5. Romeo
5
ROMEO
“ T he bathroom is right there,” I said as I put Tessa down on a chair in what might be a living room one day. When I started fixing up my great-great uncle’s house, I hadn’t counted on needing to offer a woman in distress comfort. My first-aid supplies were lacking.
Her hands and knees were covered in blood. I saw the smears of red on her thigh too. She needed to be cleaned up, but I wasn’t sure if she could stand or handle the task herself. Or if she would allow me to help her.
She flinched under my touch, and I didn’t blame her. Not after what she faced. Forcing her to let me wipe off her wounds would probably do more harm than good, but I didn’t know how else to get her to follow my instructions.
“I’ll find a rag. To help clear the blood. But…” I stood back and ran my hand through my hair.
But I can’t undo that this even happened. And I wanted to. Something about her made me turn into a beast wanting to avenge her. It wouldn’t right this wrong, but I was tugged into the need to make her feel better.
She pressed her legs tighter together and lowered her gaze. Her chin dipped, but not so much that I couldn’t see the tremble in her lower lip.
I hardened myself against the need to act. To move. To punish and kill. Battling the instant rage of finding her abused, I tried to control myself and at least look calm, even though I felt the opposite of it.
She was a stranger, but something indescribable and undeniable had me wanting to make her look at me without fear and shame.
“I can…”
I didn’t finish. I strode away, worried that my anger and frustration would rise to a degree that I couldn’t manage it. Heading toward the kitchen, I sought out the package of rags and wipes that I bought for tidying up this place. Before I grabbed the cleaning materials, I took out my phone and sent a message to Andy. He was a spy in the area, and I bet he’d have luck with this impromptu assignment.
Romeo: Find these men and send me their location. I attached the pictures I took of the two men before they ran off.
Andy: On it. He didn’t ask a single thing. That was why he was such an excellent soldier to rely on.
I filled a bucket with warm water, and after I tucked the packages of wipes and rags under my arm, I carried everything out to Tessa.
She hadn’t moved, still dipping her chin against her chest. I was glad she hadn’t been reduced to crying again, but I imagined she would be hit with flashbacks and memories of what had occurred.
There was no way to dismiss it or sweep it under the rug, and I wasn’t going to suggest that. The only answer that made sense to me was to kill those motherfuckers, and I would as soon as Andy or someone else in the family identified them. In the meantime, I could help Tessa clean up some of this blood.
I dragged a chair closer, facing her, and sat down before I wetted a rag. I began on her knee. She flinched, but I was counting on that reaction. She was still in a survival mindset, and I wouldn’t hold that against her.
“Easy,” I cautioned, reaching out to wipe the blood again.
She let me press the cloth to her, sitting so still with her gaze on my hand. Over and over, I cleared off the blood, finding the scrapes long and angry but not too deep. No wonder she struggled up the steps. The gash covered her whole joint and all the skin was inflamed.
I moved on to her other knee and repeated the slow and careful cleanse. Keeping my hands steady and not rushing so as to avoid startling her, I got all the blood and debris out of the wounds. Of at least those wounds.
“I tripped and fell,” she said, numb and dull.
I nodded and cleared my throat. “I see that.”
“They ran after me as I left work.”
“You work near there?”
She nodded, sniffling a bit. “At the sports bar. I just got done working and… and they…”
I gently set my hand on her thigh. “I saw.” Sparing her the need to talk again, I got up and dumped out the bloody water. With another bucket of clear water, I resumed cleaning her knees. Over and over, I replenished the water.
On one trip to the kitchen, I texted Danicia to come over. She was a former emergency room doctor we’d saved from the Domino Family, and she agreed to be on call, on the down-low. If Tessa would agree to any medical help, official or not, she would do best with a female.
After I did the best I could with cleaning her knees, I wrapped bandages over the injuries. Then I moved on to her hands and cleaned up the injuries and scrapes that ran up from the heels of her palms.
Holding her hands felt different from when I cleaned her knees, and I was overwhelmed with how much she pulled me to her. How much she called me closer and encouraged me to care.
Running up to intervene was instinct. I was a killer. I was a Mafia prince who preferred the darkness and somberness of life. But seeing an innocent woman like that triggered something in me at that moment.
“I’m…” She swallowed hard, raising her dark-blue gaze to mine. The vulnerability in her eyes cut through me, and I wanted to erase the pain she had to be feeling. “I’m still bleeding.” Admitting that, so quietly and sheepishly, was clearly so hard, but I admired her tenacity and bravery to speak up.
I knew. I already knew she had to be bleeding and wounded between her legs. When she exited the car, I saw the smears on the cushions her short skirt couldn’t hide.
