Enzo straightened up, but he didn’t stop glaring down at me in primal greed. I knew exactly what was on his mind.
I tried again to twist out of my restraints, but I only hurt myself doing it. I couldn’t let this happen. I had to find a way to escape… but how?
Marco waved behind him. “You know what you have to do. Get it done, and we can finish this once and for all.”
My blood ran cold when Romeo stepped out of the shadows. His eyes barely registered that I was there at all, or if they did, they had gone so dead and unfeeling that he hardly looked like the same person.
His countenance smoldered with barely suppressed malice. He looked even more like the Prince of Darkness I thought he was at my father’s funeral.
He wore his usual black suit. It set off his black hair, dark goatee, and deep, black eyes, but now his skin looked deadly white in the dim light. The shadows cast his eye sockets in darkness, so his features looked more like a skull.
He crossed the floor toward me, and I froze when I noticed that he was holding a powerful handgun in one hand.
He halted, staring down at me like I was nothing but a piece of meat on the floor. His lips hovered just far enough apart that I could see his teeth between them. That expression looked so brutal and heartless. This couldn’t be the same man I actually cared enough about to consider marrying.
“Do it,” Don Marco snapped again. “Take her now. She won’t be able to put up any struggle, and as soon as you do, we can deal with the marriage paperwork. She never has to leave this room until we’re ready to send her to the whorehouse where she belongs.”
Romeo took a step nearer. He turned his back to his father and stood directly over me. I couldn’t look at him. He wasn’t going to do this. He wasn’t going to take me by force to set off his father’s evil plan.
Romeo couldn’t be the one to steal my inheritance and destroy my father’s empire. I didn’t want to believe it, but here he was, standing over me under his father’s and brothers’ cruel eyes.
I gulped down rising desperation, but I couldn’t stop myself from crying. The zip ties dug into my wrists even tighter, and trying to struggle only made them hurt worse. How much worse could it be when Romeo started… whatever he was going to do?
He wouldn’t be nice the way he was in my bedroom. As soon as he finished, Enzo and Ricky would be sure to take their turns. They definitely wouldn’t be nice.
Didn’t they just say I was here to learn a lesson? They brought me here to ruin me, and they wouldn’t stop until they did.
Did Romeo ever feel anything for me? Was his visit to the estate all part of this plan? He fooled me, but he also fooled Leo, Nicky, and Cesare.
“Go on,” Marco insisted. “What are you waiting for?”
Romeo didn’t move. The moment dragged on so long that I couldn’t restrain my curiosity.
I looked up at Romeo, and I froze a second time when three giant figures materialized out of thin air. Cesare, Leo, and Nicky vaporized out of the darkness itself. They surrounded the Neccis, but they appeared so silently that Marco, Enzo, and Ricky didn’t notice them.
Romeo didn’t show any sign that he saw them, either. He kept glaring down at me like he might attack me at any second, but now I knew he wouldn’t. The three guys wouldn’t let him lay a finger on me. They would kill him first, and I held my breath for that moment when they took revenge on him.
Without warning, Romeo whipped around fast. His arm shot out, and his gun went off before he even took the time to aim.
The shot exploded in his father’s face, and Don Marco’s head exploded in a cloud of blood and gore. He tilted backward and slammed down on the floor. Enzo and Ricky both spun around and came face to face with three guns pointed in their faces.
Romeo dropped on his knees in front of me, and his gun fell to the floor. His hand came to rest on my shoulder, and it was the soft, gentle hand I remembered. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry about this. Here. Let me take those off.”
He started to take the gag out of my mouth and then bent over my back to cut the zip tie around my wrists.
The minute he moved out of my way, Enzo and Ricky collapsed under a rain of blows as the three guys moved in. Thumps and brutal groans drifted from the shadows, and then two quick gunshots echoed through the room.
“Never mind about them,” Romeo murmured in my ear. His arms surrounded me, and he started to pick me up. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
LEO
Irested my hand on Nicky’s shoulder—or I should say I rested my hand on Don Niccolò Greco’s shoulder. He wasn’t Nicky anymore. He was Padrino over all New York.
He sat down in the chair behind my desk—Don Alonzo’s desk—except that Nicky outranked even Don Alonzo. He outranked all of us, including the Italians who recognized him at the Met.
“This suits you,” I told him. “You wear it well.”
He blinked around at the office and then down at the desk. He still hadn’t wrapped his head around everything that happened since yesterday.