Chapter 12
12
GAbrIELLA
M y biggest fear after the sensual fog lifted was that Domenico and I would have to keep our feelings for each other to ourselves for a long time. But that concern was quickly alleviated when he stroked his hand down my spine and murmured, “I don’t want to hide that you're mine. Your brother already figured it out, so there’s no tactical advantage to keeping us a secret.”
“So there’s an us?” I teased, throwing his words from that family dinner when he was still fighting against our attraction back at him with a grin.
“Damn straight.” He slapped my butt just hard enough for me to feel a slight sting. “Don’t worry about Rafa. I’ll get him to come around.”
“You do realize that we’re still a family, even if we’re The Family.” I poked him in the side. “Rafa might be the boss of this DeLuca branch, but he still answers to our mamma when it comes to her girls. And she will be too excited about the idea of planning our wedding to raise any concerns about me getting together with my brother’s best friend.”
“Our wedding, huh?”
I lifted my head to glare at him, but the teasing glint in his dark eyes made butterflies swarm in my belly. I loved that I was one of very few people who got to see this softer side of the stoic man I’d fallen head over heels for.
Wiggling my left hand, I drawled, “If you’re going to talk about putting babies in my belly while you’re deep inside me, then you’re also going to put a ring on it. That’s the way it works in our world, which you very well know.”
Before he could react to my half-joking ultimatum, Domenico’s phone let out a shrill alarm. “Cazzo!”
After gently setting me on the mattress, he slid off the bed to stalk over to the armoire against the wall to our left. When he flung the doors open and revealed four monitors connected to the security system, I gasped.
“Wow, this security system has all the bells and whistles. No wonder you weren’t worried about anyone sneaking up on us when Rafa showed up tonight.”
“I would never have brought you here if it wasn’t.” He quickly tossed on a pair of dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and hiking boots. I followed suit and dressed in a pair of sweatpants and one of his shirts before sliding a pair of running shoes onto my feet.
Then he grabbed his Beretta and Glock, not bothering with their holsters, just shoving a couple of extra magazines into his pockets. The one for his Beretta held fifteen extra rounds, while the Glock’s capacity was six.
“Forty-two bullets? That’s a lot of firepower.”
“I’m not going to fuck around when your safety is on the line.” He yanked open a drawer beneath the monitors and retrieved the suppressors for his pistols. Then he grabbed two stiletto switchblades, following that up with one of the burner phones Dante had mentioned. He tossed the device at me. “It may turn out that your brother’s timing was impeccable because shit’s about to go down. Send him a text to let him know we could use some help.”
I turned on the phone and pulled up the messaging app. Luckily, my brother had made all of us girls memorize his number so I was able to punch it in and send an SOS.
“Done. What else can I do?”
Domenico captured my mouth in a quick, deep kiss that took what remained of my breath away. Then he stroked his thumb over my cheek as he ordered, “You’re going to keep your sweet ass inside while I take care of the problem.”
I wasn’t a fan of twiddling my thumbs while the man I loved put his life in danger to keep me safe, but that was an argument for another time. Right now, I needed to do whatever I could to help him stay focused on the problem at hand. “I can do that.”
“Thank you, sole mio .” He darted into the closet and came back out with a bulletproof vest. “And you’ll wear this while you’re doing it.”
I thought it was overkill, but I didn’t want him to worry about me. “Okay.”
He gave me another brief kiss and promised, “I’ll be quick.”
Shaking my head, I waved him off. “Take however long you need. Just come back to me in one piece.”
“Will do.”
After removing the shirt I’d pilfered from him so I could put the bulletproof vest on underneath it, I rolled the desk chair from the corner so that it was in front of the armoire. Then I plopped down to catch the show.
Watching Domenico in action was bloody…but it was also a thing of beauty. He instinctively knew exactly which approach to take with each man he needed to take out. And there were a lot of them, nearly a dozen at my last count.
The first three dropped after being shot. All it took was one bullet each—to the head, to the heart, and to the neck. After leaving those bodies in his wake, I watched Domenico stalk his next two victims up close and personal. That way, their deaths didn’t alert the other bad guys, who were only ten feet ahead of them, to the danger my man presented. He snapped their necks and slowly lowered them to the ground before pulling his guns from his waistband again and aiming them at the back of the other two guys' heads.
A quick pull of each trigger, and both men’s dead bodies dropped. Domenico didn’t slow his pace to check any of their pulses. He was too familiar with dealing death to worry about missing. And he was on a clock…determined to kill all of them before anyone could get to me.
His motivation worked wonders for his body count. After another three minutes, he was up to nine.
I’d never been a nail-biter and had complete confidence in Domenico’s abilities, but I still chewed on the tips of my reverse French manicure while studying the monitors. The stress of the past few weeks must have taken more of a toll than I realized because I felt as though I was almost about to jump out of my skin. I needed Domenico in here, with me…where we’d be safe together.
When he took down another guy with a quick swipe of one of his stiletto blades across his neck, we were that much closer to what I wanted.
“Ten down and only one more to go,” I crowed, doing a little dance in my chair.
My celebration came to a sudden halt when an unfamiliar deep voice corrected my count from behind me. “You’re wrong, Gabriella DeLuca. There’s one man you didn’t include in your tally. Me.”
I had been so focused on the lethal show that Domenico was putting on that I completely missed the fact that someone had gotten into the room with me. If I made it out of this alive, I was in for a long lecture about situational awareness—something that had been drilled into my head since I was a little girl. But in my defense, I hadn’t thought it was even possible with the kind of security system Domenico had in place. Something must’ve gone horribly wrong for this guy to have gotten inside.
Swiveling my chair, I glared up at a face I only recognized because I had researched his name from the safety of my cousin's home in New York eighteen months ago. “Douglas Snyder.”
