Bullets and bloodstains are embedded in the walls, bodies of both my guards and the enemy littering the floor.
Whoever the fuck this asshole is, he came prepared.
But not fucking prepared enough.
I click in a new magazine and aim at the area I last saw movement. Each last one of them that dared to get close got a bullet through their brain. I know there are more. I don’t know where they are, but I’ll lure them out.
“You want her? Come get her,” I growl.
The silence is deafening until…
“There you are,” I say through gritted teeth as he appears from behind the corner of my guard room, blood pooling near the door.
No fucking wonder they didn’t detect him and alerted me before it was too late.
He came in through the side entrance and killed them one by one, stealth mode.
The only motherfucker standing between them and my penthouse was Max. He’s still right in front of the door, coughing up blood.
Fuck.
I’m gonna have a tough time replacing these loyal men.
This fucker is gonna pay if Max dies.
But the look on that asshole’s face makes me do a double take. Because he isn’t fucking looking at me … he’s looking at something behind me.
I turn my head only for a moment. Just one fucking moment to see what he’s seeing.
Jill. Staring at him with a wide-open mouth and giant eyes.
“Nick!” Jill yells, right as I turn to face him again.
“Stay back!” I bark.
BANG!
A bullet flies right past my face, grazing my skin until it bleeds. My hand instinctively reaches for my face, touching the red-hot blood and the scar this wound will undoubtedly leave on my face.
He’s got a gun pointed straight at my head.
“I told you, you’d fucking pay for what you did to her,” he growls.
“No, don’t shoot!” Jill’s voice repeats in my head as I point my gun right back at him, her plea fueling me to protect her and kill him.
As he aims, I pluck my knife from my pocket and chuck it right at him.
“Gah!” His groan sounds painful and loud, annoying to the ear.
The knife buried itself into his shin, and he’s collapsed underneath his own weight.
BANG!
The gun goes off.
The bullet misses me by a hair.
It shoots straight down into the penthouse and zooms right past Jill, who ducks for cover on the floor.
Fuck, he almost hit her.
“You motherfucker,” I growl, storming at him so fast it feels as though my muscles are on steroids.
I’ve never felt angrier than I do now as I grab his collar and throw him to the ground so I can knock his gun from his hand.
“You fucking shot at her!” I bark in his face.
“I was aiming at you, motherfucker! Let her go.”
“I told you to fucking run back to your boss. This isn’t a fucking playdate with toy guns,” I say, getting up close and personal. “Did he put you up to this?”
“Easton doesn’t know I’m here,” he says through gritted teeth.
I laugh in his face. “Bad decision. Shouldn’t have come here if you wanted to live.”
I point my gun between his eyes.
“Stop!” Jill’s shriek instantly makes me look at her even though right now I want nothing more than to ace this fucker for even attempting to get close to her, let alone the fact that she almost died.
Fuck, the mere thought of anyone shooting her turns my entire body into pure, seething rage.
I should cut off his fingers, pull out his eyes, feed him his own goddamn tongue for what he did. I want to. More than anything, I want to make this motherfucker pay for murdering my guards, for trying to assassinate me, for almost getting my precious bunny killed.
But something stops me the second my index finger pushes the trigger.
“LUCA!”
Her voice.
“Please.”
Her saying my name, begging.
God.
How I yearned to hear her say those two things.
Just. For. Me.
But she isn’t saying them for me.
She’s saying them to stop me from killing him.
To save him.
Fuck.
“Please, don’t kill him,” she pleads.
I look over my shoulder, unable to ignore her. She’s clutching the shot-up doorpost, her sparkly, golden dress covered in bloodstains from the guard lying on the floor right in my penthouse. She must’ve checked him to see if he was dead. Always so caring, even when she shouldn’t be.
This fucker almost shot her.
He wants to take her from me so badly he’d risk killing her in the process.
And here she is pleading for his life?
“Do it,” Nick growls at me, and when I turn my head, he’s already grabbed ahold of the gun, shoving it even harder into his own damn skin. “Do it then. You want her? I won’t ever fucking stop until she’s safe and away from you.”
Away from me.
Like I’m the most dangerous thing on the planet.
Me.
I should fucking kill him.
Do it and prove to her what kind of monster you really are.
My teeth grit as I bury the gun into his brain, seconds feeling like hours.
“Please!”
Her voice is the only thing that breaks through the barrier and silences the screams in my head.
I hate him. I fucking hate him so much I want to stab him a thousand times just for daring to touch her.
