Page 29 of Italian Mafia Boss's Virgin Lover

I praise my good luck, but of course it doesn’t last. I turn a corner, upsetting a tiny, pale-gold vase on a stand. I pause, suspended in a moment of warring hope and terror, backing out of sight. I’m still too far from the door to make it without Gregorio turning and seeing me. I have to think again, and fast.

My eyes alight on a suit of armor in the same instant the vase topples and shatters in an explosion of noise. His pounding footsteps follow almost immediately.

I rush across the room, ducking between looming, draped pieces of furniture. They tower like columns or ghosts, as good at hiding me as they are at concealing my attacker. I stumble to the suit of armor, divesting it of the sheathed knife at its hip, and running for a window as I hear Gregorio behind me.

“Daniella? Is that you?” He’s so close I can practically smell him. I dive behind a thick drape and pull it close around me. “Come out now, love. Let’s play, why don’t we? The master is not at home.”

I shake, gripping the icy knife in both hands. I’ve never stabbed anyone. What if I can’t do it? What if he’s quicker? What if he shoots me?

What if I die in the same room Vittorio Amata did last year?

I didn’t come here to die.

“You’re a clever little mouse, aren’t you?” Gregorio’s voice sounds just on the other side of the dusty velvet drape. Cold radiates off the window pane, digging into me like an ache. His fingers appear on the fabric. He’s about to pull it away. About to find me.And do what to me? Whatever he wants?“But not clever enough, I’m afraid.”

Now.I plunge the knife forward, straight through the drape. For a moment it only glides through air, and I think I’ve missed completely, that I’ve given myself away and not even managed to wing my assailant.

Then the blade meets the soft give of human flesh, and Gregorio snarls out a stream of Italian curses. His fist finds my arm, but I twist away, releasing the knife as the sharp tang of blood invades my nostrils.

I break from behind the drape. He’s shouting, but I don’t hear a word. A bullet snaps off the stone wall at my side as I run, rushing for the door. The next doesn’t miss.

I shriek as the bullet nails me in the back of the arm, the force throwing me to the floor. I’m barely up, barely moving when I hear him behind me. I make it to the door, hurl it open. The corridor is mercifully empty, and I have no time, no brilliant plan, no stealth, no knife, no Santo.

So I do the only thing I can. I run, like I have never run before.

Chapter 16

Santo

Men shout all around me. Bullets assail the cobblestone drive, spraying shards of stone. The rain is thick, merciless, driving down like a plague. And I’m pinned, crouched behind the car closest to the front doors.

Men are scattered around the drive. Mine, Gregorio’s. Dead, wounded, alive. The air is alive with gunfire, with fear and blood.

“We rush,” says Gio to Dario. They’re crouched beside me, eyes harried like prey. “Pick the last of them off at the doors, and break for it.”

“No.” I speak before thinking. I don’t have to think. The plan was already formed in my mind before I knew it. “We rush. You hold them off. And I go in.”

“Are you fucking insane?” snarls Gio, gripping my arm. “We have no idea how many of them have gotten past your guards. There could be a dozen men in there, Santo. Do you have a fucking death wish?”

I peel his hand off my arm. “Dani is in there.”

Gio looks away as though struck, his jaw clenched tight. There is no argument for this. If they capture her, all of this was for nothing. I failed to protect my brother. I won’t fail to protect my future wife. My woman. Not a fucking chance.

“On three,” I say, and Dario and Gio answer me with a nod. “One. Two. Three.”

We stand in unison. Some of Fyodor’s men, too far for orders, crouched among the cars, rise in tandem with us. Gregorio’s guards, positioned around the doors, open fire in the same instant we do. A few go down violently, a few others wounded. I see at least two of Fyodor’s men taken down. I taste blood as Dario’s body buckles beside me. His eyes beat closed twice before remaining open, glassy and unseeing, a bullet hole pulsing blood in his chest.

Grief and rage lock twin fists around my throat. But his sacrifice won’t be for nothing.

Gio and I leap the car, rushing up the drive as the French doors open. I fire once, twice, three times, laying out two of Gregorio’s guards. Gio knocks out a third, and then I’m in.

“Go,” Gio barks, whirling to face the drive, pistol gripped fast, eyes bright with the fever of the fight. “I’ll pick them off. Be careful!”

I nod once, but there’s no time for sentimentality. I have to find Dani.

If she’s alive. If she can even be found.

No—I won’t believe it until I see it with my own eyes. I won’t believe she’s dead. I can still save her. I can still change the way this future of ours unfolds.