Chapter 7
Watching Tomas kill should horrify me. Instead, I’m wet between my thighs, gripping his backup gun, ready to murder anyone who threatens him.
The morning light filtering through the already-shattered kitchen window reveals carnage outside.
Three Santos scouts lie dead in the snow from Tomas's earlier defense.
But they were just the beginning. Through the broken glass, I track him moving through defensive positions like he was born to it.
Leonardo's warning gave us maybe forty minutes, and we've used every second preparing.
I thumb off the safety without thinking. My hands know the weight of his Glock now, know the trigger pull. Muscle memory that shouldn't exist.
The sound of engines breaks the morning quiet.
Multiple vehicles approaching fast through the snow.
Return fire erupts from the tree line. They're here, the rest of the Santos force, surrounding him like wolves, and something feral rises in my chest. A possessiveness so violent it makes my hands shake.
Mine to protect. Mine to defend. Mine to kill for.
I'm at the door before conscious thought catches up, booted feet crunching over broken glass.
The weight of his Glock feels right in my grip, natural, like it was always meant to be there.
My mind whispers about lines that can't be uncrossed, oaths I swore to uphold.
But that voice is distant now, drowned out by the thundering need to keep him alive.
The door opens silently. Icy air slams into me, stealing breath, but I barely feel it. One shooter has flanked wide, trying to get an angle on Tomas's position. He hasn't seen me yet, focused on his prey.
I sight down the pistol the way I've watched Tomas handle weapons, mimicking his stance. Breathe in. Hold. Squeeze.
The recoil jolts through my arms. The shooter drops, his rifle clattering against the ice as he falls.
The Glock is still warm in my hand. I watch him fall—a man whose name I'll never know, whose family will never understand what happened in these woods. My hands should be shaking. I should feel something breaking inside me, some fundamental piece of who I used to be shattering like ice.
But all I feel is the fierce satisfaction of the threat eliminated, the savage joy of protecting what's mine.
The prosecutor who spent all those nights building airtight cases, who believed in justice and law and order—she would be horrified.
She would drop the weapon and run. But that woman feels like a stranger now, like someone I read about in a case file.
This is who I am with him: someone who kills as easily as she once wrote briefs.
The gun weighs nothing in my hands now. Natural as breathing, Tomas said about killing. He was right.
Tomas spins at the sound, sees me in the doorway, and something wild flashes across his face. Not anger. Not fear. Pure, possessive pride that makes heat pool low in my belly despite the violence, because of it.
"Get back inside!" he roars, but I'm already acquiring the next target.
The second shooter turns toward me, rifle swinging up. Too slow. I put two rounds center mass, watching him crumple. This new version of me, this creature born of blood and obsession, only thinks: good, one less threat to him.
The third shooter opens fire, bullets chewing into the doorframe inches from my head. Wood splinters shower across my skin. I drop back, heart hammering not with fear but with something darker. Adrenaline and arousal twisted together until I can't tell them apart.
Through the chaos, an engine roars. A black Range Rover tears through the tree line, bespoke matte paint job immediately peppered with bullet holes. The driver's side window explodes, but the vehicle keeps coming, plowing through a snowbank.
Leonardo.
I recognize him instantly. Same dark beauty as Tomas but wilder, red-haired, unhinged. He crashes the SUV into two Santos soldiers, their bodies disappearing under custom wheels with wet crunches. Then he's out, laughing as he fires in wide arcs, no strategy, just mayhem.
"You fuckers want the Rosettis?" Leonardo screams, blood already streaming from a graze on his temple. "Come and fucking take us!"
More gunfire erupts. More soldiers emerge from the woods. So many more than the three scouts. They'd been waiting, watching, planning this assault. The morning explodes into full warfare.
Tomas grabs my arm, yanking me back inside. "Basement. Now."
"But Leonardo…"
"Can handle himself. Move!"
He pushes me toward stairs I hadn't noticed before, hidden behind what looked like a pantry door.
In the basement I didn't know existed, fluorescent lights buzz against concrete walls lined with enough weapons to outfit a small army.
This was never just a cabin. This was always a fortress, a fallback position for when the family's violence came calling.
Tomas dresses me in tactical gear, lightweight and bulletproof.
White, for camouflage. He presses a rifle into my hands, his body caging mine as he shows me the basics.
His chest presses against my back, breath hot against my ear, and even surrounded by instruments of death, my body responds to his proximity.
"This loads like this," he says, hands over mine, guiding. "Safety here. Shoulder it properly or the recoil will knock you on your ass."
"I studied law to stop people like you," I say, practicing the reload, hyperaware of every point where our bodies connect. His hips against my backside, the solid wall of his chest.
"And now?"
"Now I reload your weapons while you kill them." The admission makes something dark unfurl in my chest, spreading through my veins like poison I've learned to crave. "Now I want to be the weapon you aim."
His hands tighten on the rifle. For a moment, we're frozen like that. Him wrapped around me, bodies pressed together, breathing synchronized. Then he spins me suddenly, pressing me against the weapons rack. Metal cold against my back, his mouth crashes into mine.
The kiss is violent, desperate, all teeth and claiming. His hand fists in my hair, pulling my head back to deepen the angle. I taste blood. His or mine, I don't know. Don't care. All that matters is the solid weight of him against me, the promise of what comes after we survive this.
