39
Dante
I expect anger, resentment, hatred, but that isn’t what I find when I rescue Nikki.
Her arms are slung around my neck as I carry her out the front door, past the bloodshed and the bodies strewn all over the foyer.
It’s not pretty. She doesn’t even flinch.
I walk her back to my truck, outside the metal gates hidden from the surveillance cameras, and buckle her into the front seat.
Moreno can sit in the back. I’m being generous, offering him a lift back to the compound. He could drive back with Sawyer or one of the other men. Several brought vehicles with artillery and soldiers prepared for war.
Moreno gives me a glance and a silent nod that all is good with my men.
The ride back is silent.
Every so often, I glance at Nikki. She’s staring out the side window, quiet. I’ve never known her to be as silent as she is today.
Is she angry that we killed her father?
She hasn’t spoken a word about it after I confessed to giving the order to have him executed. Most of his men on site were gunned down. A few fled from what I heard over my earpiece, and my soldiers continue to hunt them down.
Would the DeLuca family finally be done once and for all in Breckenridge?
Nikki was the daughter of a mob boss.
Would she choose to take over her father’s legacy? She doesn’t seem the type capable of murder, and she isn’t going to continue trafficking women.
What did that leave? Guns and drugs?
* * *
Moreno unlocks the front door, and I carry her into the foyer. She doesn’t have shoes on, and the stone driveway and cement steps are hot even under the evening sun.
“I’ll go up to my room,” Nikki says the moment her feet touch the floor.
I grimace, not sure why she wants to go up to bed so soon. The adrenaline is still pumping through me at lightning speed. “Why? Are you feeling okay?” I ask.
She’s been through a lot. I wouldn’t blame her for wanting to take a nap, even though it’s getting late.
It has been a long and probably exhausting day for her.
Nikki pinches her lips together. “I thought you’d want me out of your hair. I guess I’m used to being sequestered to my room.”
My tight restrictions on her whereabouts in the castle will change. I don’t believe she’d run again.
I could be a fool, but she has no where to go. No one to turn to and she’s pregnant.
She will have a guard posted outside of her room but it’s for her own safety. I can’t be too sure that the few men left won’t try and retaliate.
“Well, if you can handle some dinner, you should join me in the kitchen.”
She raises an eyebrow. “How do you know I haven’t already eaten?”
Anything she’d have eaten would have probably come up already, given the events of the night. “Did you?”
I don’t tell her that I stormed past the kitchen with a soldier scaring the chef. He knocked over a half dozen dishes onto the floor, when he threw himself onto the ground to hide.