But I don’t fucking hate her, and I don’t want her to fucking hate me.
I grumble out loud as I close my eyes for a second and turn around to rip my knife from his shin. Nick groans in pain, blood pouring from his wound. I bring the knife to his throat as I take the gun away, the blade cutting into his skin until it bleeds.
“You’re going to fucking leave. Right now. And if I ever see your face again, I will scrape it off with this fucking knife and feed it to your fucking mother. Understood?”
He swallows, sweat drops rolling down his forehead.
I slowly get off him, still pointing my gun at him as I tuck my trusty knife back into my pocket. The dude seems unsure of what to do as he lies there propped up on his elbows on the floor. He clearly didn’t account for this.
“Get up,” I growl.
He does what I tell him, but not without throwing me the most daring looks. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I bark. “You should be happy I let you keep your fucking balls after trying to shoot her.”
“Don’t listen to him, Jill,” Nick says, completely bypassing me. “I was aiming for him. Don’t let him get into your head.”
“Do you have a fucking death wish?” I say, stepping closer again with my gun aimed at his head.
“Stop,” Jill says, and she grabs my hand.
My nostrils flare because I fucking hate his guts, but I still lower my gun for her.
“Fine. Have it your way,” Nick growls. “Easton and I will come back for you, Jill.”
“No, don’t,” she says, stepping forward even more. “I chose this to save Jasmine. I wanted to marry him.”
Nick’s eyes widen, and his fists ball. “What?”
“Please just leave …” she says. “It’s too much to explain. Just know that I’m here because of my own choice.”
The look on his face slowly begins to unravel. “I don’t—”
“Believe me,” she says, and she holds up her hand to show her ring.
He’s at a loss of words, that’s for sure.
And the sight makes me feel something I rarely feel.
Pride.
“Nick. Don’t come back for me. And tell Easton and Charlotte I’m fine. Please,” Jill says. “I don’t want you or anyone else to get hurt.”
“What about you?” he says, throwing me a glare. “You’re gonna let this fucker own you? Put a collar around your neck?”
He eyes the bunny symbol dangling from her neck, and I suddenly feel fiercely protective.
She blushes as my grip on her hand grows tighter. “You don’t get to fucking decide that for her. Now leave. I don’t give second chances so fucking count yourself lucky she likes you.”
His jaw tenses as though he’s preparing to say more, but he swallows it back down and turns around, marching off to the elevator. Our eyes connect a final time before the doors close, and all that’s left are the pools of blood and the dead bodies littering the floor.
Jill’s grip on my hand wanes as she immediately checks Max’s pulse. “He’s alive.”
I fish my phone from my pocket and call my father. “I need your help.”
Hours later
After Nick had left, I immediately secured more guards from our family connections to keep the building safe and to clean up all the dead bodies without anyone, especially the cops, seeing us.
Meanwhile, Max has been taken to the specialized clinic that doesn’t ask questions and only treats patients. I’ve been told he’ll wake up with a very sore chest, but other than that, he should be out of the danger zone.
I’ll need to call a renovator for the building as soon as possible to fix all the damage, but that part can wait until tomorrow.
Right now, I’m angry so many had to die for a single fucker with a crazy idea.
Nick really thought he could take Jill from my clutches.
No one steals my fucking bunny, no one.
After everything is done and peace has returned, at least for now, I go back to my penthouse and take a short shower to rinse off the blood. I told Jill to take a shower and then locked her up in her room so she couldn’t escape. Even though she told Nick she chose this … I still don’t trust her not to run.
When I’ve dried off and put on fresh clothes, I open her door and sit down on my couch for a much-needed rest. The silence is deafening as she exits the bedroom and goes to the kitchen without speaking a single word.
Sighing, I get up and head over to her.
She’s hovering over the kitchen counter, staring at a glass of water she hasn’t touched in a while.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Rain begins to pitter-patter against the windows.
When she doesn’t respond, I place a hand on her shoulder, and she jolts up and down.
“I’m fine,” she replies, but her eyes show the truth her lips are hiding from me.
“Don’t lie,” I say, stepping closer so I can wrap my arms around her waist. “You don’t have to pretend to be tough with me.”
She glances at me over her shoulder with an uncertain look in her eyes as they scour over my face until they widen. She turns around between my arms and brings her hand to my face. The soft touch of her fingers on my skin silences me and makes me forget everything that just transpired.
“You’re still bleeding,” Jill murmurs.
