There are three D’Ambrosio thugs around her. Unlike the men that accompanied Nico, these men don’t bother with thepretense of suits and respectability. They’re the kind of men who do dirty work for dirty people without ever losing sleep over it.
And one of them has his gun down her mouth.
"Come on, sweetheart." He laughs. “Show us how that pretty mouth works."
Everything happens in a blur. The world slows down, and my focus is reserved for the bastard with the gun down Bella’s mouth. My gun kicks against my palm, and his wrist explodes in a shower of blood and bone. He jerks his hand back, screaming.
Bella wrenches her head to the side, and the gun clatters to the ground.
I shoot again, and his head snaps back once before his body crumples like a marionette with its strings cut.
The second man turns and spots me. But he’s too slow. My gun fires again before he can reach his. The third man is the smartest of the bunch because he takes this moment to run. But he’s not nearly fast enough. I shoot him once in the leg and watch with savage satisfaction as he falls face-first to the ground.
He claws at the warehouse floor, and tries to turn himself over. I shoot his hand as he reaches for the gun by his hip. Then, with calm steps, I relieve him of his weapon and kick him over so that he can look me in the face.
Recognition spreads across his face when he sees me.
I kneel down on his uninjured hand, place one foot on his throat, and rest my gun on my knee so that he can see it. I look over at Bella in her disheveled state and then back at him.
"Did you do that to her?" My voice is steady despite the rage still pounding between my ears.
"We weren't going to actually hurt her!" He's struggling now. "Just rough her up a little. Teach her a lesson. What's it to you, Romanov? She's just a fucking nobody?—"
Wrong fucking answer.
I shove the gun down his mouth. His eyes widen and he tries to plead uselessly against the hot barrel.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I whisper. “She’s not a nobody, and you were stupid enough to touch her.”
The roar of the gunshot is the sweetest fucking thing I hear.
14
BELLA
She’s not a nobody,and you were stupid enough to touch her.
Slava’s words before he killed that man keep echoing in my head as the city smears past the tinted windows in streaks of light and shadow that won’t hold still.
I’m still shaking—fine tremors that won’t stop no matter how hard I press my palms against my thighs.
After Slava had killed the final man, he cut me loose with an impossible gentleness that you can almost believe that he didn’t just kill three people right in front of me. Before I had a chance to protest, he draped his jacket around my shoulders, scooped me into his arms, and carried me to the SUV.
His jacket is still heavy around my shoulders, warm with his masculine scent, and my throat tightens every time I breathe it in.
Neither of us has spoken a word since we got in the car.
I should be grateful. No, Iamgrateful, in the sick, twisted way that you’re grateful to the bear for killing the wolves circling your door.
But I can’t get that image of him looking back at me before he pulled the trigger on the final man.
Was that how he killed Luca?
She’s not a nobody, and you were stupid enough to touch her.
An unwanted warmth worms into my heart every time I repeat it in my head, and I squeeze my purse’s strap. I hate that there is a part of me that can’t stop wondering why he might say something like that about me.
“Where do you want to go tonight?” He finally breaks the silence in a low and measured voice.
