AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even that goes by the wayside as I catch the expression on Belucci’s face.
He checks his phone. “Seems like we have an unexpected guest.”
My blood ices over. “Will you be pissed if I shoot someone on your property tonight?”
He laughs. “Guess you’re going to find out, aren’t we? She’s with your Rose.”
I’m gone before he finishes speaking.
* * *
Rose is exactly where I sent her, but even if she wasn’t, the voices would have told me. Fucking Adelaide, cold and imperious and taunting, and Rose…
Soft.
Furious.
Deadly.
I lean against the atrium’s door and take in the scene. I always said that one day, Rose will come into her own and be the deadliest thing, but I meant with her other powers, the charm and beauty and sex appeal. She wraps men around her fingers without realizing, and her veneer of innocence draws them in like honey.
What I didn’t expect is Rose coming into herself as a tightly-leashed weapon. It’s quite possibly one of the most erotic and hottest fucking things I’ve ever seen.
She has Adelaide pinned against the wall, arm raised, with something in her hand, eyes narrowed and determined. I cross my arms and settle in.
“I’ll ask again: why are you here?” she barks.
“Put down the weapon,” Adelaide says coolly.
That’s when I see it—her hat pin.
A smile breaks free. Rose brought the pin. I’m betting she fucking worked out the lesson I tried to teach her back in my office that day, one about control and command of your tool of choice.
“You’re not good for him. In his line of work—” she croaks out.
“Real estate? Investor? I don’t need to spend Nikolai’s money, if that’s your suggestion.”
My Rose is beyond clever, and my dick stirs at her fucking deadly mafia princess—or is that queen?—vibes. “I have my own, and—”
“You do,” murmurs Adelaide, trying to sidestep Rose and the pin glinting in the low light. “Mafia blood-soaked money and property from both your daddy and your first husband.”
The breath stills in my lungs. Rose’s back snaps a little straighter, and she cocks her head, a move that is pure feline predator.
I’ve seen Rose in her dark moments at the height of savage emotions, when she wanted to rip apart the bastards who dared ever touch her, who wanted to do vile things to her, things designed to destroy.
I’ve seen Rose soaked in volatile anger, but this is a dark ice, the part of her she likes to call bad, a siren call to my soul.
If I wasn’t so ready to leap in to protect her, I’d fall to my knees for her.
She’s still Rose, the darker one, innocence and violence and cold, hard revenge, all rolled up together, and it’s everything.
“I know what my father was,” Rose says, just the right amount of shake to her voice, like she’s struggling to hold back a sea of despair. She isn’t. This is a warning, and it’s one I’m not sure Adelaide understands.
“Because you’re like him.”
Wrong fucking thing to say, Adelaide.
The woman continues. “And you’ll bring Nikolai down with you.”
