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I turn away in disgust. The last thing I need is this piece of shit thanking me.
I take out my cellphone and check my calls.
Seven missed calls from the estate’s landline, and three from my head of security.
“A few of you stay here to make sure this shit head leaves. The rest with me. Now.”
I stalk outside and over to Aldo’s car, and then curse when I realize I don’t have the keys. But he’s at my side, shuffling past me to get to the door.
I run around the passenger side and drop into the seat, barely aware of what I’m doing, lost in the moment the same way I was with my woman last night.
And now Franco is going to kill her, or do evil fucked-up things to her if we don’t get back in time.
“Push it, Aldo,” I snarl. “Fuck—I can’t believe he’d be stupid enough to hit the estate.”
“He’s unhinged. Nobody could’ve predicted this.”
Aldo weaves between cars, no longer caring about traffic rules. He knows I’d roar at him to hurry the fuck up if he started old-lady driving right now.
I wring my hands together, squeezing as tension moves through me, my mind flooded with all the cruel things that could be happening to Lucy right now.
I call my head of security, Paulie, but it goes to voicemail.
“Fuck.” I slam my hand against the dashboard. “If they touch one hair on her head, it’s going to be a massacre. I’m warning you right now, Aldo. One hair and they’re all dead men.”
“I know.” Aldo shifts gear and punches a hole in the traffic, surging onto the highway. “We’ll do our best.”
“Our best.” I snort. “We’re keeping her safe and that’s the end of it.”
My body roars at me, my seed rioting from deep inside, demanding to know why I ever let her get involved in this mess in the first place. I should’ve spirited her far away, to a different state or even overseas until all this madness was handled.
I made a mistake.
And I might pay the ultimate price for it.
We’re coming for you, Lucy, I roar in my mind. Please believe I’d never abandon you.
Aldo drives faster.
But part of me is terrified it won’t be fast enough.
“Don’t you think I want to keep Maria safe too?” Aldo snaps. “She raised me, Luca.”
“I know, cousin. I know. So keep fucking driving.”
“Amen to that.”
He changes gear.
Chapter Eighteen
Lucy
“Why has the shooting stopped?” I whisper.
We sit pushed together on one of the lower bunk beds, Toto sprawled our between our laps, shivering, as though the little terror wants to get as much warmth from both of us as he can.
It feels like we’ve been sitting here for years, listening to the gunfire lace the air, listening to big bangs and men roar…
And now it’s silent.
“I don’t know,” Maria says quietly. “Maybe Paulie’s men have won.”
“Or maybe Franco’s have,” I murmur, my stomach twisting with anxiety.
I don’t even know if Luca is safe. I don’t know if he’s on his way here or if they executed him the moment he stepped inside the Lioni Lounge. My body aches just as fiercely for my man’s fate as it does for my own, my insides pulsing and roaring at the thought that my Luca could be lying face down in his own blood.
My womb screams angrily at me for not giving myself to him when I had the chance.
I might not get another opportunity to feel his solid arms wrapped around me, pulling me close to him so that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Just me and him in the moment, alone and disconnected, and the whole world could collapse around us and we wouldn’t care.
That’s what we shared last night on the rose-petal-covered platform, and that’s what we might never share again.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Maria murmurs, her voice shaky.
“You don’t know that,” I say.
“No.” She sighs coldly. “But it’s what we have to believe.”
Both of us freeze when there’s the sound of movement behind the door, men grunting, something heavy-sounding and metallic being dragged across the floor.
“Little pigs,” Franco sings through the metal door, and my insides freeze in terror. He sounds high on drugs as well as bloodlust and battle and sadism, his voice a sickening cocktail of depraved intent. “Why don’t you make this easy and come out like ladies? Or are you going to make the big bad wolf blow your door down?”
“Leave while you have the chance,” Maria calls out, her voice admirably calm considering the circumstances.
We’re alone. Unprotected. And we have no weapons.
We’re freaking fucked.
“Ah, Maria, how nice to hear your voice. It’s so much sweeter than the sound of men with bullets in their bellies.”
“You know what will happen if you touch us,” Maria says, her voice ice even as her face melts under the strain of the situation. Her expression shimmers with fear, but her voice is brave and untouchable. “Luca will—”
