Both options were disastrous to me.
I woke up with adrenaline coursing through my veins, my muscles coiled tight beneath my skin even though I didn’t move a muscle. Elena was in my arms, her warm, sleep-heavy body pressed the entire length of mine, her lips parted over even, soft breaths that fanned against my face. The sight of her black silk eye mask and ear plugs made my lips twitch with mirth and warm intimacy. I tried to relax, to let the sight of her beauty soothe me like some lullaby back to sleep, but there was a lingering prickle of dread creeping up my spine that I couldn’t shake.
I’d just closed my eyes again when there was a faint creak, soft as breath.
My lids flew open and my entire body turned to stone.
I stopped breathing.
Seconds later there was a sharp, but muted crack near the locked doors to the patio.
Slowly, with infinitesimal movements, I rolled onto my back away from Elena, careful not to jostle her awake. There was a gun in the nightstand, but I didn’t dare reach for it when I couldn’t be sure if the intruder could see me from his or her vantage point. If they caught movement, they could fire indiscriminately and I didn’t want to endanger Elena.
So, I waited.
My pulse thundered in my ears, but I strained to hear every shift of air beyond it.
Finally, after a long moment, I caught the shush of soft soled shoes against the wooden floor.
They were crossing to the bed.
I risked slating one eye open, peering through the low lid to gauge the distance.
He was twenty-five feet away, close to the doors. I could just make out the entire door handle on the floor, knocked out with quiet tools so they could swing the door right open into our room.
How they knew where to find us in the colossal house spoke of resounding betrayal.
Someone had turned rat.
Anger transmuted my blood to magma, but still, I held still and waited.
That was the predator’s most powerful weapon, not their ability to attack, but their ability to wait out their prey, to strike exactly when the moment was right.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
Ten.
The dark-clothed intruder wore a ski mask over their face, muffling their breathing and obscuring their face, but it was obvious from the size of them that they were male.
And strong.
Only a few inches beneath my six foot five, a dozen or so pounds lighter than me.
It would be a fierce fight.
But there was no doubt in my mind I would win.
This bastardo wasn’t just messing with me.
He was threatening my woman.
My Elena.
The woman I was just coming to make my own.
There was a gun in his hands, a long silencer attached to the end and trained on me.
They wanted me dead, but found in the morning like a message scrawled in blood for Tore and our allies to beware.
Italians could be so unnecessarily dramatic.
Five feet.
Three.
I closed my eyes, peace coming over me as I felt him take the last step at my bedside. There was a faint click of the safety.
My cue.
I knifed up from the bed, curling forward under the level of his arms to tackle him mid-gut. The force of the maneuver took us both to the floor with a muted thud. I felt his lungs compress under my weight, my knee colliding sharply against the ground, but I didn’t hesitate. The gun was flung to one side, loosely clasped in his hand and I went for it with both hands. His grip tightened as I went to wrench it from his grasp. His other hand landed a wild punch to my jaw that burst with bright pain. I blinked away the hurt, focusing on the gun. If I could disarm him, he’d be done.
He tried to leverage his weight against the ground to get the torque he needed to toss me off his torso. I moved one knee high to pin his right bicep and successfully wrenched the weapon from his grasp. The metal was warm from his hands, the barrel still hot from a loosed bullet. Somewhere on the property, a guard lay in a pool of his own blood.
Fury moved through, adding strength to the muscles I honed for exactly this every single day. I used the butt of the gun to hit him across the face, the crunch of bone loud and satisfying in the still room. Blood sprayed from his nose in a wide arc, catching me across the face.
The pain seemed to galvanize the stronzo, though.
He knocked me in the temple with a powerful fist that made constellations of stars wheel in my vision. His foot kicked me in the chest as he began to crawl out from under me. The breath left my lungs in a whoosh, the gun falling to the ground as my hand automatically tried to catch me from falling. He collected the weapon just as I regained my equilibrium, standing to train it on me again.
I shook my head hard, grinding my teeth as I lurched to my feet and lunged forward to grab the chamber of the gun from the side. He fired a shot, the bullet flying through the open patio doors without incident, but my hand on the chamber obstructed the casing from discharging. When he went to fire another shot, this one aimed at the shoulder I’d already taken a bullet to when I’d saved Elena from the Irish mob, the gun clicked, but didn’t fire.
I grinned wickedly at him just before I swung my elbow at his face, catching his left cheekbone with the edge of my bone. His head snapped to the side, his body going limp as he staggered. The gun fell to the floor, but I didn’t go for it.
Instead, I stepped behind him and took advantage of his disorientation to catch him around the neck with one arm, the other bracing around his head. He struggled against the sleeper hold, but I was bigger, stronger, more determined than the figlio di puttana who was there on someone else’s orders.
So, I waited. Feet braced, the muscles in my arms flexing so hard they burned, the bulk of my bicep cutting off his airway.
It only took fifteen seconds.
Any longer and I would cause irreparable damage.
I didn’t want that.
I wanted this sack of shit alive and fucking alert so he would feel every one of my punches and knife strikes as I tortured him for information.
When he was out, I looked up to find Elena standing in front of us. The wind blowing in from the broken patio doors shifted around her, tossing her red hair like a pennant, her black silk nightgown plastered to her body.
But that wasn’t what held me transfixed.
It was the sight of the misplaced gun in her hands, raised high and level at the chest of the intruder. There was no fear in her gaze, no tremble in her posture.
She held the gun as if it was a gavel, the weight of righteous justice in her steady gaze.
“Tranquillo, lottatrice mia,” I murmured calmly. “Steady, Elena. Don’t shoot him.”
“Why not?” she asked, her words clinking together like ice cubes.
She didn’t lower the gun.
“We do not want him dead.”
“He came in here while we were sleeping to kill you, Dante,” she said in a reasonable tone contrasted entirely by the dark gleam in her eyes.
It was deeply inappropriate, but laughter bubbled up through the fury in my chest and I was forced to swallow it back. Elena would not find the situation as amusing as I did.
But look at her.
No matter the adversity, I could always count on one constant.
Elena Lombardi was a weapon.
And she was mine.
“Put the gun down, cuore mia,” I coaxed, letting the comatose man drop unceremoniously to the ground so I could go to her. She kept the gun raised, almost frozen with her determination to protect me, until the barrel was pressed to my stomach. I put my hand over the weapon and released the chamber so it fell into my waiting hand beneath. Then, I carefully untangled her fingers from the grip and used my free hand to sink my fingers deep in her hair, angling her head to take her mouth in a possessive kiss.