“No need to thank me. You held your own.”
“You know what’s funny? For all the training you can receive on protecting yourself, being attacked is entirely different. So is killing a man, even if he was going to try and at least hurt me.”
“Oh, he wanted to kill you.” Which I didn’t believe to be the truth, but she didn’t need to hear that right now. “You did what was necessary to remain alive. I’m proud of how you handled yourself.”
At this point, I also wasn’t going to tell her how furious I was that she hadn’t listened to me. That she’d placed her life in jeopardy. Again. But I felt it in my bones. Even now, I was bristling once again from the thought of losing her.
“But you’re pissed. Right?”
There’d never been any way to really lie to her. “But I’m pissed.”
“At me?”
“At a lot of things.”
She held up her hands, which were covered in blood, her body quivering. “I’ll be back. I just…” When she looked at me again, there were tears in her eyes. The moment I took a step closer, she used her arm to wipe her eyes, immediately walking away.
Her reaction had me staring at my hands as well. I was covered in blood and brain matter. I took a few seconds collecting the weapons and additional magazines. We’d have quite the collection. I also checked for pulses. The fuckers hadn’t wanted to die. The last one was fucking far too young to be living the life of an assassin. Hell, he couldn’t be more than twenty tops. Maybe that’s why he’d been the easiest to kill.
As I stood, I pulled out my phone, dialing the pilot. While he was allowed to enjoy himself while he was here, he was required to answer the phone when I called.
When the call went directly to voicemail, I had a very bad feeling.
Then when Emmeline returned to the room, her eyes open wide, I knew we were fucked.
“I think we have another little problem. My passport is missing. They also stole some cash. Why?”
With a growl leaving my throat, I headed to where I’d stored the two duffle bags I’d brought with me. One had been used for clothes and toiletries. The other had been used for additional handguns and ammunition as well as my passport and extra cash. With no safe or other more strategic safety measures in place, I’d been forced to improvise, hiding the items in a closet behind boxes owned by the homeowners.
Anger swept through me as I yanked them out one by one.
Emmeline stood right behind me, watching everything I was doing.
When I came to the last box, I almost breathed a sigh of relief. The bags appeared exactly as I’d left them.
Only the second I pulled them free, another even deeper, more guttural growl left my chest. The weapons, the magazines, my passport, and the cash were missing.
I started to laugh. “To answer your question,dolceAmbrosia, because whoever they are, they want to make it next to impossible for us to leave the country.”
CHAPTER 19
Donatello
Danger.
I’d been involved in aspects of danger since I was a teenager. What I hadn’t told Emmeline was that I hadn’t been an innocent kid in the deaths of my parents. At least not entirely. My father had likely been protecting me, fighting for my safety and for me to come to my senses. After their murders, I’d had to take my brother into hiding, keeping us safe from the very criminals I’d pledged my allegiance to.
How ironic that I’d forsaken my family by engaging in acts of criminal activity all to prove my allegiance to a monstrous organization. I’d been forced to leave Italy or face either imprisonment or death, only to engage in the same basic activities that had torn my family apart.
What did they call it? A found family?
That’s what I’d had from the day Baptiste Prince had caught me stealing from him. He’d had the easy choice of having oneof his soldiers to take me someone private, driving a bullet into my brain, and dumping my body in the Gulf of Mexico. No one would have been the wiser.
Except my younger brother.
Instead, he’d taken pity on me, at least by allowing me to remain alive.
The rest of the story had been true, other than leaving out the horrific deeds I’d been trained for and held responsible for handling over the years. Nothing too heinous at first, remaining one of Baptiste’s bodyguards when he went anywhere.