His lips curved into a smile that was somehow both sinister and pleased. “You know who I am.”
“I do,” I confirmed, willing my voice to remain steady despite being scared out of my wits.
“Good.” He lifted his arm to point his gun at my head. “Then you get that I’ll happily blow your brains out if you don’t do exactly as I say.”
Trying to reason with a man like Douglas was pointless—that was why Opal had no choice but to fake her own death to get away from him. But if I could buy myself even one additional minute, it might be enough for Domenico to save me. “I won’t be any good to you if I’m dead.”
“Killing you sends just about the same message to your brother as taking you.” He twisted his wrist, using a sideways gun grip that should only ever be seen in the movies because it was too flashy. Which wasn’t too much of a surprise since the man chose the same gun that Clint Eastwood used in the movies my papà used to watch when I was little—a Smith & Wesson Model 29. “And I worked too damn hard to get to you just to walk away without making sure he pays for stealing Opal from me.”
I wished I could depend on the reduced accuracy of his gun’s sights not being aligned, but I wasn’t willing to bet my life on him missing his shot. Or that the added recoil from his stupid hold on the gun would prevent him from getting another one off if he did miss. I couldn’t make any reckless moves. Complimenting him seemed like the safest bet. “Rafa definitely underestimated you. He thought sending me to this safe house would keep me out of reach.”
Douglas’s chest puffed out. “I brought more than enough men to keep your guard distracted while I put my time on a heist crew to good use. That part of my past is buried deep since I was never arrested for any of our jobs, so nobody knows to watch out for the skills I picked up back then. Like getting through the most complicated of security systems if I’m given enough time…which my men did.”
It was a bad sign that he was sharing secrets with me. It meant that he didn’t intend for me to have the opportunity to spill them to anyone else. Luckily, my patience paid off when I spotted Domenico’s shadow creeping up behind Douglas. Determined to keep the creep’s attention on me, I murmured, “I’d much rather not die anytime soon. I have too much to live for.”
“Then get up and leave with me. Right now,” Douglas demanded.
Domenico pointed his gun at him and growled, “That’s not going to happen.”
Most people would have lowered their gun at Domenico’s demand. His tone promised death, and his grip on his Beretta didn’t waver. But Douglas wasn’t a rational man. He kept his pistol pointed at me while twisting his neck the slightest bit so that he could glare at Domenico.
“She’s coming with me,” he insisted.
“Over my dead body,” Domenico snarled.
Douglas shifted his gaze back to me. “No, over hers.”
“If you so much as harm a hair on her head, I will make your death a slow and torturous one,” Domenico threatened. “In the end, you’ll be begging for mercy. Something I don’t possess. Making it that much easier to do it all over again just to ensure you’ve paid for your mistake.” Domenico shrugged carelessly. “Or because I just like the idea of your pain. Either way, you’ll suffer long and hard.”
I wasn’t sure if I was horrified or turned on by the emotionless, deadly man protecting me, who so easily tossed around the idea of torturing and killing someone. Maybe it was because I’d been raised as a part of The Family, but any dismay had been railroaded by desire as I’d watched my man work. Seeing him in his element, a deadly, fiercely loyal, sexy-as-hell Mafia enforcer…it was doing all the right things to my body at the completely wrong time.
Douglas moved the gun slightly lower before raising it again as though he was trying to decide the best place to shoot me. “You’re not in charge here. I am.”
My sexy thoughts dissipated when I saw Douglas’s hand shaking and felt the absolute evil that seemed to ooze from his every pore.
Domenico’s plan was apparently the opposite of mine while I was waiting for him because he had no problem making reckless moves—like taunting Douglas. “You’re not in charge of shit when there’s a zero percent chance of you getting out of here alive.”
I never doubted Domenico would protect me, but fear for his life suddenly crept in.
Douglas sneered. “At least I’ll go down knowing I took Rafa’s sister out with me.”
Domenico’s nostrils flared, and I knew he was holding back what he wanted to say—that I was more than just Rafa’s sister…I was Domenico’s woman. But that information would probably only make Douglas more likely to pull the trigger, so he stuck with the same kind of goading. “With your stupid-as-fuck grip on that gun, you probably couldn’t hit the side of a barn while standing a measly five yards away.”
“Or I could just fucking shoot you between the eyes right now. That would shut you the hell up.”
While Douglas’s gun shifted between us, Domenico moved quickly, stepping in front of me so that I was blocked from the line of fire.
“Move!” Douglas screamed. “Or I’ll drop both of you out with one bullet.”
Under most circumstances, I would think his threat ridiculous, except his gun was famously dubbed "the most powerful handgun in the world” by Dirty Harry for a reason.
“Take your best shot,” Domenico snarled.
I was horrified by the suggestion because although I was wearing a bulletproof vest, he hadn’t put one on. Time seemed to move in slow motion as Douglas pulled the trigger, the bullet piercing through Domenico and exiting through his back. It slammed into my vest, knocking the wind out of me as we crashed to the floor.
As I struggled to take a breath, panic gripped me because I couldn’t get to Domenico. I was only vaguely aware of my brother and several of his men storming into the room to take Douglas down. My vision was focused entirely on Domenico, who had rolled onto his back and was clutching the bullet wound beneath his rib cage, blood already pooling beneath his body.
I crawled closer to him and pressed my hands over his, hoping to staunch some of the bleeding. “Hang on, Mico. I can’t lose you.”
“Not…going…anywhere,” he struggled to whisper.
“You better not.” I sniffled. “I love you too much. I won’t let you go.”
There was a brief flare of triumph in his eyes before they drifted shut and he lost consciousness. Strong arms dragged me away from Domenico as I screamed.