A bullet burns across my upper arm, white-hot pain flares as it tears through muscle. I grunt but keep moving, switching the gun to my other hand. I drop two more attackers before Marco appears beside me, firing steadily.
Bodies drop. My men are falling too, good men. But we push them back. One by one, the invaders go down until only one remains, cornered near the loading dock.
He looks at us, eyes wide with panic, then raises his own gun to his temple and pulls the trigger. His body collapses in a heap.
Silence falls, broken only by the groans of the wounded.
“Fuck.”
“Well, there goes our chance of finding out who sent them,” Marco mutters.
I look around. Four of my men are dead. Several more are bleeding badly.
“Take the injured to the doctor,” I tell Marco, pressing a hand to my bleeding arm.
Marco eyes the wound. “What about you?”
“It’s a flesh wound. I’ll handle it myself. Find out who the fuck sent them. This has Gallo’s handwriting all over it.”
I get home well after midnight, still covered in blood, gunpowder, and smoke. My arm is throbbing, but I ignore it.
As I walk down the hallway toward my bedroom, I notice light spilling from under the adjoining door to Eleonora’s room. She’s still awake.
For some reason I can’t explain, I stop. I open the door quietly and look in. She’s sitting on the edge of her bed in the soft lamplight, knees drawn up, staring into space. Her dark hair falls loosely over one shoulder. She looks beautiful. Fragile. Lost in thought.
I stand there longer than I should, just watching her. She has no idea I’m here. This woman is messing with my head. She’s beenhere only a few days and she’s already under my skin, in my thoughts, in my blood.
I should want to use her and discard her. Instead, I keep thinking about how she felt coming apart in my arms earlier. How she said my name when she shattered.
I step into her bedroom and Eleonora turns at the sound. The moment her eyes land on me, bloodied, shirtless, with a fresh bullet graze across my upper arm, she gasps.
“What happened?” she demands, voice filled with something that sounds dangerously close to worry.
“Are you okay?”
For a split second, I’m thrown. She actually looks like she cares. Or is she just a good actress?
“You were shot?”
“It’s a flesh wound,” I say, voice rough. “Nothing serious.”
“You need to see a doctor,” she insists, eyes wide.
I ignore her and walk to the door connecting our bedrooms, she follows me as I head into my bedroom and then to the bathroom, grabbing the first aid kit from the cabinet on the way.
I head to my bedroom and sit down on the bed.
“Come here and stitch it up.”
She stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “Me? I’ve never done that before.”
“You can do it.” I pat the bed beside me. “Sit.”
She hesitates, then slowly walks over and sits next to me. Her hands are trembling slightly as she opens the kit. I can smell her, that warm vanilla scent mixed with something sweeter that’s purely her. It’s driving me insane.
“Clean it first,” I tell her, my voice lower than I intend. “Use the antiseptic.”
Her fingers brush my arm as she works. They’re soft, tentative. Every light touch sends electricity racing across my skin.
