Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
And we were going to go ahead and pretend that the thought of that didn’t make my stomach twist painfully, hard enough that my free hand moved there, pressing against my belly like I could rub away the ache.
I didn’t have time to analyze that right that moment, though. If something had happened to Primo and his brothers and his men, that was out of my hands.
What was in my hands, though, was my own life.
And I was going to do whatever it took to make it out of this situation.
If that meant using the Costa name to garner some fear in Primo’s enemies, or if it meant shooting my way out.
Whatever it took.
I’d been through just enough shit beyond my will. I would be damned if I endured anything else.
Decision made, I rose up slowly, silently, and made my way across the floor of the walk-in.
Taking a slow, deep breath that burned through my chest, I raised my arm, aimed the gun, and stepped into the doorway of the bathroom.
To find freaking Primo standing there, flicking on the water.
My gaze slid to those hands, watching as the blood swirled off of them and into the drain, getting diluted to a pink before it slid down the drain.
My head snapped up again.
He must have seen a movement in the mirror, or simply sensed me there, because his head turned toward me, eyes dark, intense.
“Good girl, lamb,” he said, nodding. “You do what you gotta do,” he added, looking back down at his hands as he scrubbed at the blood.
“You were just going to let me sit in that closet sick to my stomach that I was going to be raped and murdered while you washed your hands?” I hissed, lowering the gun to my side, realizing I was somehow shaking harder than I’d been in the closet when I was scared for my life.
Primo ignored that as he left the water on, but brought his hands to his shirt, flicking the buttons open.
I felt an involuntary spasm of anticipation before he was shrugging off his shirt, tossing it to the side, and I realized what was more pressing than telling me I was safe.
The gaping hole in his side.
“Oh, my God,” I gasped, momentarily frozen as I stared at the bullet hole on his hip just above the waistband of his pants. “OhmyGod,” I hissed, my gaze shooting up to his face, finding his gaze on me.
“It’s fine, lamb. Go on and get to bed.”
“It’s fine?” I said, waving a hand toward his body. “A gaping hole in your body is fine? You need to go to the hospital.”
“Hospitals mean questions. Which I can’t answer right now.”
“Why not? Someone tried to break into your home.”
“My home, Isabella, where we pack meat with drugs and ship them across the country. Committing federal crimes,” he reminded me.
“But… but… don’t you have, I don’t know, doctors?” I asked, putting the gun down, feeling a little queasy as my gaze slid down to the wound again. “Or like vets or something that you blackmail into helping you?”
“Been watching too many mobster movies, baby,” he said, shaking his head.”
“How are you so calm right now? You have a hole in your body, Primo.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve been shot,” he told me, shrugging it off as though past experience with pain meant he couldn’t possibly be in pain currently.
“It still hurts,” I insisted.
“Worried about me, lamb?” he asked with a devilish smirk toying at his lips.
“More worried than you were about me,” I grumbled to myself, forgetting that Primo had the hearing of a dog.
“I took a bullet protecting you tonight, Isabella,” he told me, voice low.
“You took a bullet to protect yourself, your Family, and your drug empire,” I shot back, chin jerking up.
I guess whatever control he had over himself to stay so calm snapped at that moment, because he stormed across the space between us, paying absolutely no mind to the hole in his torso that had to be killing him, coming right up to me, and grabbing the back of my neck hard, yanking me almost up against him by it.
“Make no mistake,” he growled in a voice that had no right to be sexy when it was so clearly pissed at me, but there was no way to deny it, either, “I protect what is mine.”
“I’m not your fucking poss—“
I didn’t get to finish that sentence.
Because I suddenly found myself yanked firmly against him as his lips crashed down on mine. Hard, borderline punishing. His lips bruised into mine as his fingers crushed into my skull.
And what did I do?
Did I bring up my hands between us, push against his chest, or even take a cheap shot and push around his injury to get him to release me?
No.
No, I did not do that.