I even forgot that.
“Must’ve opened up again when I took that shower,” I say. “It’s nothing. Just a scrape.”
“Of a bullet,” she says, sliding her finger across the wound until I hiss in pain.
I didn’t expect it to hurt this much now that I’m no longer running on pure adrenaline.
“Where do you keep your supplies?” she asks.
“My office,” I say.
She grabs my hand and tugs me along. “Come. Let’s go fix you up.”
I’m too obsessed with the fact that her hand is locked in mine to even notice the fact that I’m letting her drag me to my own damn office. She grabs my chair and scoots it in front of my desk, the same desk I fucked her on only hours ago, and points at it as if to tell me to sit down.
She knows better than anyone else not to give me commands.
Still, I sit, wondering what she’s planning to do.
“Where is it?” she asks.
I point at a cabinet in the back. “Third drawer.”
She opens it and takes out a box filled with medicine and gauze. Emergency supplies in case I’d be locked up in here fending for my life.
She sits down in front of me on the other chair and opens the box to take out some gauze, tape, alcohol, and a cotton pad. It’s deathly quiet between us, the rain falling against the windows the only sound filling the room.
Jill dips the pad into the alcohol and rubs it over my wound, which hurts like a motherfucker, but I keep the hisses to myself by digging my nails into my knees instead.
“It’s quite a gash,” she says, rubbing the gauze on it. “Does it hurt?”
“I can take it,” I reply.
“I’m not asking if you can take it,” she responds, looking me in the eyes. “I know you can. I’m asking if it hurts.”
“Only if I think about it.” I lick my lips. “Why are you doing this?”
She shrugs and proceeds to cut some tape. “You help me. I help you.”
I grasp her wrist and force her to stop. “Tell me the real reason.”
She pauses, her lips parted. “To thank you.” She swallows, unable to look me in the eyes. “For not killing Nick.”
The mere mention of his name makes me want to grab an axe and chase after him. But I don’t. Because she’s with me. Not with him.
She chose to be here.
She chose me over him.
“I could have,” I say.
I definitely would have if he’d kept talking to her.
“But you didn’t,” she says. “Why?”
“Because you begged me not to,” I reply.
She pauses to look at me. The compassionate look on her face is something I haven’t seen before. At least not directed at me. And it silences the beast inside me that wants to chase after that fucker just for attempting to snatch her away.
“Thank you,” she says, blushing. “That means a lot.”
My brows furrow. “Is that why you’re helping me now? Out of guilt?”
I don’t want to sour the mood, but I know damn well what kind of relationship we have. What I forced her to be. “I thought you hated me.”
“So? I can’t help the people I hate?”
Laughter spills out of my mouth. “That’s a really strange way to show you hate someone, Jill.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just as strange as kissing and fucking someone you hate.”
Fucking. Just that one word triggers all the delicious memories of her tight ass wrapped around my length. The first time I took her and made her my own. I even made her come from my cock. And I can’t fucking wait to be the one to claim her virginity too. To be the first to enter that tight, wet pussy and come inside.
I would’ve done it right there on that fucking desk if it wasn’t for that fucker ruining our fun with those loose shots.
But now that he’s out of the picture, all I can focus on are those pretty pink lips and the collar around her neck, signifying my ownership over this beautiful fucking girl.
Our eyes connect, and the moment feels like it lasts an eternity. Neither of us moves away from the other.
“I don’t hate you,” I say, my voice as heavy as my heart, as I release her from my grip. “God knows I fucking tried.”
“You said that before,” she mutters. “But I thought you were messing with me. Just like you were when we were kids.”
My eyes narrow. “When?”
She sticks the gauze with a little tape to my wound and then sighs. “Stop pretending you don’t know. You were such a bully to me. From day one, even when we were little kids. You stole my crown and kept taunting me again and again every time we met. You even invited that girl over just to shove it in my face that you were hooking up. Not to mention that poor bunny I tried to save that you just—”
I plant a finger on her lips.
Everything she said is true. And she still doesn’t see.
Me.
“You don’t know me. At all.”
I get up and grab her hand, dragging her to the back door in my office. I open the door and grab her shoulders to push her forward. “Look.”
Her pupils dilate, and her jaw drops. Because in there, in that mid-size closet with a tiny window, a whole fucking pen filled with expensive bowls and beds and playthings exist. Along with a fuzzy little creature hiding in the cotton ball-shaped bed in the corner.
That bunny.
