Page 49 of Read This Before the Villain falls in Love with You

I shove my door open, nearly falling out onto the gravel. "Shut the hell up and let someone look at your head."

Guards are already pulling the door open, someone shouting for a medic, someone else shouting my name, and then Luca is there, and I don't remember him crossing the courtyard, I just remember his hand closing around my arm and pulling me out of the car like I weigh nothing.

"Where are you bleeding?" Luca's voice does not rise, but something hollow and terrifying rattles behind his ribs, his pupils dilated so wide they swallow the brown of his irises completely. "Tell me who touched you. Tell me right now."

"I'm fine." I stumble as my heels scrape through gravel and broken glass. "Luca, let go of my wrist, you're breaking the bone..."

"Don't tell me you're fine!" A jagged, feral hiss rips from his throat, his breath coming in hot, shallow hitches against my hairline as he drags me flush against his ribs. "You don't get to die out here. I didn't give you permission to bleed."

"A car just rammed us into a ditch, Luca! Get a grip!" I shove hard against his chest, but he feels like carved marble, rigid and vibrating with pure, murderous adrenaline.

His hands move over my body in violent, frantic sweeps, checking my ribs, my neck, my hips, tearing at the seam of my jacket to hunt for bullet holes with an intensity that looks less like concern and more like absolute madness. When he spots glass in my hair, his jaw clicks sideways, a twitch starting under his left eyelid.

"Who ordered the car?" He snaps his fingers an inch from my eyes, his fingers locking into my jaw hard enough to bruise. "Look at me, Nora. Did you recognize anyone? Did anyone get close enough to speak?"

I yank my chin sideways, horrified by the lunatic gleam in his stare. "No, they just shot the shit out of our back window! You're hurting my jaw!"

"They hit us from the trees. Two guys, big guns, knew what they were doing." The words tumble out fast. "They wanted to grab me, not just kill us."

"They came for you," Luca whispers, and the quietness of the words is ten times scarier than any shout. A terrifying, twitchy grin pulls at one corner of his mouth as he stares at the bullet-pocked metal. "They dared to touch you. They thought they could take what's mine from my own road."

I wrap both arms tight around my chest. "Thanks, Captain Obvious."

Dino is helped out of the car by two guards, one hand pressed to his head, still muttering something about how the coffee argument isn't over. I almost laugh.

"I will skin them in front of their mothers," Luca murmurs into my ear, his hand sliding up around the nape of my neck to clamp me against his chest so hard I can barely draw oxygen. "I will tear them apart bone by bone. Every man who sat in that SUV will drown in their own blood before sunrise."

I claw at his forearms to pull back, gasping for air. "Luca, you're acting insane, stop! I need a second, my ears are still ringing!"

"You're covered in glass." His voice drops into a dark, rapid rasp, his eyes darting frantically over my skin like he expects me to dissolve on the spot. "There's blood on your sleeve. Adrian! Bring me the names of every Bellini crew within fifty miles or I will start putting bullets through our own scouts!"

I dig my heels into the stones to steady myself. "Get off me, I can stand on my own two feet."

"Your legs are giving out." He tightens his grip on my waist.

I shove back against his chest with everything I have left. "It's adrenaline, you asshole, not a breakdown. Don't baby me."

A short puff of air hitches in his throat, his mouth twitching once before his teeth lock tight. His dark eyes flick sideways, cold and calculating. Adrian steps up beside him, pressing a black smartphone against his ear, his jaw clamped like iron.

Luca spins toward Adrian without releasing his grip on my waist. "Burn the road. Lock down every gate. If a single unfamiliar bird flies over that wall, shoot it out of the sky. Kill anyone within five miles."

Adrian taps his phone against his leg. "Fake plates. Same crew from the docks. They were waiting for her car."

"Great," I laugh bitterly. "So I'm on a hit list now."

My breath catches in my throat. I stare past Luca's shoulder at the ditch down the drive, where the skid marks cut two black gouges into the gravel straight toward the trees where that black bumper had been idling. Not a random vehicle. Not someone mistaking me for another girl on a London sidewalk. They had sat in the brush, watching the gate, waiting until my driver turned the corner.

"They were waiting for me," I whisper, a cold dread washing through my gut.

Luca dips his head to meet my eyes. "Nora, breathe."

"Stop it." I shove away from his chest, trembling even harder without his hands. "Don't talk to me like I'm made of glass."

Luca catches my elbow before I trip over the gravel. "You're not made of glass."

I smack his arm weakly. "You're lying. You look ready to kill everyone in the city."

Luca does not blink. He stares down at me with the vacant, unhinged focus of a starved hound watching fresh meat, his chest rising and falling in sharp, ragged gasps while his fingers dig like steel claws into my side.