Page 165 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

Anger transmuted my blood to magma, but still, I held still and waited.

That was the predator’s most powerful weapon—not their ability to attack but their ability to wait out their prey, to strike exactly when the moment was right.

Twenty feet.

Fifteen.

Ten.

The dark-clothed intruder wore a ski mask over his face, muffling his breathing and obscuring his face, but it was obvious from the size of him that his was male.

And strong.

Only a few inches beneath my six foot five and a dozen or so pounds lighter than me.

It would be a fierce fight.

But there was no doubt in my mind I would win.

Thisbastardowasn’t just messing with me.

He was threatening my woman.

My Elena.

The woman I was just coming to make my own.

There was a gun in his hands, a long silencer attached to the end and trained on me.

They wanted me dead but found in the morning like a message scrawled in blood for Tore and our allies to beware.

Italians could be so unnecessarily dramatic.

Five feet.

Three.

I closed my eyes, peace coming over me as I felt him take the last step at my bedside. There was a faintclickof the safety.

My cue.

I knifed up from the bed, curling forward under the level of his arms to tackle him mid-gut. The force of the maneuver took us both to the floor with a muted thud. I felt his lungs compress under my weight, my knee colliding sharply against the ground, but I didn’t hesitate. The gun was flung to one side, loosely clasped in his hand, and I went for it with both hands. His grip tightened as I went to wrench it from his grasp. His other hand landed a wild punch to my jaw that burst with bright pain. I blinked away the hurt, focusing on the gun. If I could disarm him, he’d be done.

He tried to leverage his weight against the ground to get the torque he needed to toss me off his torso. I moved one knee high to pin his right bicep and successfully wrenched the weapon from his grasp. The metal was warm from his hands, the barrel still hot from a loosed bullet. Somewhere on the property, a guard lay in a pool of his own blood.

Fury moved through me, adding strength to the muscles I honed for exactly this every single day. I used the butt of the gun to hit him across the face, the crunch of bone loud and satisfying in the still room. Blood sprayed from his nose in a wide arc, catching me across the face.

The pain seemed to galvanize thestronzo, though.

He knocked me in the temple with a powerful fist that made constellations of stars wheel in my vision. His foot kicked me in the chest as he began to crawl out from under me. The breath left my lungs in a whoosh, the gun falling to the floor as my hand automatically tried to catch me from falling. He collected the weapon just as I regained my equilibrium, standing to train it on me again.

I shook my head hard, grinding my teeth as I lurched to my feet and lunged forward to grab the chamber of the gun from the side. He fired a shot, the bullet flying through the open patio doors without incident, but my hand on the chamber obstructed the casing from discharging. When he went to fire another shot, this one aimed at the shoulder I’d already taken a bullet to when I’d saved Elena from the Irish mob, the gun clicked but didn’t fire.

I grinned wickedly at him just before I swung my elbow at his face, catching his left cheekbone with the edge of my bone. His head snapped to the side, his body going limp as he staggered. The gun fell to the floor, but I didn’t go for it.

Instead, I stepped behind him and took advantage of his disorientation to catch him around the neck with one arm, the other bracing around his head. He struggled against the sleeper hold, but I was bigger, stronger, and more determined than thefiglio di puttanawho was there on someone else’s orders.

So, I waited. Feet braced, the muscles in my arms flexing so hard they burned, the bulk of my bicep cutting off his airway.