I took a step back, but he just stepped with me and kept his arm locked on my waist. I smirked. “Let go, monster. You can’t have me here or anywhere. We have to be done.”
“We’re never done. I want your address.”
“You can’t have it. We can’t . . .” I sighed because my body and heart were running toward him and leaving my mind behind. I had to reign them all in and stay the course. “We can’t be anything, Rome. Not for a long time.”
“We are something. I’ll take your address when you’re ready to give it.”
“I won’t be.”
He stepped back and I chilled immediately. “I guess you’re leaving me to my own devices.”
The warning in his voice didn’t scare me. The animal in him wasn’t going to leave me alone. And the fiend in me was about to give in. It wouldn’t be smart. Some would even say we were heading toward our own demise. The fact that I was looking forward to it was what truly scared me most.
12
Rome
Igave her another two weeks. In that time, I knew that Ivan had been training her. I knew she still went to see Dante at the gym, even when I’d forbade her to. She wanted a damn punishment, I swear. I also knew she met with Cade and Bastian. They even invited me to sit in on their meetings.
I didn’t. That woman was about as malleable as a rock. She wouldn’t give in to my request for her address at all.
She hadn’t reached out again by texting or calling. I tried to give her time. I even got to the point where I hoped she’d send a message via Cade, Bastian, or Dante.
That shit hurt my pride. It enraged me. Why the hell was I the one she had to avoid when she’d been in my bed, slept in my damn panic room, and wanted me most? I saw the look in her eyes even when I was putting a bullet in someone. That woman wanted me.
I could have hassled Cade for her address. I could have got it, but I was trying not to give in to the rage that normally consumed me. She had me and us all looking at ourselves in the mirror and questioning our own existence. We’d lived powerful lives based on what the mafia had given us. It was easy to take, to enforce, to get what we wanted. I wanted her to come willingly.
That was one of the hardest things to admit to myself over the past few weeks.
We needed to change.
It started with me asking for something. At least I’d given her a head’s up this time. That was more than we normally did.
I was the enforcer of the family. She had to know that, from me, she only got change to a certain point.
If she didn’t want me to show up in the dead of the night, she should have given me the damn address.
Instead, I was sitting on the loveseat in her new penthouse suite, the coils of tension that had been wrapped around every muscle in my body finally relaxing at being near her. We belonged together in the shadows and darkness. It was where we thrived.
I breathed in deep and watched her chest rise like we were in sync. She’d kept her hair bone-straight over the past couple weeks and as black as ink. She appeared lethal despite how small she was.
I left without waking her and walked down a flight of stairs to the apartment I’d bought out from another resident. Ivan’s team wasn’t doing enough to protect her. The fact that this was even doable showed that.
They had men outside the building and thought their checks inside the building were enough. Not now that I lived there. Not now that I could sneak in and out after each of their checks.
I broke into her penthouse the next night and the night after. No man at her door made it that easy.
I’d been about to leave when a whimper escaped her lips. She clutched the sheets over her and twisted in them. Her face scrunched in pain as she whispered “no” over and over again. There was a monster in me that usually controlled my biggest emotions, and the one I had in that moment was fucking love. My mind tried to pull me toward the door, but the beast loved Katalina more than it loved me. He dragged me to her, and I knelt down.
“Kate-Bait,” I whispered and put a hand to her cheek. “You’re okay, huh? You’re okay.”
She jolted awake and the hand that was at her sheet went under her pillow and drew a knife. It was at my throat so fast, another man would have been left at her mercy. My hand moved quick though. I caught her wrist just far enough away from me that the knife didn’t break skin.
She sucked in small breaths, each of them rapid with adrenaline. Our gazes held in the moonlight.
“No weapon is going to save you from me,” I said.
“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” Instead of taking the knife from my neck, she shoved it harder into me. I smiled at her fight, at the part of her that didn’t ever back down.