Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 74214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“Okay. That’s alright. Just stay on the phone with me.” I heard the beep of his open car door, the purr of his engine, then the peeling sound as he pulled out of wherever he was. “Hazel?”
“I’m here.”
A loud chugging sound outside had me pulling my shoulders up by my ears.
It was probably just an eighteen-wheeler or work truck making its way down the highway. But it might as well have been the attacker busting down the door by the way my body reacted.
“I’m all of eight minutes away,” Dante told me.
“Okay.”
“Just stay hidden until I get there.”
No problem there.
I wasn’t capable of moving. Save for trembling. It seemed like even my hair was shaking.
“Six minutes,” Dante updated me.
Then five. Four. Three.
He skipped the last two.
There was a jiggling of the door, dragging a strangled yelp out of me.
“It’s me.” He said it in my ear, but also in the shop as he let himself in.
My finger slid to the off button, the little bleep almost deafening in the quiet space.
Dante’s footsteps rushed around the counter.
I saw a flash of metal and I registered the barrel of a gun as Dante set it on top of the counter before crouching down in front of where I was wedged against the desk.
“Hey, honey,” he said, voice singsong, like he was trying to soothe an injured animal.
I guess that was exactly what I was right then.
“Is he…”
“Don’t worry about that right now, okay? Dom and my brothers are on that. No one’s gonna get close to you again.”
Vaguely, I registered that he was already dressed for the day, his suit crisp, his shave fresh.
“Can you come out of here?” he asked, gentle, not demanding it.
I knew I needed to move, had to get cleaned up. There might even be glass in my hands.
But I found myself shaking my head instead.
“Alright,” he said, dropping down next to me. “That’s fine. I’m just gonna sit with you here for a minute. If that’s alright.”
“I don’t want to be alone.” My voice was as jangly as my bones felt.
“Good. Because I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’m all dirty,” I said as his arm moved around my back.
“I have soap.”
“Your suit.”
“I have a dry cleaner.”
Despite myself, that had my lips curving up even as he pulled me carefully closer, tucking me in at his side.
Yes, he was guilty of hiding a body, of lying to my face, but he came speeding; he was here, and I desperately needed comfort.
I turned in toward him, resting my cheek against his chest, hearing the steady thump of his heart—slow, calm, in such opposition to my own frantic beat.
Dante’s fingers slid up and down my arm, a barely-there touch, like he was worried about hurting me any further.
“There you go,” he murmured when the trembling eased, my breathing evening out, and my pulse slowing. “Feeling a little better?”
No.
God, no.
With the adrenaline bleeding out of me, I was much more aware of all the aches and pains in my body.
There was a burning in my palms, a deep, throbbing ache in my shoulders, a soreness in my thighs, and a sharp pain in my ankle that made me think I’d maybe sprained it somewhere along the way.
“Dante,” Domenico’s voice called, making me jerk so hard that I might have whacked my head on the underside of the desk if Dante hadn’t quickly placed his hand there first.
“Mind if I go talk to my cousin for a minute?”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he agreed, giving my knee a little squeeze, then getting to his feet.
I watched him reach for his gun. Then, thinking twice, he left it right there within reach.
If I was looking for more reasons to believe I’d called the right people, I somehow felt like that might be one of them. Just seeing it there made me feel a little better.
Outside of the shop, I could hear the low timbre of male voices. Somehow, I didn’t want to know what they were saying. So long as it meant I was safe with them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dante
I knew the second I heard her voice that something had gone horribly sideways.
It was that whispered tremble, that desperate way her voice looped around my name.
I was running out of Famiglia before I could tell anyone what was going on. That said, this wasn’t our first rodeo. So by the time I was running down the salt-slippery steps, I heard them all rushing behind me.
I knew I didn’t have to yell back to them that there was a problem, that they needed to follow me. I just focused on trying to keep Hazel calm and flooring it all the way back up the highway to the garden center.
Nothing seemed overly out of place as I pulled in. Except, of course, that Hazel’s Jeep was nowhere in sight.
I managed to clock that but didn’t let myself focus on it as I ran to the shop, unlocked the door, and rushed inside.