Dante didn’t dare look away, even to check to see if they were drawing attention. “Up.”
Casimir rose slowly. He was a few inches shorter than Dante and built leaner. Much like Dante himself, he was dressed in a nondescript pair of jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Nothing to mark him out of place the way an expensive suit would. Nothing to draw attention to him at all… Except for the fact he was attempting to murder Rose in the parking lot of a fucking Walgreens.
If Dante shot him here, there would be questions. The Russians didn’t give a fuck about that because they would catch the next flight out of California and never return to this area. They didn’t need local connections to smooth things over or money to grease palms. Dante did. More than that, he only had connections in LA. They wouldn’t extend to this little town in Northern California.
They had to make this go away, but they needed to do it quietly. He spared Rose a glance as she struggled to her feet. “Your head?”
She touched it gingerly and winced. “I’m fine.”
She sure as fuck wasn’t fine, but he wouldn’t be able to tell the extent of the damage until they were alone and he could check her over. “The SUV, Rose. Now.”
“Okay.” She nodded slowly and started limping in that direction. Fucking limping.
Dante grabbed Casimir by his throat and drove him back several steps to slam him against a nearby box van. “You have bad luck, friend. You should have stayed in Russia, but now you’re destined for an unmarked grave on foreign soil.”
The man’s lips curled, just a little, and something feral lit up his gray eyes. “Nyet, I do not think so, Dante Verducci.” His gaze flicked over Dante’s shoulder and even though he damn well knew better, he twisted to look.
A black sedan flew down the main street, going far too fast, and slammed on their brakes in the middle of the street. He caught sight of a large dark-haired white man behind the wheel, and then Casimir punched him in the stomach and Dante had to focus on the danger closest to him. The Russian moved too fucking quickly, slamming into him and bearing them both to the ground. The gun went flying beneath a nearby car. Damn it.
Dante tried to flip them, but for being a relatively small guy, Casimir managed to keep him pinned. And then he started punching, methodically wailing on Dante’s face and head. Dante got his arms up as best he could, but his head rang. The stranger in the car had better be one of Rose’s many relatives because if it was another Russian Romanov, they were in deep shit.
He was in deep shit regardless.
Between one punch and the next…the blows stopped. He slowly lowered his arms to see Rose standing behind Casimir, looking like an avenging angel with her dark hair whipping around her face and a gun in her hands. Where the fuck had she found that?
She snarled something in Russian, and Casimir responded in kind. Through it all, his expression never changed from the vaguely bored one he’d worn since Dante first saw him. Another man stepped up next to Rose, a gun held down by his side. He, Dante recognized from his files on Rose’s legion of family members. Grady MacNamara. Her cousin by way of her mother’s sister, Sloan.
Casimir rose slowly and stepped off Dante. He glanced down, eyes holding no emotion whatsoever, before turning his attention back to Rose. “A delay. This changes nothing.”
“Mozhet byt, mozhet I net.” She shrugged. “You won’t be around to worry about it either way.”
“Rose.” Grady’s deep voice cut through the tension. “You can’t shoot him.”
“He’s a threat.”
“We are in the middle of a public parking lot with no fewer than three cameras catching at least part of this. You shoot him, things get messy.”
Her finger hovered on the trigger, and Casimir tensed, the tiniest reaction. Finally, she cursed and took a step back. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”
Dante held his breath as the Russian considered her, him, and then Grady. Finally, he shrugged. “Now or later. Makes no difference to me. This only ends one way.” He turned and walked away without another word.
Dante started to get up, but Rose turned the gun on him. “Nyet. Stay where you are.”
The betrayal seared through him with more violence than the actual bullets she shot him with three months ago. She’d told him over and over again that she wanted him dead. Of course, the last four days wouldn’t change anything, not for her.
But she didn’t shoot him.
She passed the gun to her cousin and took the zip tie he produced from somewhere. Grady kept his gun carefully pointed near Dante’s head as Rose knelt next to him. She grabbed his hands and fastened the zip tie around them in a practiced move.
“Rosa—”
She leaned down, nearly close enough to kiss. “This is your get-out-of-jail-free card, Dante. Stay in California. Find someone else to fuck around with. Get married and have those babies you want so desperately. If you come after me again, I will kill you.” She lowered her voice. “I won’t have a choice.”
He might laugh if he weren’t so fucking frustrated. “You’re it for me, amata. There’s no one else.”
“Find someone else,” she repeated. She rose to her feet, only slightly unsteady. “If you’re smart, you’ll find your way out of the zip tie before the Mad Wolf circles back. Goodbye, Dante.” She turned and walked away.
Grady glanced at her retreating back and then crouched next to Dante. “You have five families between Boston and New York howling for your blood because of that stunt you pulled with Dmitri and Keira’s little princess. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll listen to my cousin.” He pushed back to his feet. “If you step foot in New York or Boston, you’re dead.”
He was turned away and strode to Rose, tossing an arm around her shoulder as he guided her to the sedan he’d arrived in. Within seconds, they were gone.
Dante took a slow inhale and then jerked his wrists apart, snapping the zip tie. He climbed to his feet, head spinning a little, stopped to dig his gun out from beneath the car it’d landed under, and made his way back to his SUV. Casimir Romanov was nowhere to be seen, which was just as well.
As he pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the street, a single cop car careened into the parking lot, lights flashing. Typical. Too little, too late. He kept himself chained to the speed limit as he headed south, leaving the town behind. After fifteen minutes, when no one pursued, he dialed Matteo.
“Si?”
“I’m headed back, but I’m not staying long.”
His cousin snorted. “So, things either just blew up in your face, or you’re bringing back a bride. Cute.”
“Something like that.” He touched his jacket. The Plan B box was still there. Fuck. In the chaos, he hadn’t thought to hand it over. Not that Rose would have taken it while she was zip tying his fucking wrists together. Despite himself, he smiled a little. Three months ago, she would have shot him in the parking lot and to hell with the consequences. The fact that she didn’t, the fact she warned him away from New York?
Yes, his woman had feelings for him.
She should know better than to wave a red flag in front of a bull while telling it not to charge. Likely, she meant every word, but Dante had never been closer to what he wanted. He wouldn’t be deterred now.