Chapter 12 #2
I try again to move, to fight, to do anything I can to stop this madness.
I fail and lie there trembling and terrified, fear and anguish finally overpowering me.
My scream is loud and desperate and causes Pietro to jump, an almost comically disappointed look on his face.
What did he expect? That I was going to be happy about this?
It takes Martin a split second to reach me, to shove something firmly into my mouth. I gag and choke on my saliva. He has forced my panties between my lips. Before I can spit them out, he slaps a piece of duct tape over my mouth as well.
I have nothing left but my eyes, and I use them to plead with Pietro as he approaches me. Tears roll down his cheeks, but that doesn’t stop him from unzipping his fly and pulling out his fully erect penis. I haven’t seen him naked since he was a young child, and I don’t want to see it now.
“I’m sorry, Rosa.” He stumbles forward and kneels on the bed between my thighs.
“I don’t want to do this—you must believe me.
” He fumbles with his cock, and no matter how much he says he doesn’t want to do it, he’s still ready to go.
I shake my head from side to side, my own tears flowing freely, and stare at him.
At my baby brother. At the man who is going to fuck me against my will.
I refuse to look away. I won’t make this easy for him. If he’s going to do this, he is going to be haunted by the memory of my face every damn day for the rest of his pathetic life.
I sob, and my impromptu gag threatens to choke me. For a moment, I wish it would.
Pietro moves closer, his body racked with sobs, and I close my eyes. I was wrong. I can’t watch this happen. I can’t see this done to me—not by him. I need to shut down and go somewhere safe in my mind.
The mattress shifts beneath me, and Pietro lets out a sudden yelp of shock.
My eyes shoot open as he flies across the room. He crashes into the wall, slides down to the floor in a heap of limbs. His eyelids flutter, and he’s out.
There’s a blur of movement so fast I can’t track it, followed by an explosion of blood and gore where Martin was standing. The guard’s head teeters on his shoulders and rolls to the ground, tendrils of flesh oozing over the carpet. His body collapses a second later.
Shouts come from around the house, accompanied by a shrill alarm.
I still cannot move. I can barely breathe.
I have no clue what is happening. But then he’s here on the bed next to me, tearing at the tape that covers my lips and pulling my panties out of my mouth.
He isn’t gentle, and I’ve lost some skin, but I really couldn’t care less.
Some wounds will heal; others would not.
He cradles me in his arms like a child, and I am dizzy with relief, crying and shaking against his chest, unable to control my body or my mind. But I’m safe now, no matter how broken I feel.
I allow myself a few moments of respite, a few seconds of pure joy at being held by him.
When I am recovered enough to pull back, I see that he is covered in blood, but I’m sure it’s not his.
To get this far, he must have left a trail of death and destruction behind him.
Tomasso keeps at least five guards in the house with him at all times.
Luca scans my face, smooths my hair back, and kisses me so ferociously that I will now be covered in blood as well. Another thing I don’t care about. My heart sings at the sight of him, a sudden burst of right amid a whole day of wrong.
A stream of Italian comes from his mouth, only some of which I catch. “Are you okay?” He runs his hands over my body and checks for signs of injury before pulling me close. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” I murmur. He is about an eleven out of ten on the ramped-up scale, and I get the feeling that if I wasn’t okay, he wouldn’t stop until every human in Chicago was dead. “I’m all right. I can’t move, though, or I’d have my arms around you. Thank you. Thank you for coming.”
“You needed me, so I am here. Now tell me who else I should kill.” His eyes are ringed scarlet, and his fangs are fully out.
He is ferocious and terrifying and utterly magnificent.
His eyes lock on Pietro’s crumpled mass on the floor.
His still-erect penis hangs from the front of his pants, and a ripple of pure rage flows over Luca’s bloody face.
“No,” I say firmly as he stands up, his hands bunched in fists. I’ve fallen straight back down onto the bed, and there’s no way I’ll be able to stop him physically. “No! Don’t. He’s … That’s my brother …” I stumble over the words, and Luca’s attention is immediately back on me.
With unexpected tenderness for a huge vampire coated in gore, he brushes my dress back down over my exposed body and lifts me easily into his arms. “Your brother? The sick fuck …”
“Yeah. Well. I can’t disagree with that statement, but please don’t kill him. If anyone’s going to do that, it’s going to be me. Did you see my grandfather on your way up here? Short, old, white hair?”
“I don’t think so, bella, but I wasn’t exactly doing a head count. I heard you scream, and everyone who stood in my path is dead. Does he need help?”
“I doubt it,” I reply. Now’s not the time to fill Luca in on the role Tomasso played in tonight’s clusterfuck. “He’ll be safe. He’s like a cockroach. Now come on, we need to leave. Extra guards will be on the way, and there’s a limit to how many even you can take on.”
With my body crushed tight to his chest, he dusts a kiss on my forehead. “You’re wrong, my darling. For you, I will take on the world. But yes, we should leave.”
“Grab my amulet, would you?” I manage to jut my chin in the direction of the nightstand. “But be careful. I don’t know how it will respond to you. The last vamp that tried to grab it still had a heart-shaped scorch mark on his palm when I killed him.”
He holds me steady with one hand and doesn’t hesitate to pick up the necklace with the other. Expecting to hear the sizzle of burning flesh, I wince, but there’s nothing as he closes his fist around it. The amulet seems to have … accepted him.
He shoves it in his pocket, swoops out of the room, and takes the stairs down three at a time.
We pass a trail of corpses, some missing their heads, some their throats, while others are simply drenched in blood.
I don’t give a damn that they’re dead. They worked for Tomasso and would have been hand-picked for tonight’s special job.
They would have known what was going down, so as far as I’m concerned, good riddance.
“Go out the side door from the kitchen.” I know this house so well I could move through it blind.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “I used to live here.”
“Home is where the hurt is, carissima. But you never need to come back here again. We can return tomorrow, the next night, or a year from now, and tear the whole place apart brick by brick.”
I smile and lean my head against his neck. That is possibly the most romantic thing a guy has ever said to me.
“Now where?” he asks as we emerge into the courtyard.
“Garage. Over there, by the trees. Take the Alfa Romeo Spider. He fucking loves that car. Keys will be on a hook by the window.”
As we dash across the courtyard, cars are drawing up to the house, doors slam, and footsteps stomp over the gravel driveway. Floodlights leap into action, and black-suited figures swarm the grounds. Reinforcements are here, and we’re running out of time.
Luca finds the car, settles me in the low-slung seat, and fastens my seatbelt. I feel like a kid being looked after by their daddy, and I’m not gonna lie, it doesn’t entirely suck.
He clambers in next to me and stares at the dashboard.
“Shit,” I mumble. I can’t help with the great escape. “Can you drive a stick shift?”
He throws his head back and laughs, and I gawk at the way the light plays across his features—the strong nose, his cheekbones, those gorgeous lips. The blood, fangs, and red-rimmed eyes. Luca da Firenze, my very own monster.
“Rosa, I was around when they invented cars.” On cue, he puts the Spider into gear, and we blast out of the garage, off the grounds, and out of the hell I was almost trapped in.