I closed my eyes and stood tall, took that deep breath I needed and let it go along with the other shit he was spewing my way. If what he said was true, it didn’t matter. I’d climb to the top, prove I was a worthy partner, and be better than them all.
“I’ll be fine.” I shrugged him off in the way I knew he hated.
Rome’s eyes bulged, and then before I could take another breath, he grabbed me by my neck and shoved me hard into the window. The glass and his hand on my neck were the only things keeping me from falling fifty stories to my death. “You’re never fine, Katie. You’re in danger here, right now, even with me.”
“Am I?” I whispered.
He loomed over me and squeezed my neck so tight and so long, my vision blurred.
“You’re a menace to yourself,” he murmured before he let me catch my breath, but when I gasped, he kissed me like I was his to do with as he pleased.
I gripped his hair and jumped up to wrap my legs around him. He tasted like he was mine to do with as I pleased, too.
Our problem—we weren’t anyone’s. We were dead inside.
11
Katie
They left a bodyguard outside my room the whole night.
Which was overkill, considering I got the surprise of my life when I peeked out my door to find Rome staring at it from a chair he’d slid over.
I opened it wide to glare at him. “What are you doing? You should face the other way in case someone tries to kidnap me.”
“That’s what our bodyguard here is for. I’m here to watch for the real danger: you sneaking off and doing something stupid.”
I slammed the door as loudly as I could. Then I opened it wide and slammed it again for good measure.
Still, I slept like a baby wrapped in a very safe cocoon. Was this what it felt like when my father was still living? Was this the family dynamic I missed so much?
The next morning, he was gone. I was left with just the security. “Dante, can you stop staring out into the abyss and make yourself useful this morning?”
“Katie girl, you’re going to wreck this family, you know that?” he said as he turned to me with a sparkle in his greenish-blue eyes and a smile I knew he only had for me.
His sun-kissed skin made me wonder where he’d been the past couple of weeks. “You have some mission in the Caribbean and decide not to call me?”
Dante had done contract work since getting out of the military, and I knew he was flown places to do things in the middle of the night that only he and very few others knew how to do. I was lucky that he’d been an ally since the first day I’d met him.
“I’d have called you,” he said, “but I heard you’ve been chumming it up with all the other men in the city. Georgie and now Bastian, huh?”
“Ha. Ha. You got a car here?” I leaned against the doorframe of my room and stuck my bottom lip out.
“Where you want to go, toots? I’ll take you.”
I needed to burn off the energy from the night before. I needed to get a handle on my thoughts. Decompression and centering of the mind worked for most. I got there by beating it out of myself. “You got time to train? I need to let off steam.”
“Sure thing. But if Bastian asks . . . Ah, fuck it. They got eyes on us. They’ll know.”
“Sorry. If it’s going to be that much—”
“Don’t sacrifice your health, mental or physical, for someone else’s comfort, toots. They might be important, but you’re the most important thing to yourself. Got it?”
I didn’t argue with Dante. The man’s aura or spirituality or something just flowed through me, made me believe his words, and empowered me to push on with what I wanted without asking anyone else.
We jumped into a black SUV and made it to a gym we frequented.
Mats were reserved, but Dante walked up to one of the signs and pushed it aside. Reservations weren’t something he ever had to worry about here.