Feverish and completely drenched in sweat, I wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night… only to land straight back into one. Because I’m abruptly pulled out of my sleep by a hand covering my mouth and eyes locking with mine. A man is crouched on top of me, his body weighing down on mine so hard I can barely breathe.
A guard, one of my mother’s own trusted employees, is trying to have his way with me.
His thin lips move closer, vile stench entering my nostrils as he opens his mouth. “Don’t fucking make a sound,” he whispers.
My eyes widen as his free hand moves to my nightgown and tries to wriggle underneath.
The adrenaline kicks into action, and I thrash beneath him, trying to kick and shove him off me, but my body is still drowsy and weak from the sleep I just had. I can’t wake up this quick and fight off an attacker.
The guy’s hand snakes up my belly, and bile rises up my throat.
I scream, but the sound gets nowhere as it’s blocked by his hand.
His grip is so tight that it hurts as he straddles me, and panic begins to flood my veins. This cannot be happening. I can’t let him do this to me.
I try my hardest to remember my training, and I use all my strength to lock his own shirt between his neck and my elbow so I can choke him, but he manages to grab my wrist before I can and pins me down to the bed.
I try to shove my knee between his legs and kick him as hard as I can, but he’s so much heavier than me, and this nightgown doesn’t help either.
“Don’t fucking move, and it’ll be over quick,” he groans as he fumbles the button on his pants loose with a single hand.
Fuck.
How could I have ever let my guard down like this?
Why did Mother hire someone like him?
Suddenly, my door bursts open, but it isn’t my mother who’s come to rescue me.
It’s Marcello.
My heart almost stops beating the second our eyes connect.
“Motherfucker!” Marcello yells as his eyes home in on the man on top of me, the look on his face darker than I’ve ever seen before. The look in his eyes was like a devil who just stepped straight out of hell to pick up the sinners and drag them back down with him.
Faster than I can even blink, Marcello pulls out his gun and shoots the guy point-blank in the back.
I shriek as blood spatters all around, covering me.
I almost want to vomit, but then I realize the situation I find myself in, and my fight or flight instinct takes over. No time to lose my shit. I have to go, now.
I kick the body off me and crawl away, trying to swat the blood off my nightgown, but it’s no use. I scramble off the bed and stare at Marcello for a moment as he tucks his gun back into its holster.
“Harper,” Marcello says. The indignation is still there even though it’s hidden by a layer of guilt and anguish over my predicament. “That fucker was touching you, wasn’t he?”
“You came just in time,” I respond, nodding as I try to ignore the dead body on the floor.
“Fuck …” he growls as he steps closer and grabs me, wrapping his arms around me in a warm hug.
His sweet embrace makes me falter, even if only for a moment, and my body sinks into his like a key sliding into a lock. A sigh dissolves the panic that had settled in my bones, and I want to cry against his neat suit for everything I’ve been through. But even now, I don’t cry easily.
And when I look up at him, and he gazes back at me with that same longing gaze, he smashes his lips onto mine.
It feels like heaven and sin all wrapped into one.
Was it ever supposed to feel this good? It almost makes me feel guilty. That’s how good it feels to have his lips claim mine. And how could I not feel like kissing him when he just saved me from a fate worse than death?
So for once, I let myself enjoy the moment for what it is, no matter how short it lasts.
But then I realized he was the man I ran away from.
My lips tear away from his. “How are you even here?”
“I went through a hatch in the basement, straight from the backyard. I waited until it was pitch-black and everyone was asleep before I set my plan into motion.”
“Plan?”
He had a whole plan to get me back?
I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does.
A quick and dirty grin spreads across his lips briefly. “Of course. You didn’t think I’d come storming into my enemy’s lair without thinking, did you?”
Enemy.
That’s right.
The Irish and the Italians are sworn enemies now.
And Frank and Molly are dead-set on killing Marcello. If they find him here …
“Fuck!” My brain kicks back into action. “My mother, Molly, she locked me in here.”
“Let’s go,” Marcello says, and he grabs my arm and tugs me toward the window.
“Where are we going?” I mutter as he rummages with the window, which obviously doesn’t budge. “I already tried. She sealed everything shut.”
“I don’t care how, but we’re going home,” he says before he pulls out his gun again and shoots at the lock.
Home? Home where?
Does he mean…?
BANG!
In a single shot, it’s broken off, and Marcello shoves open the window. Then he whips a rope from a backpack he was carrying and ties it around my waist.
“What are we going to—?”
Suddenly, the door bursts open. My eyes widen. Molly steps inside with three guards following suit.
Time feels like it slows down. Marcello snatches me, ties the rope around his waist too, binding us together, and he grabs my arm and hoists us out through the window, throwing us onto the railing.
“Hold on tight!” he shouts as we climb down the ivy growing up against the building.
“Get them!” my mother yells.
Marcello jumps off and flicks open a knife, cutting the rope in just a second.
The guards are already positioned near the window, guns at the ready.
When I throw Marcello a panicked look, he yells, “RUN!”
BANG!
A squeal leaves my mouth as the bullet ricochets across the grass.
BANG! BANG!
I run as fast as I can through the garden in front of the house without looking back, without even thinking about the fact we’re being shot at. Even if Molly hates me for trying to escape, she can’t possibly hate me that much, can she?
Maybe she would rather see me dead than in Marcello’s arms.
But there’s no time to think about it.