I hung my head, exhaling heavily. Those men would be dead before the end of the night. I vowed it as I stared at the floor, but when I lifted my face to meet her eyes directly, I tried to soften my expression so she wouldn’t misinterpret my anger as something she was responsible for.
“I called a doctor.”
She reared back, tugging her hand out from my grip. “No. No doctor. No, I can’t afford?—”
“Not like that.” I shook my head. “Not at the hospital. Danicia used to work at the emergency room, but since we helped her out of a…” Shit. I couldn’t tell her that we saved Danicia when she was caught in the middle of a hostage situation. That would scare her more.
“Out of a what?” she asked, furrowing her brow.
“Out of a delicate situation,” I improvised.
She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side. “Who are you, Romeo?”
I sighed.
“You said you wanted to help me out of the alley before the cops came. Are you on the run from the cops?”
I stared at her, knowing that confessing I was a Mafia man might frighten her even more.
“Are you a secret agent?”
I didn’t laugh at her, but the idea was so ludicrous that I couldn’t hold in a chuckle. She frowned, almost pouting at me, and I shook my head. “No, Tessa. I’m not a federal agent.”
“Then who are you? What are you that you would avoid the cops in an emergency like that?”
I licked my lips, hesitating. “I’m in the security industry, but in my line of work… I’ve learned that many cops and authorities we should trust are corrupt.”
When she nodded, I raised my brows. “You agree with that?”
“Sort of.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. I do. I’ve, um, heard some stories, and I wonder sometimes.”
“Well, Danicia used to work with the cops when they’d bring victims like you in. She’s able to bring a rape kit and help you get more comfortable.”
I stood quickly, recognizing that she wanted distance from me after I said the word rape . “Danicia was an ER physician for twelve years before she came under my organization’s protection.”
She frowned again. “Like the witness protection program or something?”
“I guess that’s a close enough comparison.”
Danicia arrived, and just like I knew she would be, she was kind, take-charge, but compassionate. When she asked if she wanted me to stay during her “check-up” and Tessa said no, too embarrassed and on the verge of tears again, I led both women up to the master suite. I’d spent the most time making this room livable, and Tessa could have privacy here.
Once I knew she was safe and in good hands, I called Franco.
“Can you come watch over the house?” I asked. He was only a five-minute drive away.
“Yeah. But why?”
“I have someone here. And I need to go out and take care of a little business.” That was code for a variety of things, and Franco knew better than to ask any questions.
While I cleaned Tessa’s wounds and let Danicia in the house to look her over, Andy had surpassed my expectations. He’d found all three of the guys, because they stopped in the same hotel Andy had a room at. Maybe it was fate. Luck. Coincidence. I didn’t care what happened to line up their paths, but Andy grabbed them all and brought them to the nearest warehouse we owned in the area.
He didn’t need to be told what to do. That was the beauty of having well-trained and experienced soldiers.
Heading to the location he gave me, I let all the pent-up anger I'd tamped down rise to the surface. Rage coated my conscience. Dark energy had me tense and impatient to inflict pain.
I arrived primed and ready to kill those motherfuckers for ever daring to touch Tessa, to prey on her and make her cry.
“Need help?” Andy asked as I walked in and tugged on gloves. I wanted the men’s blood on my hands, but in a rhetorical sense. If I got too messy killing them, I’d need to take even longer to clean up before I returned to Tessa and saw to her care.
I had no clue whether she belonged to anyone. She said she lived with her parents and was afraid about something with a man named Elliot.
But she would be there, and I wanted to be the man to comfort her and see to her recovery.
“No.”
Andy nodded and backed up. Before I walked in, I did a double-take at the short dagger hanging on a hook. I grabbed it, and inside the room where the three rapists were tied up, I took my time carving out lethal lessons as to why they shouldn’t have ever tried to hurt her.
I didn’t hurry because I wanted to give Danicia and Tessa more than enough time and privacy, and also because I relished in the satisfaction of torturing these rapists until they begged for death. On that point alone, I was tempted to let them bleed on slowly and suffer.
Andy was still posted outside the room. He was a spy, but I knew he’d handle helping me out with this too.
“Dispose of them when they’re dead.”
Andy leaned to see past me as I tugged off the gloves. “Want me to kill them and get them out of here quicker?”
I glanced back at the bloody, messy room. “No. They’ve earned every second of agony.”
“Yes, sir.”
It felt good to kill the men who’d raped Tessa, but as I drove back to her in that shambles of a home, I realized that this was quickly becoming more than an ordinary night of being a Mafia prince and a ruthless killer on the streets.
Tessa deserved this act of revenge because she was an innocent, preyed upon and brutally violated.
But a sneaky alternative entered my mind.
I cared. A lot. I wanted to pay back those men personally, even though Andy or any other soldier could’ve handled it for me.
And it was because Tessa, whoever she was, was already getting under my skin in a way no other woman ever had.