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“But… why?” I shook my head. It was too much information to digest. “Why would they want him dead?”
“Because he’s powerful.” Santino didn’t seem happy to admit it. “Because the Five Families of the Cosa Nostra are strong again, united, not fighting. Take your pick. Trust me, Italy was happiest when the Five Families all wanted to kill each other, and now… pot roast.”
“What?” I blinked slowly at him.
He shook his head. “Never mind, there was blood, a pot roast. You don’t need the gory details.”
I trembled and tried not to focus on the fact that despite his shower, he still had blood running down his arm. “So we just live in fear?”
He ran his hands through his thick hair and then bit down on his lip like he was trying to keep himself from yelling at me. With a curse, he made his way to the side of my bed and very slowly ran a finger up his own arm, catching some of the blood trickling from an actual wound in his arm. “This…” He spread the blood between his fingertips. “…is the only thing that matters.”
“Blood?” My voice cracked.
“Blood.” He nodded as he raised his bloody fingertips to my forehead and swiped across my skin. “Blood makes you a target, but it also offers you protection. You’re as good as covered in mine from this day on. That is my vow. Take it or leave it. I don’t give a shit. But at least you know there will be one body between you and certain death, and at all times, that body will be mine.”
I started to shake. Did he really just put his blood on my skin? I swallowed the horror in my throat and managed to get out. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Consider me your shield.” He leaned back. “They will have to spill my blood in order to get to you, and I’m not an easy man to kill.”
“Says the guy who’s bleeding,” I snapped back immediately, wanting to crawl under the covers at his menacing expression. He was painfully beautiful with angry eyebrows and a mouth that sneered more than it smiled.
Why was I fixating on that?
Or his body?
Blood. He’d literally put blood on me.
“He missed on purpose.” He shrugged. “I barely felt it.” He stared me down and then whispered. “You’re hard to figure out. One minute you’re brave, and the next, you remind me of a little girl.”
That stung. I lifted my chin. “I’mnot a little girl.”
“We’ll see about that.” His eyes flashed, and then with a cruel grin, he pulled off his towel, wiped the blood from my forehead, then turned around, showing nothing but a bare muscular ass.
I was caught staring.
“Get some sleep,” he barked as he wrapped the now bloody towel back around his body and shut my door.
Sleep. Right.
How did a person sleep when they knew that the nightmares wouldn’t come at night anymore? But during the day? From a man who looked like he would rather shoot me than protect me?
My hands shook as I pulled the comforter over my body and stared at the wall, trying to ignore the laughter once again coming from downstairs and the footsteps that paced in front of my door like a countdown to hell.
Damned if I stayed.
Damned if I left.
And once again.
Imprisoned.
CHAPTER SIX
“Now I know why tigers eat their young.” —Al Capone
Santino
“You’ve got blood…” Andrei said without looking up from the breakfast table like it was a normal conversation. “It’s lingering on your right shoulder, even after showering—
