The oppressive hand holding my handcuffs was gone and there was a burst of language. The couch was knocked back, banging to the floor as Ethan suddenly stood. Handcuffed and stabbed, yet these men were no match for him. Shit, he was dangerous.
He disarmed the guard closest to him in an instant, and the other guard was laid out with the grip of the gun to the face.
Without a weapon, the first guard ran. Vitale seemed to want to run, too, but the gun in Ethan’s hand went off, aimed at Carlo, and fixed back on Vitale right after. In a single breath, Ethan became the most powerful person in the room.
Carlo folded unnaturally sideways as his knee erupted in a burst, and he fell in a heap, screaming in agony. Outside the front windows, the rotors of the landing helicopters beat thebushes against the house.
The gun was outstretched in Ethan’s bound hands, pointed dead center of Vitale’s chest, and he turned to stone under Ethan’s cold, detached gaze.
I slid off the desk like I’d been poured over the side, collapsing painfully to my knees on the unforgiving floor. I cradled my wounded arm to my chest like a bird with a broken wing.
“Do you want me to kill him?” he asked.
My brain refused to comprehend the question. “What?”
“If you want him dead, I need to do it now.”
The icy pinpricks that slid down my skin were paralyzing. He waited for my command, for me to give him permission. My broken arm definitely wanted the bastard dead. But what about Ethan? What he was asking was murder. What about his soul?
I was a survivor, but I wasn’t sure how wecould survive this.
“No,” I said on a shaky breath. “No.”
I didn’t want to lose him now that he’d found me, but my gaze drifted to the Italian king who had put us, and the Dunns, through hell. He couldn’t come out of this unscathed. He needed at least some amount of pain.
“Tell him,” I said, “what you did to Constantine.”
It wasn’t the same smile I loved that crossed Ethan’s face. This was more of a satisfied smirk laced with evil as he told Vitale he was looking at the man responsible for the death of one of his sons. And if Gio didn’t get medical attention soon, I suspected I would kill the other. I’d dumped the whole bottle of Ethan’s drug into the glass.
Just beyond the wall of the office came the sound of the front door breaking open, and hurried footsteps stomped into the entryway. Figures moved in, flowing through the doorway and shouted in both Italian and English, looking like a strike team with military-grade weapons and armor. Ethan dropped his gun and held his bound arms up, grimacing in pain, hisface pale.
The last guy into the office pulled up short, his face full of surprise as he lowered his weapon. “Foster?”
Ethan took one look at the man, balled his fists and swung them together, unleashed a ferocious punch that struck the guy’s jaw and knocked him sideways.
“Where the fuck have you been, Tragar?”
The man righted himself, putting a hand on his jaw, his other still gripping the gun. Was it really a good idea to punch someone armed? This impulsive action from Ethan was shocking.
Then, the man he’d referred to as Tragar noticed me hunched on the floor beside the desk and rattling in the aftermath of adrenaline. His focus flew back to Ethan with something like sympathy edging his expression.
A knife was pulled from a pocket, the blade springing free, and it sliced through the plastic binding Ethan’s wrists. Tragar was wise enough to ask it with a touch of restraint, probably still annoyed about being blindsided. “Everyone okay?”
“Does she look okay to you?” Ethan demanded.
That was the moment he must have remembered I was wearing only a bra and underwear. He peeled off his suit jacket carefully?—
“So,” Tragar said, flatly, “you need medical, too.”
I gasped. The dress shirt that clung to his back was a bright crimson, soaked in his blood, but he barely seemed to notice. His gaze flicked to Vitale with a sneer before returning to Tragar. “Can you clear the room?”
“I need some hands in here,” Tragar announced to the men outside the office.
He stepped over Gio’s body like it was a minor inconvenience on his way to securing Vitale and began to pull him from the room. He didn’t hold my attention long. It returned to Ethan, who knelt in front of me and slung the bloody jacket gently around my shoulders, taking care not tobump my arm.
“You got a lock pick?” he asked one of the men who filed past, and the man handed over a skinny tool that looked like a screwdriver.
Ethan said nothing while the men hauled the Italians out the door, two men hefting Gio’s body. Instead, he focused on undoing my cuffs as delicately as possible, gauging my reaction for pain when he freed my shattered wrist.
