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I swallow, and I stalk from the bathroom and toward the golden vase Kristian dropped.
Kris twitches, turning to me, his face stern. I know he wanted to look back at me when I shouted, but he needs to stay focused.
But now he glares.
I shake my head at him. I need to help. I can’t let this private heaven of ours turn to hell.
With my prom dress rustling absurdly loudly, I lean down and scoop up the vase. My arms tremble at the weight of it, my fingers gripping the cold metal so tight my fingertips ache.
I move to the other side of the door.
The whole time, Kris’ eyes blaze at me, his jaw tight, his expression searing.
“What?” Aaron murmurs after a pause.
“Well, he’s only got you,” the same man says. “What’s to stop us from putting a bullet in your head and taking him for ourselves?”
“No—wait,” Aaron cries.
“Wait,” I yell at the same time, my voice sharper than I intended.
They can’t do this, not here, not on this night. All my life, people have done this—they’ve walked over my sacred moments as though my life was just secondary to theirs.
I’ve always felt like an extra, ignored.
But not with Kris. Not here.
I hate them.
“You’ll have to kill us,” I shout. “If you don’t, people will come looking—an army. You have no idea what a force the Cameno Family’s army is, you stupid man. You’ll be hunted to the ends of the earth. Nowhere will be safe for you. Ever. Nowhere.”
Kris’s mouth falls open, twitching into a smirk at the same time. He nods toward the bathroom, but I stubbornly stay where I am, the golden vase clutched to my chest.
“Then maybe we’ll kill you,” the man says a moment later.
“Then you become prey,” Kris snarls. “I’ve got a thousand men who will lay down their lives to take yours. But you can challenge me if you wish.”
“What?” Maury gasps, his voice cowed.
I mouth to Kris, What does that mean?
He waves a hand at me, his face fierce. And yet he still has a shadow of a twitch there, his eyes blazing with the suggestion of withheld pride.
“Yeah—what?” the man chuckles.
“It’s a bare-knuckled fight, either to the death or until the loser quits. Whoever wins gets to rule the Cameno Family. It’s how Don Kris won his position. Against me,” Maury says.
“And you fought well,” Kris snarls. “No matter what’s happened, Maury, that’s still the truth.”
“Just me against you?” the man laughs.
“If you’re ready to taste blood,” Kris growls.
“And if I win,” the man goes on. “Everything you have, it will all be mine. Including that young thing, I saw with you?”
“You shut your fucking mouth,” Kris snarls.
“Nah ah, Kris, let’s be civil. If I beat you and become Don, I get a taste of that curvy little young thing you’ve got on your arm. That seems fair to me.”
Time slows down as I stare. I stare as Kris ducks his shoulder and drives into the door, using it as a battering ram to charge into the hallway.
His roar floods the room louder than the gunshots did, and suddenly I feel silly, standing here with my vase.
I scream at Kris to get back, to stop. He doesn’t have to defend my honor. I just want us to get out of here alive.
But Kris will never let another man talk to me like that.
Even if our romance has been short – intense and bright and real – I know that about my man.
Now he’s charging toward violent men with guns and I don’t know what to do.
“Kris,” I cry, as the first gunshot explodes.
There’s one more, but then somebody is screaming, high-pitched and shrill. For a confused second, I think it’s Jackie. Terror twists through me.
But then I listen closer.
It’s the man, the one who taunted Kris.
Chapter Eighteen
Kristian
I move like an animal, my pulse steady and my rage that of a wolf.
I’m alive, fucking burning up from the inside.
Nobody ever talks about my woman like that. Nobody implies that they’ll claim her in the way I’ve claimed her—the way I’ll always claim her.
It awakes the primal piece of me that Kimberly has claimed in return.
I have to fight – to kill if necessary – to defend her.
First her bully, the scumbag, and now this motherfucker.
I push Aaron back and hear the men stumble, and spin and throw the door as hard as I can. The edge of it crashes into Aaron and sends them all toppling together.
They collapse and some asshole starts shooting, the bullets hitting the wall.
My woman is screaming and something in me aches to go to her, but I know I have to finish this.
This is for her.
Everything I do will always be for her.
I’ve just put our first child in her belly, and now these monsters have come to try and take that away from us.
