“I know.” He doesn’t peer at me. He keeps his head low and his eyes at his feet. “But you could never be so lucky to get rid of me that easy.” When he lifts his head, his infamous half-smirk has me forgetting I’m in the process of committing a felony. “And if you were, I would have taken you to hell right along with me, because I’d rather save you from Satan’s urchins than never see you again.”
A normal person would construe his comment as a threat.
Lucky I’m nothing close to ordinary.
Threatening me is the equivalent of him telling me that he loves me.
“What is it?” I ask Dimitri when his smirk is pushed aside for a snarl.
When I stray my eyes in the direction his narrowed gaze is facing, I spot the cause of is annoyance. Detective Ryan Carter is making his way down the corridor. He too has the eye of many admiring watchers, but just like Dimitri, he isn’t interested. He has a wife and kids too. He just doesn’t need to hide them from his enemies to keep them safe. Although it didn’t stop him from getting shot. His unhindered walk has me hopeful Dimitri’s recovery will be just as effortless.
Upon spotting my prolonged gawk, Ryan dips his chin in greeting before he passes by me. I don’t need to crank my neck to know he’s giving me a second look. I can feel it in my bones—as can Dimitri.
He leaps out of his wheelchair like he wasn’t shot two nights ago, curls his arm around my chest, then draws me back until my back is flattened against his torso. He doesn’t pierce the pointy end of the syringe into my neck like I did the agent only minutes ago, but his threatening growl that he’ll poison me with cyanide sounds authentic. It has Ryan’s hands raising into the air long before they reach for his gun.
“Toss your gun to the ground.”
Although Ryan isn’t happy about Dimitri’s demand, he plays along. He’s standing across from Dimitri’s hospital room’s now open door, so he’s more than aware how far Dimitri is willing to go to escape.
“Now step back.”
Dimitri’s shouted command is for Ryan, but it’s followed by every person in the corridorbutRyan. “Dimi—”
“I said stepthe fuckback.” His roar excites me more than it scares me. He’d never hurt me. Not in a million years. He merely wants Ryan to think he will.
As Ryan’s eyes bounce between my drenched ones and Dimitri’s narrowed ones, he takes a step back. He can’t help but be a hero because he has no clue I’m not a damsel in distress who needs saving.
He soon learns the truth when I bob down to gather his gun from the floor.
With my stance replicating the one Dimitri has shown me time and time again in our range at our family ranch, I flick off the safety of Ryan’s gun, then line up the barrel with his head. I won’t shoot him. Despite him being on the opposite side of the law to Dimitri and me, Dimitri respects him.
That alone will save his life.
That alone will see him walking away from today with only a bruised ego.
Ryan’s red face exposes he is pissed as fuck we played him, and his anger grows when I blow him a kiss before shadowing Dimitri’s walk to the elevator at the end of the hall by sauntering backwards. Dimitri’s mean scowl has our approach well-guarded, and Ryan’s gun is more than capable of handling the back.
“What floor?” Dimitri asks when we make it into the elevator car unscathed.
“Any,” I reply loud enough for Detective Carter to hear. “Because they’ll never find us once these doors close.”
Confirmation Ryan has faced a similar set of circumstances before confronts me when he roars, “Not again!” a mere second after the elevator doors snap shut with Dimitri and me on the other side.
Then, even quicker than that, the panels above our head are pulled out and Dimitri and I are hoisted into the elevator shaft by a group of men dressed head to toe in black.
When the faintest hum of helicopter blades rotating in the distance purrs into his ears, Dimitri shifts his eyes to me. “We play to play. We kill to kill…”
“And we take down any fucker stupid enough to get in our way.”
Epilogue
Dimitri
Four months later…
When Roxanne’s trace of the circle wound in the middle of my stomach continues past the standard three-second embrace, I scoop her hand into mine then lift it to my mouth. I feel her smile more than I see it when my teeth graze the tips of her fingers. She’s nuzzled in my chest, enjoying the last of the sun on a day that would usually be cold if we were anywhere but here.
We’re not lazing beachside at Hopeton. We’re soaking up the sun at Cefalù, a coastal town in Sicily. It was my favorite place to get away to when life became too much before Audrey was abducted. Now it is my favorite place to live.
