Page 44 of Antonio Miles

“I’d be lying if I said wasn’t expecting this.” He rubbed my nose with his continuing to hold me on his lap. God, I love being in this man’s arms. “I don’t want you to think I’m stifling you or trying to control you, but, Tessa, I need to get you back to my mountain. I can’t let these men get you.” He kissed me. “Nothing can happen to you.”

“I know,” I said, and I meant it. I put my hand flat over my stomach, over the place where that fierce little heartbeat lived. “I’ll go, Tonio. Not because you’re telling me to. Because I want this baby safe more than I want anything else in the world.”

He kissed my forehead, then my mouth, gently tasting and teasing lightly. Just because he could.

Instead of making love -- like I wanted -- Tonio ate me to orgasm. Three times. He insisted he wanted to talk to Pain before he did anything else but promised to make it up to me later.

He pampered me and cuddled me and treated me like a princess. For several hours, I pretended we were a normal couple.

Then things started happening.

Knight called with an update and, from Tonio’s side of the conversation, I knew they’d found someone. I listened as Tonio and everyone else made plans. I tried to pay attention, but it was all mostly white noise. I nodded in the appropriate places as I tried to come to terms with my life now and wanted it with everything in me. Tonio and the baby. And this crazy club.

“You look like hell,” Carrie said to me, cheerful as anything. “Good hell. Glowy hell.”

“Shut up,” I said, but I was smiling. I had grown to really like Carrie and Darby. Both women had a lot of Antonio in them. Carrie, I’d learned, was basically a trained assassin. Apparently, she had brothers in the shadows no one was supposed to know about. And yeah. That wasn’t terrifying at all.

She bumped my shoulder with hers and went back to looking out the window, relaxed but I could see the tension in her shoulders and the set of her jaw. Twenty minutes out from the compound, and we’d be at the private airport. Obviously, Carrie took her protection detail very seriously. We’d landed on the roof before, but Knight thought it might keep everyone guessing if we left Tonio’s helicopter here and took a different helicopter home. And there was so much to unpack in that statement alone.

Under protest, Tonio had gone ahead to the airstrip, readying yet another freaking helicopter to take me and Carrie back to the mountains. If I was the kind of woman to care about money, I’d probably have my head spinning with the amount of casual wealth the man had. But truthfully, I just wanted Tonio. OK, so, I wanted Tonio and his family. Because I’d never felt closer to anyone other than my sister than I did in the presence of all the men and women of Kiss of Death, but most especially Tonio’s large and ever-growing extended family. His absence was why Carrie was with me now. She said she’d do anything she had to, to keep Darby’s new stepmother and brother or sister safe. Carrie had said it with a straight face, but Darby had cracked up which led to a cascade of giggles before Carrie and I both hugged Darby goodbye and left.

I never saw the truck coming. Metal screamed into metal as something enormous slammed into the front quarter panel where Kass sat. The impact threw me hard into my belt, air punching out of my lungs in one ugly grunt. Glass sprayed across the seats like ice. Carrie’s arm came across my chest on instinct, bracing me back, and she was already shouting something I couldn’t process because my ears had gone to a high thin ring and everything else sounded like it came from a deep, deep well.

Gunfire erupted from both sides at once, flat cracks against the windows, and I ducked with a scream, covering my head instinctively. Smoke rolled in through the shattered window, gray and stinging. Finch shouted something. Kass had his door open and his weapon covering us while Finch assessed the situation.

“Tessa!” Carrie’s voice cut through the ringing, sharp and furious. She had her door open, was already half out of the vehicle, hauling me by the arm toward the gap. She must have undone my seat belt because I certainly hadn’t undone it.

A man in a black mask came around the back bumper and grabbed me. I screamed again, and Carrie pounced with a yell.

She got his knife from his belt and stabbed the guy in the neck four times. She hauled me toward the tree line, half guiding, half dragging, before a second man grabbed my other arm and jerked hard enough to make my shoulder scream.

“Let her go!” Carrie screamed. She slammed her bloodied palm flat against the side of the vehicle where they’d taken me. She wasn’t letting them take me without a fight and I helped her as best I could, struggling as hard as I could, kicking and scratching. For some reason, I focused on that bloody handprint. The smeared, bloody handprint was difficult to see on the dark paint, but it was there, streaked down the side of the van where Carrie dragged it across the surface.

I fought. I clawed at the hand on my arm, kicking out blindly and connecting with something because the man grunted close to my ear, but there were two of them, and they moved like this wasn’t the first time they’d done this. Both were calm and coordinated even with Carrie shrieking and Kass’s gun going off somewhere behind me. I know Carrie had dropped at least one more of the attackers and she was making enough noise to wake the dead.

Then something bit the side of my neck. Sharp, quick, and gone before I understood what it was.

The world went soft at the edges almost immediately. My legs stopped working the way they were supposed to. I heard Carrie’s voice, still screaming my name, and it sounded like it was coming from underwater, from very far away.

A hood came down over my head, and the world went from gray to black, and somebody’s gloved hands checked the zip ties at my wrists.

I don’t know how long the drive lasted before the drug thinned out enough to let me think again. Long enough that my wrists had gone numb against the plastic. Whatever was coming, I’d survive it. I’d survived worse with less reason to.

And whoever had sent these men had no idea the magnitude of shit storm about to rain down on them. As I covered my middle with my bound hands, I understood my assignment. Keep us both safe until Tonio came for me. Then God have mercy on anyone involved in this, because I knew Antonio Miles would not.

Chapter Fourteen

Antonio

The rotor wash battered me where I stood a distance from the waiting aircraft. Kerosene fumes mixed with wet tarmac smell created the backdrop. My heart pounded with equal parts fear and… elation. Tessa was pregnant with my child. As badly as I failed Darby, I didn’t think I deserved a second chance so while I was happy, that happiness wasn’t for me. Tessa was happy. I was happy she was happy. If the end result was I got a chance to be an actual father, I’d grab it with both hands and hang on as long as Tessa let me.

OK, that wasn’t true. I wanted this child. I wanted to love this child. Most of all, I wanted to protect the child and her mother like I hadn’t been able to with Darby and Jen.

And… I hated fucking waiting. They should be here any minute, but I had a bad feeling.

I climbed inside the waiting helicopter and one of the hanger crewmen shut the door after me. My phone vibrated with an incoming call. When I answered it, my world stopped.

“They hit us, boss.” Finch panted, his breaths coming in heavy even as I heard continued gun fire in the background.