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He hits me again, and then again, and again. He flips his hair out of his face and runs a hand through the greasy mess. “Tell me what I want to know, Izzy Arden.”
Tears burn behind my eyes, but I will not give him the satisfaction of shedding one fucking little tear. “Fuck you.”
The next blow comes fast and hard. “Fuck me? No, fuck you! You don’t care about a messed-up face, maybe you’ll care when we start carving you up? Maybe knives are more your thing?”
The man in front of me is a blur. “Give me your fucking knife,” he says to the other man. The other man moves into my sight, pulls his knife out, and instead of handing it to him, plunges it deep into the back of the man who’s about ready to start whaling on me again.
My attacker slumps over in agony. He still tries to draw his gun, but he’s far too late. The man who stuck him with the blade sends a bullet straight to his brain, sending him slumping to the floor for good. He jumps up on the box with me and unties my wrists, grabs me by the waist, and pulls me with him toward the door.
The sound of gunfire just beyond the room echoes around me. He puts a hand to my shoulder, making me wait slightly away from the door. Just when I think it will cease, two more shots are fired in quick succession before the door is kicked in. “Isabella,” Lorenzo says.
He closes the distance between us in quick strides, cradling me in his arms, just letting me rock back and forth as the tears flow.
His eyes are intense as he looks at me. The same kind of fear that’s settled in my heart knowing that he loves me, that I didn’t give him a chance to tell me, and that I believed the worst when what he was doing was for me. “You came,” I say on a ragged breath.
Matteo stands with the man who saved me from the man beating on me. “She wouldn’t talk, and it was going too far. He would have killed her if I didn’t step in. The fucking maniac. I had to blow my cover.”
Matteo shakes his hand. “You did good. It won’t matter soon. By the end of the night every one of the fuckers who sent men to our casino to take what didn’t belong to them, and to treat her like this? They’ll all be dead my friend. There will be no reason for your cover after that.”
Lorenzo picks me up and cradles me to his chest. “Thank you, Nico,” he says to the man. “Let’s get you out of here,” he says, carrying me through the large warehouse.
The sound of screeching cars outside causes my eyes to tear, my chest to tighten, and my heart to fill with mind-numbing fear.
So close, but so far…
He must feel every muscle in my body tense. “The men are ours,” he says, as Matteo heaves the large steel door open with a boot, and we walk into the darkness.
Lorenzo holds me in his arms as we get into the back seat of the Lincoln. He wipes blood from my face and then pulls the cloth that’s adhered to my shoulder wound. “Take us home,” he says to the driver. He turns to me. “We’ll have Doc look at you. She’s the best physician we know.”
“He was going to use a knife on me…”
“We will make them pay, Isabella. They will see what happens when they fuck with the Larussios and the women who belong to them.”
I struggle to shift in his arms. “This revenge, I want to see for myself,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not something I want you present for, Isabella.”
I put a finger still tinged with my blood to his lips. “This blood, it’s mine. I’ve earned the right to see that fucker pay.”
The man who rescued me closes the door and stands talking to Matteo, as Lorenzo tells Darryl to drive. “Take us back to the restaurant. Some scores are meant to be settled face to face, and this one, she is going to see,” he says. “It will be cathartic.”
Chapter31
Lorenzo
My chest poundswith anger as I look at what the bastard has done to Isabella as my arms wrap protectively around her. “Bruno?” she whispers through lips that are busted open and still bleeding from the man who now lies dead with a scrolled letter L carved deep into his chest, left in the De Rosa warehouse for our enemies to find. That hardly compensates for what they’ve done, and they will learn that soon enough.
I stroke her hair back from her face, shifting her in my lap. “He’s in surgery right now. Doc went with him but will be back at the resort when we get there,” I assure her.
“I’m sorry,” Isabella says before her eyes close, and her head nuzzles into my chest.
“Wake up. I don’t want you to sleep until Doc has a look at you,” I tell her, cradling her head as I look down at my fearless love. She knows so much and could have said any number of things to keep from getting hit. I would have wanted her to say anything to keep from getting hit. Yet she stayed silent. For me. For my family.
Darryl pulls in behind my cousins’ cars. Salvatore gets out of the first one, surrounded by soldiers as he walks past Dominic’s car to get to ours. He opens the door and slides in beside me as our soldiers wait outside. He takes in Isabella’s face as she lies on my chest. “Fuck.”
I cover her ear and press her face closer to my chest. “Revenge for Alena would have been brutal; revenge for Alena and for what they’ve done to Isabella? I want De Rosa lying at my feet half dead before we leave. No negotiations, Sal. I want the fucker strung up while I watch his face turn as purple as hers is going to be tomorrow. And only then do we let him live to see what we’ve taken and gained from his hard work over the years. Capiche?”
He may be the boss, the ultimate decision maker for the family, but in this, he’s lost that choice.
