Someone was in the flat.
The landing light switched off, plunging everything into full darkness.
Close to being petrified with fear, she strained her ears into the silence.
A floorboard creaked. Her heart jumped into her throat. In her mind’s eye, she could see the knife on the floor, but was too frozen with fear to move a muscle, never mind reach for it. She was too frightened to even breathe.
Another floorboard creaked, this one further away, coming from the direction of the kitchen, and as she heard it, softfluttering ripples set off beneath the taut skin of her small bump. Her baby was making its presence felt. The fluttering lasted barely ten seconds, but it was enough to inject Georgia with a needed dose of protective adrenaline.
Keeping her ears strained and making every effort to be as soundless as possible, she groped for the knife before forcing her jelly-legs upright and moving stealthily to hide behind the open door.
The footsteps were returning. The little breath she still had in her lungs caught, then the rest of her froze as movement from the intruder sounded on the other side of the door. Her eyes, now adjusted to the dark and assisted by faint moonlight, widened in terror when a hand emerged holding a gun, followed by a shadowed arm and a shadowed face in profile.
The burst of adrenaline that had carried her from the sofa to hide behind the door was already dissolving. When it came to fight or flight, Georgia had always been a flight girl. Callie had always done her fighting for her.
Pressing herself tighter against the wall, she prayed harder than she’d ever prayed before for the power of invisibility.
It seemed her prayers had been answered when the intruder slipped back out of the living room and his footsteps treaded to the bedrooms. But she knew it was only a temporary reprieve.
She needed to get out of there. Right now. The intruder – an Esposito or one of their hired thugs, she was certain of it – would find the bedrooms empty and then he’d search again, more thoroughly, without bothering with stealth. And this time he would find her.
The living room door was directly opposite the entrance to the flat, separated by ten feet of hallway. If she could make it to the entrance door, she could escape down the stairs…
Gripping the knife even tighter in her clammy hand, Georgia pictured her unborn child, the baby she’d been protecting withevery breath of her body since the pregnancy test had come back positive, and used the image to spur her body into action.
She’d barely crossed the threshold of the living room when a hand clamped around her mouth and a gun was pressed into her temple.
“Don’t fucking move,” a harsh, biting voice said into her ear.
Chapter Two
Niccolo had sensedsomeone hiding behind the living room door, and so had purposefully gone in the other direction in the hope of flushing them out. He only registered that the figure he’d captured was female a beat after he’d captured her, but then there was no time to register anything more because in less than a beat, the figure had taken advantage of him loosening the hand on her mouth and moving his gun away from her head, and turned into a Tasmanian Devil, biting his fingers at the exact same moment she flexed her arm back and sliced the knife into his side with a scream of rage.
The sudden burn of pain was enough for him to release her completely, and in the time it took for his brain to fully comprehend who the figure was, she’d snatched a vase off the mantel running the length of the hallway and smashed it over his head. The gun went clattering to the floor, the clang it made echoing off the walls.
Niccolo threw himself on it. By the time he had it back in his hands and had rolled onto his back, she was standing over him with the knife high, ready to plunge it into more of his flesh.
“Georgia, it’s me!” he snarled through teeth gritted with pain.
There was just enough moonlight for him to catch the uncertainty on her face. “Niccolo?”
“Yes,carina, it’s me. I’m sorry I scared you – I thought Rico had laid a trap for me.”
“Niccolo?” she repeated, her voice now matching her face’s uncertainty.
“Si,carina. Please, put the knife down.”
There was another moment of hesitation before she lowered her arm and dropped the knife, but there was no time for relief because in another beat she’d transformed back into the Tasmanian Devil, charging at him and kicking him in the ribs with her bare feet.
“Youbastard!” she shouted, practically frothing with rage as she aimed another kick at his side. “Ihateyou, you arrogant, selfish piece of shit.” Another kick landed. “And don’t call mecarina!”
Georgia might be in Tasmanian Devil mode, but Niccolo was twice her size and had an agility most men his size couldn’t dream of possessing. Ignoring the kicks pelting him, he hauled himself to his feet and scooped up her kicking, screaming frame and marched her into the living room, not even flinching when she caught his cheek with her fist.
Dumping her on a sofa, he captured her wrists to stop her hands causing more damage.
“Calm down,” he ordered tersely.
“Fuck you,” she spat, kicking at him.
