Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
My body started to shake. “Are we safe?”
He frowned. “I’ll kill anyone who blinks at you wrong, happy?”
“Comforting,” I mumbled. “And no, I’m not happy. Why would any of this make me happy? I’ve been dropped in the middle of a mob war. I had a Russian mob boss as a father, which actually does explain a lot, so thanks for that. And what, he just got tired of us? Threw us out?”
Santino sighed in annoyance. “You still don’t get it. This is why you will never sit at the big kids’ table. Because you won’t ever get it. You are half of what he hates, half of what he loves. He was so angry at his wife that he took the single most precious thing she had. He needed the eldest to take on his legacy. The other two? Simple spares that would hurt your mom and brother more than anything. It kept them under his thumb, and when he no longer had use for you…” He shrugged. “He simply took you for a drive.”
My nose burned, and my eyes right along with it. “A drive.” I looked away from him and stared down at the comforter. “Like you take with a pet.” I stared straight at the clean, stark white comforter, refusing to blink. “I was a pet.”
“No,” Santino said softer. “You were a pawn. There is a big difference.”
“Pawns get taken to the special farm too?” I tried to joke.
He didn’t laugh. “You were useful until you weren’t. I’m still not sure how you didn’t die, but here you are, so make the best of it. Your brother went through shit to even find you.”
“So I should say thank you?”
“Yes.” Santino snapped. “Say thank you to the only fucking family you have left! The family that actually cares for you!”
“Cares!” I spat.
Santino marched up to me until my head was right in line with his waist and leaned over. “Oh, I’m sorry, did you need prettier words? A softer delivery? Three-point-seven million dollars.”
I gasped and met his eyes. “What?”
“The price they’ll pay for your brother’s head. Rumors have it, the longer he stays alive, the higher the price goes, so you tell me? As he’s fighting to stay alive and keep his family safe, why should you sit here and think he doesn’t for one-second care?”
“But… why?” I shook my head. It was too much information to digest. “Why would they want him dead?”
“Because he’s powerful.” Santino didn’t seem happy to admit it. “Because the Five Families of the Cosa Nostra are strong again, united, not fighting. Take your pick. Trust me, Italy was happiest when the Five Families all wanted to kill each other, and now… pot roast.”
“What?” I blinked slowly at him.
He shook his head. “Never mind, there was blood, a pot roast. You don’t need the gory details.”
I trembled and tried not to focus on the fact that despite his shower, he still had blood running down his arm. “So we just live in fear?”
He ran his hands through his thick hair and then bit down on his lip like he was trying to keep himself from yelling at me. With a curse, he made his way to the side of my bed and very slowly ran a finger up his own arm, catching some of the blood trickling from an actual wound in his arm. “This…” He spread the blood between his fingertips. “…is the only thing that matters.”
“Blood?” My voice cracked.
“Blood.” He nodded as he raised his bloody fingertips to my forehead and swiped across my skin. “Blood makes you a target, but it also offers you protection. You’re as good as covered in mine from this day on. That is my vow. Take it or leave it. I don’t give a shit. But at least you know there will be one body between you and certain death, and at all times, that body will be mine.”
I started to shake. Did he really just put his blood on my skin? I swallowed the horror in my throat and managed to get out. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Consider me your shield.” He leaned back. “They will have to spill my blood in order to get to you, and I’m not an easy man to kill.”
“Says the guy who’s bleeding,” I snapped back immediately, wanting to crawl under the covers at his menacing expression. He was painfully beautiful with angry eyebrows and a mouth that sneered more than it smiled.
Why was I fixating on that?
Or his body?
Blood. He’d literally put blood on me.
“He missed on purpose.” He shrugged. “I barely felt it.” He stared me down and then whispered. “You’re hard to figure out. One minute you’re brave, and the next, you remind me of a little girl.”
That stung. I lifted my chin. “I’m not a little girl.”