No, she wasn’t. She’d played a very careful game for her entire adult life. Entertaining her “cousins” from Russia when they came to visit with obvious agendas while never agreeing to anything. She’d gotten very good at dancing on the knife-edge between too strong to fuck with versus being too much a pain in the ass to be allowed to live. Her family in Russia was always hungry for more. More power, more territory, more money. It aggravated them to no end that her father eventually settled into something resembling peace with the scattering of other families in NYC and the surrounding area instead of crushing them beneath his heel in a bloody war.
Somehow, in all of this, she hadn’t considered that they’d get involved.
Foolish. So fucking foolish.
She let her head drop back against the seat. “Damn it, I didn’t expect them to move so fast.” It wouldn’t matter that she’d made the right call—and she was certain she’d made the right call—the day of the wedding by getting in that trunk. It wouldn’t even matter if she’d made no calls at all and Dante had overpowered her. She’d disappeared with the enemy, put their alliance with the Capparellis in jeopardy, and had been missing for days. Of course, they would use that opportunity to their advantage. “Fuck.”
The trees opened up the tiniest bit as they came to a stop sign at what appeared to be a highway. Dante looked at her. “Are they a danger to you?”
“Da.” No reason to lie. She’d be gone before it mattered, and even if she didn’t manage to escape, he’d figure it out eventually. “They aren’t my biggest fans, and if in the course of this whole clusterfuck, I somehow died and Sasha became the next heir, they’d have a better chance of convincing my parents to marry her off to someone of their choosing.” Sasha wasn’t built like Rose and their other sisters. She was softer. A brutal husband would break something fragile inside her that she might never recover from. Anya and Lorelei would make sure he never had a chance to do it again, but that wouldn’t save Sasha after the fact.
“Rose.” From the way he said her name, it wasn’t the first time. Dante waited patiently for her to drag herself out of her dark thoughts and look at him. “They won’t touch you.”
“I wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for you.” Not the truth, not really. If not this, then something else would have happened to give them the excuse to go after her. She just thought she had more time, more space to build up the walls to keep herself and the people she cared about safe.
“They won’t touch you,” he repeated.
She had no business feeling warmth from his assertion. Even if the fairy tale in this man’s head came to reality, even if he was as formidable as his reputation, in the end, Dante was only one man. He couldn’t protect her from the full might of the Russian Romanovs if they decided to take advantage of her being outside the relative safety of New York. “Do they know where we are?”
She half expected him to brush off her question like he had in the past. Instead, Dante pulled onto the highway. “Si. Not our specific location, but they’re in the area.”
Her breath whooshed out. “Dante, you have to let me go. If your uncle wants me dead and they’re sniffing around… You’re outmanned and outgunned. Eventually they’ll find you—find us—and then it’s all over. They’ll kill both of us and make it look like it’s your fault and…” And then the people she loved would pay the price.
What was the fucking point of all this power if all it did was paint a target on her forehead? Her parents claimed it served to keep their family safe, but if she were a civilian, she wouldn’t have to deal with shit like this. Rose didn’t spend much time worrying about what her life would have been like if she were born into a different family because, ultimately, it didn’t matter. Her circumstances were what they were, and she mostly loved her life.
Just not when it seemed like everyone and their dog was gunning for her.
Dante didn’t look at her, but his body had gone tense at her statement. “All the more reason for you to agree to my terms.”
“That’s not possible and you know it. You are one man, Dante. No matter how good you are, they’re better. Marrying you would just make it worse.”
“That’s not a no.”
She opened her mouth to tell him no but couldn’t make her lips form the word. Dante was not for her. He couldn’t be for her. It didn’t matter that she was starting to believe him about their connection being real even before they were honest with each other. It didn’t matter if he fucked like a dream and seemed to enjoy her at her most monstrous. It didn’t matter that he’d most likely burn the entire world down for her if she set that as her condition for marrying him.
It didn’t matter what she wanted.
She closed her eyes. Okay, fine, she wanted Dante. She even liked the way they circled each other, neither willing to pull their punches. She liked that he was the perfect combination of Jackson Smith and Dante Verducci. She liked how they fit in so many ways.
But he wasn’t for her. He couldn’t be. Even if they could get the situation figured out with the Russian Romanovs, her family would never accept Dante. The Capparellis would never accept her marrying a Verducci, either. The implications for following what her heart may or may not want…
No. The cost was too high.
“It’s a no, Dante,” she said softly. “It has to be.”
He didn’t say anything the rest of the drive. It wasn’t an angry silence, though. His body language remained loose and easy and his expression contemplative. It made her want to push him, to poke and poke and poke until he snapped. To ask him if he was actually that easily dissuaded, even though the act of asking would give away far more than she could afford. This was what she had to want, after all. Him to back off.
She watched the road signs but couldn’t dredge up any happiness when she realized they were in California. What did it matter now? This had to end, and end immediately.
The town Dante drove them to was barely large enough to have a Walgreens. He parked at the back of the lot and turned to look at her. “I need you to stay in here.”
“But—”
“Rose.” Rose. Not Rosa. Not amata. That, more than anything, made her stop protesting and look at him. He held her gaze. “I will go and get the meds for you. The Russians were spotted in the next town over, so they might not be here, but we can’t risk it.” He paused. “If you run, I can’t protect you.”
“I wouldn’t need protection if you hadn’t interfered!”
“Si.” He shrugged. “But it happened and now we deal with the consequences. There is nothing stopping them from gunning you down in the street if you try to run. Stay in the car. Please.”
He could be lying. He probably was. If that were the case, why bring her at all? He could have kept her locked up in the cabin and returned with the medication. Yes, it would mean a few more hours before she could get the dose, but ultimately it wasn’t Dante paying the price of their recklessness.
She nodded slowly. “I’ll stay.” Even Rose couldn’t tell if she was lying or not.
For a moment, it seemed like Dante might change his mind, but he turned off the car. “Lock up behind me.” Then he was gone, striding toward the building.