He growls wordlessly against my lips, then pulls away, leaving me gasping. "Stay alive. We finish this after."
Upstairs, Leonardo has made it inside, trailing blood and chaos. He's still laughing, even with what looks like a serious wound in his shoulder.
"Been years since someone had the balls to come at us directly," he says, grinning through the pain. "Merry fucking Christmas, cousin."
Tomas doesn't return the smile. "How many?"
"Twenty? Thirty? They brought an army." Leonardo starts loading a fresh magazine, blood making his fingers slip. "Good. I was getting bored."
"You're insane," I tell him.
Leonardo looks at me properly for the first time, taking in my bare legs, Tomas's shirt hanging to my thighs, the gun in my hands. "You're the prosecutor. The one hunting us."
"Was," I correct, checking the rifle's chamber. "Now I'm something else."
His grin widens. "Oh, at least she’s interesting, Tomas. That's rare. That's fucking precious." He winces, pressing against his shoulder wound. "Still going to have to die though."
More gunfire outside. Closer now. They're tightening the noose.
"Take position upstairs," Tomas orders me. "East window. Call out what you see."
I should argue. Should demand to stay with him. But this is his world, his rules, and right now following orders keeps us alive. I head for the stairs, but his hand catches my wrist.
"Natalie." Just my name, but weighted with everything we can't say right now.
"Don't you dare die on me," I tell him.
"Same to you."
Upstairs, I take position at the window.
Through the scope, I count bodies, positions, movement patterns.
My voice stays steady as I relay information, even as my finger finds the trigger again and again.
Each shot I take is one less threat to him.
Each kill makes me less of who I was and more of what he needs.
"Three more, northwest corner," I call out. "Moving away, looks like they're falling back…"
Leonardo's scream cuts through everything. Not pain. Rage. Through the window, I see him charging directly at a cluster of soldiers, firing wildly. It's suicide. It's insane. It's going to get him killed.
Tomas sees it too. I watch him make the choice. Pursue fleeing enemies or save his cousin who brought this violence to our door. Family wins. It always wins with him.
He breaks cover, sprinting toward Leonardo. Immediately, three soldiers pivot toward him, rifles rising.
No.
I don't remember making the decision to move. One moment I'm at the window, the next I'm on the porch, rifle snapping to my shoulder. The world narrows to breath and heartbeat and trigger pull.
The first soldier drops before he can fire. The second manages one shot, wide, panicked, before my bullet finds his throat. The third turns toward me, and I see his eyes widen. Maybe he recognizes me.
I put a bullet between those wide eyes without hesitation.
Tomas reaches Leonardo, who's taken another hit, this one to the leg. Together they fall back toward the cabin while I cover them, the rifle kicking against my shoulder again and again. Each shot is a prayer, a promise, a declaration.
When they crash through the door, Leonardo is barely conscious, blood pooling beneath him.
"Kitchen table," Tomas barks, and we work in perfect synchronization, clearing the surface, lifting Leonardo's dead weight.
I'm humming as I work, "Away in a Manger" threading through the chaos as I apply pressure to wounds. The melody feels right somehow. Sacred music while I'm elbow-deep in blood, trying to keep someone alive because he matters to the man I love.
Love. The word stops me cold for a second. When did that happen? When did I fall in love with a man who quotes philosophy while loading weapons, who kills but holds me like I'm precious?
"Don't stop," Tomas says, and I realize he means the pressure on Leonardo's leg wound.
"Will he make it?"
"He's a Rosetti. We're hard to kill." But his voice carries doubt.
"Can they get in?" I ask, worry lacing my voice as I nod toward the outside.
Tomas shakes his head. "Place is a fortress. Looks like a cabin, works like Fort Knox."
The gunfire outside has stopped. Either we've won or they're regrouping. Through the broken windows, snow begins to fall again, covering the bodies like nature's own burial shroud.
Leonardo's eyes flutter open. "Did we win?"
"We survived," Tomas corrects. "Dom's going to be pissed."
"Dom's always pissed." Leonardo coughs, blood speckling his lips. "Worth it though. They won't underestimate us again."
"They won't get the chance," I say, and both men look at me. "Next time they come, we'll be ready. Next time, I'll be better."
Leonardo laughs, wet and pained.
We staunch the bleeding and wrap a bandage around Leonardo's leg. I finish work on Leonardo while Tomas and I secure the perimeter.
Three more Santos soldiers made it to the tree line before dying. Their bodies join the others, a massacre's worth of evidence that would have once had me building cases for decades.
Now I help Tomas drag them into a pile for burning.
"Seventeen," he says, surveying the carnage. "Plus the three scouts from earlier. Twenty men."
"And we killed them all."
"You killed six of them." His voice carries something like awe. "Six men, Natalie. Do you understand what that means?"
"That I'm evil?" I guess.
"That you're magnificent." He pulls me against him, heedless of the blood covering us both. "That you're deadly. That you're perfect in ways I never imagined possible."
His mouth finds mine, and this kiss is different from the desperate one in the armory. This is claiming, possessive, a seal on whatever we've become. I taste violence and victory and something like forever.