Page 20 of A Bond Beyond Blood (The Butcher’s Daughter Trilogy #1)

I groaned and stepped back inside, shutting the door to what I imagine would soon be a laundry list of questions. Whoever made him, truly let him down.

“Come on, man!” There was a thump on the other side of the door, then his muffled voice, full of dejection. “I have nowhere to go.”

You gotta be fucking kidding me. I’d managed to find myself in love with a woman who’d not only caught the eye of a vampire king who’d been MIA for decades, but she also had a determined ex-boyfriend-turned-baby-vamp without a maker—or a home , as luck would have it.

While the latter should be easy enough to handle, assuming I could get it through his thick skull that Jacqueline had moved on, the former wound up on her doorstep, beat the shit out of her but left her alive, and vowed to return in two weeks.

The fuck is going on right now?

As the kid’s footsteps retreated down the stairs, I dropped my head back and sighed, looking up at the ceiling as if I’d find answers there.

“Vinny?” Jacqueline barely finished calling my name before I was at her bedside.

“Hey, gorgeous, why aren’t you sleeping?” I ran my hand over her forehead, smoothing her hair away from her face. She was clammy, but not feverish. Her blood still stank of the sedative Dr. Bianchi had supplied, so it couldn’t have worn off.

“Is someone here?” Her eyelids fluttered closed, those dark lashes fanning out across her soft cheeks, mottled with shades of purple and red as the bruises continued to bloom on her skin.

“No one important.”

She hummed as I caressed her hair, turning her head into my hand and nuzzling against my palm.

Fuck me, I was in deep.

“Vinny?”

“Yeah?”

The ghost of a smile danced on her lips, then she whispered, “Come to bed?”

I smiled, shaking my head. “Any time you ask, sweet girl.” I moved to the other side of the bed and kicked off my shoes, then pulled back the covers and crawled in beside her.

As carefully as I could manage, I snuggled her into my arms and pressed my nose against her hair, pulling the delicious scent of her into my lungs.

“Who was here?”

I smirked; I should have known she wasn’t going to give up that easily.

“It was that kid, Garrett or whatever.”

She lifted her head, meeting my gaze with sleepy, half-lidded eyes, a crease tugging at her brows. “Gannon?”

I nodded.

“What did he want?”

Apparently, what every vampire wants lately: my girl. “He could tell you’d been injured.”

Her eyes widened.

“I told him you were resting and threw him off the balcony.”

“What?” She moved to push up, then winced and I gently eased her back into my arms.

“He’s fine. We always land on our feet.” Once she was settled again, I ran my fingers over her scalp and through the long strands of her dark hair. “Now go to sleep, little Fiorino. You need to rest.”

“Tell me about Eli.”

I stiffened. I’d known this would come, but was unprepared to answer all the same.

“That’s a long story, Jacqueline. I think you need to rest before we head down that rabbit hole.”

She made a frustrated sound in her throat even as she fought not to succumb to her body’s demand for sleep. “Please,” she whispered. “I need to understand.”

With a deep breath, I cradled her head to my chest and gave her the quickest explanation I could come up with.

“Elias Bristol is a king,” I murmured, pressing a kiss into her hair.

“Once upon a time, he abdicated his throne by pulling a disappearing act. His return means...” I breathed deeply, pulling her scent into my lungs once more.

“Well, I don’t really know what it means.

” And that part was digging at me. Why now? Why here?

She tipped her head up to look at me and I traced the length of her nose, then couldn’t help myself as my fingers traced the shape of her full lips. “How long has he been gone?”

“Since long before the treaty. A hundred years or so, give or take a handful? When he disappeared, all hell broke loose in my world.” At the quirk of her brow, I remembered what I’d said earlier about this being our world, and quickly amended, “All hell broke loose among vampires .”

She sighed then, settling her check against my chest once more. “How did you know who he was if he disappeared so long ago?”

I shrugged. “It’s difficult to explain, but... I just knew. My veins thrummed from being so close to someone so powerful. I’d never felt that before.”

She hummed softly, sounding like I might lose her to sleep again any second now.

“And I’d heard about him, of course... stories passed down between fathers and sons, from generation to generation. Whispers among vampires about that shocking white hair and those freaky blue eyes.”

She snorted, then exhaled a deep breath.

“They’re pretty unique,” she murmured. “But I wouldn’t say freaky.

” After a moment of listening to the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, I began to wonder if my girl had fallen asleep, but then she asked, “Why do you think he’s come back?

” The words were slow and whisper-soft as she started to drift off to sleep.

“That’s the million-dollar question, little Fiorino.”

Within moments, her breathing settled back into the heavy, steady rhythm of sedative-induced slumber.

I exhaled deeply, staring at the dresser across the room and the framed photograph of her father front and center on the top.

There was a link here that I hadn’t put together yet, dots I needed to connect.

She’d sought me out within weeks after her father died, begging me to teach her how to fight—and I had a feeling Franco Fiorino was the key.

She’d had an obvious vendetta, a revenge plot she’d never survive.

And, had I been a better man, I would have told her as much, would have sent her away that very day.

But my heart was hers the moment she walked into my gym.

And I’m a selfish asshole.

I wouldn’t give her up then and I didn’t intend to now, though I feared that when she learned the truth, I wouldn’t have much choice in the matter.

When she discovered that even though I trained her week after week, took her money as if it was even fair to do so, molded her into the strong and powerful fighter currently wrapped in my arms..

. she was still never going to be strong enough to take on a vampire.

She’d have every right to leave me when she learned the truth.

I lied to her, and in doing so, I risked her life, her safety—two things I vowed to protect the moment I locked eyes with Jacqueline Fiorino.

I didn’t deserve this woman, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to do everything in my power to earn her love going forward.