“C’mon!” Marcello beckons me as we reach a fence, and he goes on one knee to let me use him as a step so I can grab the top and hoist myself over with a little help.
As I jump over and land on the ground, he grabs the fence and climbs. While he reaches the top, I briefly look around, trying to decide whether I should continue running as far away and as fast as I can.
But then he jumps down next to me, and the moment passes. He grabs my arm and pulls me along with him, away from the fence.
More guards pour out of the mansion’s front door, and it’s got me screaming my lungs out … because their guns are pointed straight at us.
“Watch out!”
Suddenly, two men run up to us from the sidewalk, and for a second there, I almost think they’re Molly’s secret henchmen coming to drag me right back. My body instinctively prepares for impact.
But then they whip out two guns, and my eyes widen as they point them at the guards at the fence and start to shoot.
I recognize these two men.
Mario and Claudio! Two of Marcello’s most trusted allies.
“Didn’t think you would listen,” Claudio says to Marcello as we hide behind them for cover.
“I’m surprised it took you this long,” Marcello replies.
The two men shoot some more until the guards are forced to use the doors as a blockade.
“Go,” Mario growls. “We’ll take care of them. Get her to safety.”
“Don’t die, old man,” Marcello says, and Mario nods right back at him.
Then Marcello grasps my hand and drags me along with him.
“I have a car waiting for us,” he says, briskly crossing the street and turning left.
It’s all going so fast that I barely have time to fully process what just happened.
That I was just about to get used by one of Molly’s filthy guards only to be saved by Marcello himself, who snuck into her house as though it was no big deal just to save me and bring me back with him.
Like he planned all of this just for me.
Marcello’s grasp on my arm grows weaker as he opens the door to a car parked beside us and beckons me to step in.
I do what he wants even though it pains me a little to do it.
After all, it was this man who made me run in the first place.
This man is the reason I was in that house, to begin with.
And it makes my stomach churn.
The door slams shut, and the silence that follows is deafening, especially when compared with the gunshots that flared through the neighborhood just seconds ago.
All the people walking the streets were ducking and running while screaming. Just like me, they feared for their life even though none of it was directed at them. But none of this was gentle, and this was far from an easy, quiet escape. What if the police come and arrest Mario and Claudio for trying to save Marcello and me?
The other door opens and Marcello steps inside, sitting down next to me. “Go,” he tells the driver, and the car starts to move.
My mouth opens before I realize it. “What about—?”
“Claudio and Mario have a different vehicle,” Marcello interjects. “No need to worry about them. I trust they’ll get back safely.”
A blush spreads across my cheeks. “I wasn’t—”
“Sure you were,” he says, adjusting his jacket and putting a button back into place. “But it’s okay if you don’t want to admit you were worried about them. I know you’re angry with me and my men.” He throws me a damning look. “And for the right reasons.”
I gulp. Even after all this time has passed, he still has a huge effect on me.
When he grabs my hand, electricity shoots through my veins, lighting my soul on fire. “Are you injured?”
My lips part, but I’m momentarily at a loss for words. “I … I …”
“I swear to God, if any man or woman touched you there in that fucking house, in any way that hurt you, I will storm straight back in there and cut their hand off and feed it to them.” Pure rage exudes from his eyes, and I can’t help but be enamored by his sudden need to protect me.
I place a hand on his cheek. “No, I’m fine. Please, don’t do that.”
I don’t want him going back in there to risk his life just to punish someone. And I don’t know why I care so much, but I do. Despite being upset over the way he treated me, I don’t want him to get hurt.
He covers my hand with his and gently leans into it, breathing a sigh of relief. “All this time, I was so goddamn worried about you.”
His words pull at my heartstrings. Even though I wanted nothing more than to escape his grasp, I don’t know what to feel anymore now. After learning how Molly truly felt about me, all those damn years I wasted on finding my parents felt like a lie, and I don’t know how to cope.
Maybe Marcello was right. Even though that doesn’t excuse him for not telling the truth, at least he had the right intentions. He saved me from that fire. If he had known that Igor was my father before the night of the shoot-out, maybe he would’ve tried his best to save him. Even though the man did try to sell me off at an auction…
God, it’s all so fucked up.
“I’m sorry,” Marcello says, looking away as he sighs. “And I don’t mean that lightly.” I smile as he looks back up again and pulls me closer with the other hand. “For a second there, I thought I’d lost you. And that hurt me more than anything I could bear.”
“I … I …”
He plants a finger on my lips.
“You don’t need to say anything right now, Kitten. I don’t expect anything. I just want you to give me a chance to make things right.”
I frown and look away for a moment, but as I stare down, I realize the dark secret I’ve been keeping from everyone. Not just from my mother but from him, too.
I’m carrying his baby … and I don’t know if I’m ready for him to know yet.
After all, it could only give him more reasons to make me his prisoner, the one thing I was running away from the most.
But how long can I keep this a secret? How long can I hide this growing stomach of mine?
My heart pounds in my chest as I look up at him again, searching his eyes for a deeper message, a hidden meaning to all of his words. If there would ever be a chance for us to be more than just captor and captive. If he could ever be something more than a man obsessed with making me his.
His hand reaches for my face, and he caresses me so gently I almost melt into him. “Let’s go home.”
And I decide that, for now, I’m going to keep this little life growing inside me a secret.
Not just for the sake of the baby … but for my own safety as well.
