Page 52 of Antonio Miles

Antonio shrugged. “Then in we go.” He kicked the door open, his gun up and at the ready, Hawk and Carrie followed leaving me and Mercy, who had my back as solidly as I had hers.

Denton stood behind a wide desk with both hands flat on the polished surface. He was smaller than I remembered. Ten weeks I’d carried that voice around in my skull, low and unbothered, describing me to a room like I was inventory, and here the body attached to it barely came up to Antonio’s chin, soft through the middle, sweat already darkening his collar. I felt something in my chest settle instead of spike. My nightmare was about to end.

“Antonio.” Denton’s voice came out steady, working hard to stay that way. “We can be reasonable men about this.”

“You’re not a man,” Antonio said.

Denton’s gaze cut to me, to Mercy, and something calculating moved behind them even now, even here. “I have names,” he said, fast, the words tumbling over each other. “Accounts. Every route this operation’s ever run through, banks in three countries, I’ll give you the buyer list from tonight, the whole client roster going back four years.” He reached slowly into his jacket and set a phone on the desk like an offering. “Everything’s on there. Passwords too. I’ll write them down myself.” Somehow, he managed to sound like a salesman offering a deal instead of a rat begging for his life.

“Who do you answer to?” Antonio asked.

“There’s a man above me who handles distribution out of Memphis. I’m not sure what his name is, but he contacts me here.” He tapped the phone he’d laid on the desk.

Antonio didn’t look at the phone. He looked at me. “The night I pulled you out of here,” he said, and his voice had gone quiet in a way I’d only heard once before, “I told you I’d kill every man responsible. Every buyer, every fucking bastard who ever looked the other way.” He didn’t move his gun off Denton while he said it. “None of this is revenge to me, Tessa. This is about me making you a promise and keeping it, no matter what. Do you see what I would do for you and our unborn child?”

“Tonio.” His name was no more than a breath on my lips. “I don’t want that. I don’t want you to kill for me.” I heard Denton sigh in relief. Like he thought he’d just gotten off the hook. “I can kill anyone who needs killing myself.” Denton opened his mouth to speak, but I held out my hand to Mercy and she handed me her gun. I demonstrated my statement by raising the weapon and shot Denton in the throat.

Antonio picked the phone up off the desk and pocketed it, along with a flash drive from an open drawer. Then he lifted his chin at Kass. “Take him down to the vault before anything burns. His thumb’ll still work if you hurry. Take everything to Knight tonight.” From there on out, for the next ten minutes at least, the operation was about cleanup. Seth still kept the heat off us, but he could only do that so long before he brought the wrong sort of attention.

Outside, the loading bay had gone quiet except for the low idle of vehicles and the murmur of women being walked out in twos and threes, wrapped in emergency blankets or long T-shirts unless they still had their own clothes. Darby helped get everyone settled while Veda went to get names and emergency contacts. Two of Knight’s people wheeled a steel server cage out through the roll-up door on a hand truck, headed for the vans. Mercy walked out under her own power, spine straight, and waved off every hand that reached for her elbow, including mine.

“I’ve got it,” she said, not unkindly, and kept walking toward the vehicles on her own two feet like she’d decided a long time ago she wasn’t going to be carried out of anywhere ever again.

Kass approached me, a grim look on his face. “Iron’s in the wind. Knight can’t even find when he was here.”

Antonio’s jaw worked once. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Kass said.

Antonio looked toward the building for a long moment. He didn’t say anything else about it. He turned to the men already moving cans of fuel through the first-floor entrance, and gave a short nod, and they got to work.

We walked out of Enclave Éclipse together as the first gray light came up over the roofline, Antonio’s hand found mine somewhere in the dark between the building and the car. Behind us the building caught fire fast, orange light climbing the frosted glass, smoke rolling black against the paling sky.

Inside the SUV as Kellen drove us back to the Kiss of Death compound, Tonio didn’t say anything. Neither did I. As he stared out the window, his hand drifted up to where my own hand rested over my flat lower stomach. I wrapped my other hand around his, and we both wrapped the growing life inside me in as much love as we did protection.

I didn’t know what my future held, but I knew, without a doubt, I wanted this man -- and his child -- in my life. If that meant I picked up a huge extended family along the way? So much the better.

Epilogue

Tonio

Three weeks later

Morning came into the room a slow, grayish gold through the blinds. Tessa’s hair spilled across my arm where she’d fallen asleep with my arms wrapped securely around her. I’d been awake an hour already, just watching her breathe, one hand resting lightly against the place where our child slept with her. Her eyes fluttered open, and she found mine with her gaze.

“Morning,” she said, voice rough with sleep, and stretched against me like a cat.

“Morning.” I brushed hair back from her face. “How’s my girl?”

“Which one?” She smiled, slow and sleepy, and pressed her palm flat over my hand where it rested on her belly. “We’re both good.”

I caught her gaze and scowled. “You could have at least gotten knocked up with a boy. I’ll have to run off every male over the age of ten in Nashville and that would be bad for tourism.”

She giggled and my heart soared. I gently rolled her to her back before leaning in to kiss her in unhurried slides of my tongue inside her mouth. She made a soft, pleasurable sound against my mouth and rolled us so she straddled my hips, still kissing me lazily. Contentedly. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close as I dared. I’d been careful for three weeks now, like she was made of something breakable when we both knew she wasn’t. She let me have that small worry over her. Likely because she knew I needed to care for her more than she needed the care. But she’d suffer through it. She always let me have that, even when she rolled her eyes at me.

I slid my hand down her spine, over the curve of her ass, and she arched into my palm, sighing when I squeezed gently. She sat and braced her hands on my chest. I looked at her for a long moment in the silvery morning light. The small new swell of her stomach, the way her whole mindset had changed as she thought about being a mother. All the energy she’d put into fighting her way back to Enclave Éclipse, despite my wishes, she now put into readying herself for motherhood. And, I hoped, into being my wife.

“You’re staring,” she said.