Page 25 of Soulmate of the Mafia King (Kings of Philly #8)

PAIGE

I scrubbed my hands in the hotel bathroom sink, holding my own gaze so I didn’t have to watch the water turn crimson. A bubble of manic laughter expanded in my chest. So long hiding from mirrors, and here I was clinging to one to keep my wits.

But I couldn’t laugh. I couldn’t anything . Because as soon as I started feeling, I’d have to think about everything that had happened, and I needed to flee the country, not break down.

My hands still clung to each other stickily. The sink wasn’t doing enough. And Zahur’s blood covered my chest. I switched on the shower and paced.

Killian kept watch outside the door. Another odd, almost-funny thought.

The Mano Della Morte guarded my back. I trusted him to do so.

But I did. Something had come over his face when he said Tom was injured, something I’d seen a whisper of in our conversation about the plane.

I didn’t know what kind of person Killian was, but I knew he loved Tom more than anyone in the world except Sera, and he’d die to keep Tom safe.

Since he was here instead of at Tom’s side, I had to assume Tom had extended that dogged protection to me.

I could picture him when he said it, the humor falling away to sincerity?—

No. No last thoughts of Tom. I had to shower. I stripped and stepped into the still-icy spray. The hotel shampoo cut through the crust of blood on my skin quickly, though it smelled like flowers I didn’t recognize. Just a little too close to the bastard’s cologne.

Cologne I’d never have to smell again. Killian had pronounced him dead, in his taciturn way. That asshole could never touch me again. And I’d made that true, not anyone else.

I couldn’t catch the laughter this time.

How had I let anyone talk me out of going on the raid?

I’d believe whoever said they’d killed him, but the relief that washed through my body as the blood sloughed off was palpable.

Zahur—because his name held no power now—was dead, and I’d killed him.

I had bright-red proof people shouldn’t fuck with me painted on my skin.

For a wild moment, I wanted to walk into the airport still wearing it, a promise to anyone who saw me that I was just as dangerous as the men I traveled with.

The water ran clear, and I smothered the impulse. Organized crime was about keeping your lethality under wraps. Tom would?—

I climbed out of the shower and dressed. As I dropped a new T-shirt over my head and pulled on some pants, I realized I hadn’t showered to wash Zahur’s touch off me, just his blood.

His smile leered out of my memory, and I shivered. Maybe I still had some work to do processing this when I got home. But I opened the bathroom door with my head held high.

Killian toppled backward onto the wet tile. We stared at each other blankly for a moment. Then, I burst out laughing, and he rewarded me with a small smile. I helped him to his feet.

“So, I was thinking?—”

“Wait,” he interrupted. He hadn’t yet let go of my hand.

I turned back to look at him. He stared at our intertwined hands with something burning in his eyes.

“I am…sorry,” he said.

“For what?” I asked.

He sighed. “For making you stay back here. And for arriving too late. Tommaso asked me to save you, and I failed.”

I swallowed. Tom would’ve only asked him that if he couldn’t save me himself.

My thoughts drifted off into the city, toward Zahur’s house.

But I yanked them back and squeezed Killian’s hand.

He still scared the shit out of me, but his careful hold on my fingers showed something human under all the armor.

I took a deep breath and decided to tell him what I would’ve told Tom if he’d been the one to burst in the door like I thought.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “Because you weren’t too late.”

He arched an eyebrow.

“I couldn’t have killed him if I was alone.” I glanced at the red spot on the bed. Sometime during my shower, Zahur’s corpse had disappeared. “By bursting in the door, you gave me the push I needed to save myself. That’s almost as good in my book. So, thank you.”

Killian stared at our hands a moment longer, then released me. “If you say so.”

We finished packing up in silence. It didn’t take long.

I’d barely taken anything out of my suitcase, and Tom, even less.

Killian carried Tom’s bag as we left. I considered asking about him for a moment, but that circled too close to the thought-hole I was trying not to fall into.

I just needed to keep it together enough to get on the plane. Tom would return to me. He’d promised.

A handful of men, stripped of the tactical black they’d been wearing when they burst in, sat in the common room. Sam, Rico, Harry, and Eddie lay at their feet. Killian exhaled.

“Two of you, wrap the bodies in sheets and take them to the airport,” he said. “We’re not burying them here, and that means smuggling them out with everyone else.”

Two of the larger men stood. Several remained at attention.

Killian nodded to the door, and they followed without a word.

I didn’t think about the bodies, or the smuggling, or the certainty that I was going on the trip to tell Amalia what happened to her husband.

One foot in front of the other, behind the most dangerous mob boss in Philly.

He led me down to the garage, to an idling black van that looked like one of the ones I’d seen at the airstrip.

I climbed into the passenger’s seat. The rest of the men took the back. Killian drove.

As we pulled out, a siren ripped through the quiet, and I couldn’t stop myself.

I pictured Tom in the back of an ambulance, racing through the night without me.

I pictured buckets, oceans, of blood, more than Zahur had shed twice over because Tom actually had a heart to pump it out of him.

I pictured his bones shattered, his neck snapped, bullets in every vital organ.

Pressure built in my chest. I glanced at Killian.

He stared steadfastly at the road. He hadn’t given me any details.

I knew, from Sera, that he struggled to believe women could handle this lifestyle.

Would he have hid the truth from me? Would he have hid his best friend’s death?

And what was I supposed to do if the man I loved died in the line of fire I’d begged him to enter?