"Smart choice," he said.
"Don't make me regret it."
"Can't promise that." He tugged me toward the door, already moving with lethal efficiency. "But I can promise you'll live long enough to decide whether you do."
It wasn't comfort. Wasn't safety. Wasn't anything except the brutal honesty of a man who dealt in violence and power.
But it was more than anyone else was offering.
I followed him into the parking lot, where an Aston Martin idled in the shadows—sleek, expensive, dangerous. Like the man who owned it.
He opened the passenger door and gestured for me to get inside.
I hesitated at the threshold, one foot in the car, one still on cracked asphalt. Once I got in, there was no going back. No morerunning. I'd be putting my life entirely in the hands of a man I barely knew.
A man my father had sent to find me.
Alessio's dark eyes met mine over the roof of the car. "Your choice, principessa. But choose fast. We've got maybe five minutes before someone realizes I'm not bringing you home."
I looked back at the motel—the shattered door, the barricaded furniture, the life I'd tried and failed to escape.
Then I looked at him.
And got in the car.
CHAPTER 3
Alessio
The Aston Martin's engine purred beneath us, eating up the miles between that flea-bitten motel and my fortress in the city. Beside me, Valentina sat rigid, her thrift store sweater bunched in her fists, face pale under the harsh glow of streetlights. Even with mascara streaking her cheeks and hair tangled from her mad dash, she was stunning. A diamond tossed in the mud, still sparkling despite the muck.
"You're not taking me back to my father." Her voice sliced through the silence, sharp as a blade.
I shifted gears, eyes on the road. "Not yet."
"Why?" She turned to face me, her green eyes narrowing. "He sent you to retrieve me. Isn't that what good little soldiers do? Follow orders?"
A smile tugged at my lips. She had fire, this one. Not just the beauty I'd admired from afar at society events, but brains and backbone too. "I'm no one's soldier, Valentina. Least of all Marco's."
"Then what are you?"
"A man assessing the situation." I took a corner tightly, tires squealing against asphalt. "Your father can wait."
She huffed, a sound caught between frustration and fear. "And what about me? Can I wait too?"
I glanced at her then, took in the defiant tilt of her chin, the white-knuckled grip on her seatbelt. She was scared but hiding it well. Not begging or crying, but demanding answers like she had every right to them. It impressed me. More than it should have.
"Depends," I said, turning back to the road.
"On what?"
"On whether you trust me enough to let me do my job."
Her laugh was bitter. "Trust you? I don't even know you, Alessio. Except by reputation. And that's not exactly reassuring."
I shrugged. "Reputations are just stories people tell. Doesn't make them true."
She went quiet after that, chewing on my words like they were a puzzle to solve. Good. Let her think. Let her see me as something other than the monster her father painted me to be.
