Page 70 of Brutal Kiss

"You should have stayed away from her," I tell him conversationally.

"Go... go to hell," he gasps.

"You first."

I break his neck with a quick, efficient twist. The sound echoes in the small room like a gunshot.

Kieran Costello, heir to the Irish mob, crumples to the floor like a broken doll.

The silence that follows is deafening.

"It's done," I say, stepping away from the body.

Vito nods grimly. "It's done."

I turn to Sofia, who's watching me with wide eyes. There's no fear in her expression, just relief and something that might be pride.

"You okay, princess?"

She nods, touching the cut on her cheek gingerly. "I am now."

Gianna tears a strip of fabric from her dress and presses it to Sofia's face. "We need to get this looked at properly."

"Later," Vito says. "Right now we need to get out of here before his brothers come looking."

As if summoned by his words, shouts echo from somewhere in the cathedral. The sound of running feet, men calling Kieran's name.

"Time to go," I say, scooping Sofia up in my arms. The wedding dress is cumbersome, but she weighs nothing. "Can you walk?"

"I can walk," she says, but makes no move to get down from my arms. "But this is nice too."

Despite everything—the blood, the violence, the war we've just started—I find myself smiling.

"Then I'll carry you out of here, Mrs. Not-Costello."

"I like the sound of that," she murmurs against my neck.

Vito leads us out through a side exit, away from the main cathedral where gunfire still echoes. As we emerge into the afternoon sunlight, I can hear sirens in the distance.

"Marco's got the cars ready," Vito says. "We'll be gone before the cops arrive."

I look back at the Gothic cathedral where I killed a man for the woman in my arms. No regrets. Not one.

"Ready to go home, princess?"

Sofia's hands wrap around my neck, her fingers intertwining leaving bloody smears against us both.

"With you? Always."

CHAPTER 34

Sofia

Dante carriesme inside like I'm made of glass, his arms protective and sure around me. I press my face into his bloodstained shirt, trying to muffle the sobs that keep escaping despite my efforts to stay strong. The familiar scent of him—cologne mixed with gunpowder and something uniquely Dante—grounds me in a way nothing else could.

"I've got you," he murmurs against my hair as he navigates the stairs carefully, making sure my torn wedding dress doesn't catch on anything. "You're safe now, princess."

Safe. The word should bring comfort, but all I can think about is how temporary safety always seems to be in this world. I'm safe from Kieran now, but for how long? And at what cost?