Page 12 of Sin City Obsession (De Salvo Empire #1)

Her arm shot out before she could think the action through, her fingers curling around Rocco’s wrist and holding tight.

She stared at her hand latched onto his arm, surprised at her own behavior and well aware that she’d surprised him, too.

It was her dominant hand. She would need that hand when the shooting started.

“Alessa?” Rocco reached around himself and pried her fingers from his wrist, guiding her hand into his. He folded his fingers over her hand and the gesture felt like reassurance. “You okay? ”

Say yes. Pull away. It was the smart thing to do. She needed to retreat, to compose herself, to shake the shit from her head. But Rocco felt like strength. Rocco was sturdy. And she needed those things.

“Incoming,” Emanuele declared.

The sound of bullets impacting the shatterproof rear window heightened Alessa’s awareness.

It did nothing for the claws scraping through her insides, but in a strange way, it helped her to focus.

She could freak out later. First, she had to do her part making sure the people in the vehicle with her all made it home.

So she blew out a breath, tugged her hand free of Rocco’s grip with minimal resistance, and ignored his immediate frown as she reached for her handgun. She didn’t have anything sturdier on her, so her Glock would have to do.

Ignazio spun the SUV around with no warning, blocking the one-way street he’d detoured to, and he and Emanuele jumped out.

Both were armed with semis they’d had tucked away under their seats.

Both were smart enough to keep their bulletproof doors open and in front of them, acting as shields, while they aimed and fired back.

Alessa popped her door open to join them.

Rocco leaned across her, grabbed hold of her doorhandle, and jerked it shut. “ No .”

She whipped sideways to face him, bullets continuing to ping off the car and explode rapid-fire from the closer pair of guns. “Excuse me? What do you mean, ‘no’?”

He laid the palm of his hand over the barrel of her gun as he adjusted to better obscure himself behind Emanuele’s vacated seat. He gave a gentle tug on her hand, silently asking her to follow his lead, and said, “You stay in here with me. This is what they’re paid for.”

Alessa frowned. “I get this is what they’re paid for,” she said, “but it’s also my job. I need to—”

“ Gwathney is your job,” Rocco said, the hard tone of his voice carrying over the escalating melee.

“Whatever you have to do to see that done, fine. But in all other ways, you are not a soldier here.” His hand snapped up until he had hold of her chin and he leaned closer.

“I will not have you wading, unprepared, into a goddamn firefight. Now be a good girl and move the fuck out of range.”

Alessa faltered. Breath suddenly unsteady, she scooted herself away from the door—and the vulnerability of the crack between Ignazio’s open door and the side of the car—and closer to Rocco. She opted to keep her gun in her hand, though, just in case. It couldn’t hurt to be ready.

The SUV tipped, rocking briefly before seeming to settle. The motion lasted maybe two seconds, but it was enough.

Visions of a different SUV rolling off the road, the frame smoking from a hit the driver couldn’t hope to avoid, flashed through her mind.

She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen the accident.

She hadn’t even laid eyes on the aftermath.

But she knew enough about accidents and momentum and the various, gut-churning technical terms that had been relayed to her later for her imagination to supply the rest.

She didn’t hear her gun clatter to the floorboard.

She didn’t realize she’d even dropped it .

The SUV around her swam, blurring and shaking until she couldn’t be sure how much was really happening and how much was only happening in her mind. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. Her chest was too tight.

Al had died so much like this. Trapped in a car that had been forced onto a small, unpopular detour. Ambushed by gangsters who didn’t care what they were doing or who they hurt. Pinned by gunfire, unable to fight back, unable to escape, unable to protect his charge. It was a terrible way to die.

A burning heat tore across the curve of her shoulder, snapping Alessa back to the moment.

As if her ears had unclogged, she was immediately overwhelmed with too many loud noises.

Booming, bursting explosions she knew to be gunfire and something above them that sounded like tires squealing, and shouting. Definitely shouting.

Not all of the shouting was outside the cab of the SUV.

“Get the fuck down!” Rocco hauled her down to the floor between the seats, and with concerning ease he maneuvered her still-disoriented form completely between his knees. The motion wedged her rather tightly between his body and the back passenger seat, her legs stretched awkwardly around his.

Alessa blinked, hard, as the cacophony finally developed identifiable layers. And with that came the realization that she had likely been shot. “What the hell—”

“‘What the hell’ is my question!” Rocco snapped. He pressed one hand firmly—almost painfully—over the burning area on her shoulder and raised his other arm. “We don’t have time for that right now, so stay the fuck down.”

Alessa winced, but she wasn’t sure if she was more winded from the discomfort in her arm or the hard truth in his words.

She wasn’t showing her best. And now the underboss of the family she was technically only visiting was having to use her gun to shoot at a target she couldn’t even see, which meant that target had an angle on him, too.

No sooner had the thought stabbed another knife into her pride than the shooting came to a sudden, jarring stop.

Rocco blew out a breath. “Get Ignazio loaded and let’s get the fuck out of here!”

Ignazio? Of course. Ignazio should have been defending the side Rocco had just been shooting through. The side where the bullet that had clipped her had obviously come from. Alessa looked up at Rocco, but found she didn’t know how to ask.

Would it be her fault for zoning out? For having a goddamn panic attack in the middle of a fight?

She’d certainly seen men blamed for less.

Rocco hauled her straight up, onto his lap, as the back hatch of the SUV popped open.

He used the back of his hand to brush her hair away before carefully peeling down one shoulder of her shirt.

The sleeve material was stickier than it was supposed to be, more from the blood of her wound than the Vegas heat.

Alessa craned her neck to see the hit for herself.

She’d surely had worse, but it would be smart to get eyes on it as quickly as possible.

Except then she wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or further humiliated, because by all accounts, it was a scrape.

The bullet was surely lodged in the seatback behind them. Not even top ten .

Rocco made a low sound like a growl and tilted his head back and to the side, toward where Emanuele and another man struggled with a groaning Ignazio. “Bring me the goddamn first aid kit, too.”

Movement in the backseat paused.

Alessa refrained from smacking herself. “It’s all right,” she started.

Rocco whipped forward again. “It is not fucking all right. None of what just happened is fucking all right.” He curled an arm wholly around her waist as if she had made any effort to climb off—as she should have—and tugged her closer with a hand at her nape.

“We’re going to talk about whatever the fuck that was.

As soon as you’re patched up and I’ve calmed down. ”

Emotion threatened to clog her throat and Alessa ducked her gaze. “I’d rather not.”

“I’d rather you weren’t bleeding.”

She looked up again as Emanuele settled in the driver’s seat. It had been her intent to roll her eyes and say something snarky, but Rocco’s expression was so dead-set serious that the plan itself withered away before she could put it into action.

“First aid kit,” Emanuele said moments before something landed with a muted thud on the seat in her periphery. “Need any help?”

Alessa’s gaze drifted to the unassuming box.

“No, just drive,” Rocco replied. He adjusted his grip enough to grab up the box, and by the time the SUV was straightened on the road again he had an antiseptic wipe torn open.

His eyes lifted back to hers. “This is just until we can get a doctor over to look at it properly. That might be an hour or two.”

“I can clean it myself, really,” she said, softer than she’d meant.

He ignored her completely.