Page 11 of Soulmate of the Mafia King (Kings of Philly #8)

TOMMASO

I stroked a few strands of sweaty hair out of Paige’s face and kissed her forehead.

“Don’t tell me it’s time yet.” She wrapped her arm around my waist.

I glanced at my watch. “I wish I could.”

She groaned and nuzzled into my naked chest. “One last kiss?”

I could never refuse her. I tilted her chin up and caught her dark eyes.

Despite the humor she was trying to bring to the moment, a gulf of fear lay in her gaze like I’d never seen before any other mission.

I dropped a kiss on her lips and tried not to let that shake me.

She was scared because I was facing Zahur, one of the bastards who’d hurt her the worst. Now that we were already inside Egyptian borders, this really wasn’t any more dangerous than any other raid.

So despite her clinging fingers, I pulled away from her and began dressing.

“I love you.” She reached for the buttons on my shirt.

I let her fasten them as I adjusted my pants. “I love you, too.”

The first step I took away from her, still naked on the strange bed in a strange land, ached.

She curled her legs into her chest, and I couldn’t help seeing the skinny, terrified woman from so many months ago.

Paige and I both wanted justice for her.

It was my job to get it. And if I lingered any longer, I wouldn’t.

So I marched out the door with one final goodbye.

In the common area, all of Paige’s security team was awake, as promised. Apparently, she’d told Sam the news before I’d arrived, so he could prepare. I caught his eye and gestured him away from where the other guards were readying weapons.

He stepped up to me. “Sir?”

“She is your highest priority,” I said.

“Of course.” He smiled. “Sorry, I thought I did something wrong. Of course, she is. We’ve got an audio transmitter in the hallway and Harry is hacking the camera feeds—or trying to. I’m not worried.”

My chest squeezed. I trusted Sam. He seemed like a good guy, and he made Paige comfortable, which was no easy feat. But the cavalier way he said he wasn’t worried set off something animal in my mind.

I grabbed his shoulder, hard. “I’m not fucking around, okay?”

“No, me neither,” Sam said quickly. “Has something changed?”

“No, I—” I shook my head feeling silly but not silly enough to back down. “I know you have a wife. You love her, right?”

Sam nodded, suddenly serious. “Like nothing else in the world, sir.”

“Paige might not be my wife”—my breath caught as I imagined never getting to see her at the end of an aisle in white, never getting to call her that and mean it—“but she’s just as important.”

He studied my face for a moment. “Of course, sir. I’ll protect her with my life. She’s getting out of this country if it’s the last thing I do.”

Some of the pressure in my chest released. I clapped his shoulder. “I’ll make sure there’s a safety net for that wife of yours before the fighting starts.”

“Thank you,” he said earnestly. “Let’s hope both of us are wasting our effort.”

“Deal.” I smiled as I headed out the door.

I strode through the lobby like a ghost. This place had security better than most banks, but in the end, I picked it because they also had a secrecy policy that beat out most members of the Alphabet Mafia. They didn’t want to remember what I looked like, and I was grateful for that.

On the street, I called a taxi to the hotel. It came quickly, and the cabbie didn’t negotiate for long before agreeing on an actually fair price. After a day of riding around with Killian, though, I automatically climbed into the front seat.

The driver looked at me. I looked at him.

Then, he muttered something under his breath I could guess was insulting and pulled away from the curb.

I ignored him and stared out the window, sucking in lungful after lungful of thick diesel fumes.

The ride was just as jerky and swervy as I’d come to expect in Cairo, though a part of me couldn’t help pointing out how odd it was that I expected anything in Cairo.

I’d lived my whole life in Philly. Sure, I’d traveled here and there, spent some time in major cities, but never much.

I was needed at home. At Killian’s side, even before he took up the mantle.

I wondered how much of the world I’d missed.

The traffic thinned slightly as the cabbie turned onto a new street, and my heart skipped.

I’d taken this road before, in this seat of a taxi.

When I was bringing Paige away from Zahur’s palace for the first time.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, and my brain conjured a phantom image of her into the empty reflection of the backseat.

She was half-dressed, covered in blood, curled into herself like she was expecting to be hit at any moment.

She’d kept her eyes closed for most of the ride because the sun burned them after her time in Zahur’s back halls.

And still, every time she met my gaze for more than a split second, she glared at me.

Just like she had today when I told her I really had to go.

A wild laugh burst from my lips. The cabbie glanced at me then turned up the music.

Somehow, that made everything even funnier.

Only seven months ago, I’d pulled a feral woman off these streets, and she made the miraculous choice to trust me, to love me.

She sat in a hotel right now, waiting for me to come back to her.

The only thing standing in my way was one of the men who made her feral in the first place—and three armies of Egyptians.

Maybe I was kidding myself. Maybe this was more dangerous than other raids I’d done. But I meant it when I said I’d always find my way back to her, even if the thought made my shoulders shake even harder, until I wasn’t certain whether I was laughing or crying.

The cabbie pulled to a stop at the rental house. I wiped my face, tipped him well beyond handsomely, and stepped out of the taxi.