my hold over her that easily. Not with demands or pleas, not for all the right reasons or those considered wrong. Sabrina Rose had returned to my life for a reason, the moment in time the responsibility of fate.
I refused to allow her to get away from me a second time.
As of this moment, the beautiful, strong, and ballsy woman belonged to me.
And hell would rain down on anyone who tried to take her from me.
CHAPTER 18
Sabrina
Every nightmare I’d had about the worst night of my life flashed in front of my eyes. Every thought about the piercing eyes that had followed me throughout my life was suddenly suffocating. And every thought I’d had about trying to find the boy who’d become my hero, longing to talk to him no longer seemed important.
As I stared into Diego’s eyes, twenty years faded away and I was back in the abandoned warehouse, terrified of dying. Even the echoes of the gunshots that had finally faded away returned, the pinging sounds gutting me as they’d done before. Yet there was the same aura surrounding Diego that I remembered, the little girl in me remembering her hero fondly. The horrible crime he’d committed in taking lives and the loneliness I’d felt didn’t matter. At this moment I was stunned, petrified yet exhilarated and overjoyed to finally see him again.
Nothing was real. Not the moment, the man or the horrors of the past that had suddenly followed me. In those few moments of staring into his eyes, seeing the gangly boy instead of the muscular man with frown lines and the slight graying at his temples, I was that young girl again. I was the girl who’d been forced to become an adult at an early age, my childhood shattered by that very moment in time, a single blip that had changed me forever.
There were no words to describe the moment, no understanding of why this was so difficult for my psyche or my heart. All the while that I remained lost in the past, he was searching for my reaction, more emotion in his eyes than I’d seen since I met him.
But a moment of raw suffocation replaced the slight giddiness. This wasn’t real. This was just the beginning of another nightmare. I had no idea what was happening, but I knew nothing good could come of our connection. Not a single thing.
“I can’t do this, Diego.” The words sounded hollow, the breathlessness I was experiencing tickling my throat.
“What can’t you do, my sweet Sabrina?”
“Stay here. Around you. I just can’t. You need to understand that what happened all those years ago changed me. I can’t… I can’t face it again. I’m sorry.” I tried as I’d done before to break free, not just from his physical hold but my emotional one as well. Yet with all the strength I usually had, all the resolve that had helped guide me from the life I’d once endured to one I’d worked so hard to achieve, everything was failing me. Everything.
“You were never far from my mind, Sabrina. I wanted to find you. I tried more than once.”
“You killed those men that night.”
“Yes, and I’d do it again if that meant protecting you.”
“I just… That’s not me. I’m not that girl any longer.”
“No, you’re all woman.” He shifted his hold, sliding his hand to the back of my neck, keeping the crush of his heated body against mine.
I wanted so much to back away, to refuse to be near him or see him ever again, but the draw to him was as strong as it was oddly fragile. It was as if on that fateful night our souls had been permanently fused together. As he slowly lowered his head, I leaned into him, my pulse racing, and I wrapped my fingers around his shirt.
