“Yeah, man. I’m ready.”
“I’ll go first. Wait a second for me to get away before you go out there.”
I nodded. “Okay.” He headed for the mouth of the alley, and I grabbed his arm. “Romeo… thank you.”
He smiled. “Give her a kiss for me.”
He darted away and vanished into the crowd outside.Give her a kiss for me. Did he know?
None of that mattered. I knew where my loyalties lay, and it sure as hell wasn’t to the south.
I waited a few more seconds just to let everything he said sink into my head. Fuck, he never should have left. He should have been the one to win her heart.
I pushed those thoughts away. I had a job to do that had nothing to do with who she was going to marry.
I left the alley and took off northward back the way I came.
GIA
Iran my hand across my eyes, but I couldn’t stop crying. First Romeo left, and now Nicky was gone too.
I never thought I would ever experience what I had with him yesterday on our trip to the mall. I never would have believed I could be this sexual with all of them.
How could I ever choose between them? How could I choose Cesare or Leo over Nicky or Romeo?
Now I would never have any of them because two of them were gone. Would I ever get over that—ever?
I thought my life was changing for the better when we got home from the mall. I couldn’t wait to fool around with Nicky again. He opened up a whole new world of possibilities I never knew I had in me.
I even dreaded Cesare and Leo finding out about Nicky. He was just a lowly foot soldier, not royalty like they were.
It didn’t matter now because all of that was gone. I even started to feel something for him in the limo on the way home—something I didn’t feel for the other three. How could I give that up to marry someone else?
I wouldn’t marry any of them. If I couldn’t have all of them, then I wouldn’t have any of them. I wouldn’t be able to marry one of them without thinking of the other three.
All I had to do was go back to the house and tell Leo. I hated to hurt him, but that was better than hurting the others by marrying someone.
I choked back tears, and the house blurred in front of me. One of the other security guys came out of the grounds and started flanking me. That only made me cry harder. I didn’t want some stranger guarding me. I wanted Nicky or no one.
I picked up the pace. The sooner I told Leo my decision, the sooner I could put this whole disaster behind me.
I stepped through the front door and marched straight to Leo’s office, but I stopped dead on the threshold when I heard voices inside.
My scalp prickled when I heard Nicky’s deep rumble talking back and forth with Leo and Cesare. “I know, but I’m telling you it all makes sense. They plan to come out of these buildings here while the limo is stopped at the intersection. It would be easy for them to hack the stoplight and make it turn red so you stop there. We need to change your whole security detail for that night. We’ll use armored limos with bulletproof windows, and you should be wearing a bulletproof vest.”
“You come with us, Nicky,” Leo replied. “I’ll feel a whole lot better if you ride in the limo with us.”
“Sure, whatever it takes. We’ll use four different limos so they don’t know which one you’re in.”
“We’ll ride in convoy with you,” Cesare added. “I’ll call my father, and we’ll arrange the whole thing. The more limos we use, the more we can confuse them. We can get Terranova security people on the convoy too so we have enough men to repel the attack.”
I stepped into the office. “What’s going on?”
All three of them spun around in surprise, and then Cesare glanced at Leo. My gaze flicked from one man to the next. Nicky looked right at me. He didn’t look like the same man who just walked away from me in the grounds.
“We just got word that the Neccis are planning to hit our limo on the way to the Met on Saturday,” Leo began. “They plan to kill me and kidnap you.”
I gasped with the tears drying on my cheeks. “What? Is Romeo involved in this somehow?”