Page 11 of Protected By the Mafia

Finally angry enough to stop beating around the bush, Felicity pounded a fist on the armrest of the chair. “Well you never explained that, either! You can’t expect me to quietly acquiesce to being locked in the bedroom of a man whose name I didn’t even know before he kidnapped me! What’s the problem with taking me home? Just drop me off in the middle of the night and threaten to come back and slit my throat or something if I ever tell anyone where I was. I don’t care! This isn’t even my fault, why am I paying for it? You haven’t explained jack shit, okay? I have a—” The words finally caught in her throat, her eyes burning. She swallowed against the brick of emotion inside. “I have people who would look for me if I just up and disappeared.”

Technically one of those people was Tristán and she actually didn’t care how much she inconvenienced him, but somewhere in the back of her mind she figured it was better to make herself sound more important than she was. Telling the man who’d stolen her from her low-budget apartment in the middle of the night and thought nothing of locking her in what she presumed to be his own home that she had only one friend, and that that friend lived on the opposite side of the country, seemed rather stupid.

Cristiano exhaled and scrubbed a hand through his short-cut dark hair. The brown looked even darker since it was still damp. Then his eyes locked onto hers again, the blue somehow stormier than before, and he said, “I didn’t answer that earlier because I knew the answer would upset you more than just being stuck here. Are you prepared for that, sweet Felicity?”

She scrunched up her face. “I may be young, but I’m not a child. If you think my life has been roses and sparkles or something up to now, I’ve been giving you too much credit.”

“I’ve never considered you a child, Felicity.” Cristiano didn’t blink. “I brought you here to protect you, even if it’s hard for you to see it that way.”

Her mouth fell open. “Protect…” She was shaking her head before she realized it. “How is this protection? How is this anything other than plain, old-fashioned kidnapping?”

“It’s that, too.”

She jumped to her feet. “It can’t be both!”

Something lit in his eyes and it looked like he held back a smile. Just for a second. “It is. Because of how I got you here, and why I’m keeping you here.”

“Why would I need protection? No one even cares about me; they certainly wouldn’t go out of their way to hurt me.” She realized her blunder only too late.

Cristiano caught it immediately, of course. This time his lips did lift, just a little. “Except for those ‘people’ who’ll be looking for you soon?”

Felicity deflated a bit. “Okay, maybe I exaggerated on that…” She sucked in a breath. “That shouldn’t mean my life matters less!”

Cristiano was on his feet in the span of a heartbeat, suddenly in her space, bending over her with his large hands cupping her cheeks. His skin was warm and rough, but his touch was as gentle as his nearness was intense. “Your life absolutely matters,” he said. His tone was aggressive, almost angry, and yet she wasn’t frightened. “That’s why I brought you here, Felicity. Because your half-brother fucked up and put a target on a lot of heads, including yours. Right now, hiding here is the only way you survive.”

Her hands landed on his chest as if increasing her amount of contact with him would provide her better stability, or better clarity of thought. Instead her head spun. Her fingers curled in his shirt. She didn’t understand. Visions of a different male—younger, slimmer, and angrier—crowding over her clouded her mind. “A-are you saying T-Tristán’s … finally coming after me?” Her question was weak to her own ears, but hearing it out loud, she heard something else, too. That didn’t feel like the message Cristiano was bringing her. But her brain was having a hard time processing.

Cristiano frowned. “Finally?” he repeated. His tone gentled to match his touch. “What just happened, baby?”

She dragged in a breath, his scent filling her lungs. She’d become quickly familiar with the scent of him that day, locked as she’d been inside his space. Already the subtle, somehow woodsy, aroma immediately conjured the sense of Cristiano in her mind. And she knew she shouldn’t have found comfort in it, or in him, considering everything. But she did. “That’s a different story,” she said quietly. “Let’s just say it’s … a long time coming.”

Cristiano extended one thumb beneath her chin and tipped her head up again, drawing her focus back to his gaze. “He’s not coming after you, Felicity. He’s not coming after anyone.”

She frowned. She wanted to believe him, as stupid as the rational part of her brain insisted that was, but she struggled to keep up with what he was saying. “Then, how…?”

Cristiano scooped her up, his hands running over her sides as his grip adjusted, and turned them back toward the bed. “How detailed of an explanation do you really want?”

Her whole face had to be red again, she was sure. Her head was practically up against his shoulder, her body tipped sideways into his strong chest as he carried her princess style. There was no way he couldn’t hear her heart hammering away as she tried to stay present and not lose herself in idiotic fantasies. She barely heard his question, and certainly didn’t process it before he was sitting again on the side of the bed and setting her down—in his lap.

She still hadn’t found her tongue when he moved a hand to her jaw. He tilted her head so she was facing him, his other arm wound around her and his perfectly proportionate but nonetheless massive hand clamped onto her outer thigh.

“Felicity,” he said, “either answer my question or tell me why touching you is a bad idea.”

The heat still burning her cheeks seared through her and it was all she could do not to squirm on his lap. Was it a bad idea? Yes. Yes, it’s a bad idea. The only thing she really knew about this devastatingly gorgeous beast of a man was that he was more than comfortable kidnapping innocent women and holding them for ridiculous reasons. She was shameful enough for having masturbated to him earlier, she could not do more than that. No kissing, no getting handsy, and absolutely—definitely—no giving him her hated virginity.

She told herself not to think about how much better it would probably be with a man like Cristiano than with one of the lame frat boys she’d thought were her better options in the not-so-distant past. Then she opened her mouth. “I want to know the truth,” she said, proud of herself for saying the right thing. “I can handle it.”

His eyes softened for a beat and his thumb brushed across the underside of her lower lip before he pulled his hand away. “Good girl.” He reached into his pocket. “Brace yourself, baby. It’s not a happy story.”

She nearly moaned. Men actually say that in real life? They were just two words, and they hit so much harder to hear than to read on a page. It wasn’t fair. Maybe she had made the wrong choice. Maybe she should change her mind. That was a woman’s prerogative, right?

Felicity dragged in a breath, her gaze moving to the phone now in the hand he’d previously used to touch her skin. She twisted her hands in his shirt again. “What am I about to see?”

“I told you about the gang your half-brother’s running with. And you know who I am.” Neither of those statements were questions, so she nodded and waited for him to continue. But she wasn’t, truly, prepared for the story that followed.

Cristiano told her of the terrible things Tristán was responsible for, the ones just associated with—against—the De Salvos. He told her how Tristán had cost an innocent woman and her young son their safety by capturing their nightwatchmen, as well as strung up and murdered those men, all the while laughing like it was some kind of game. How he’d filmed it. Felicity wanted to be sick simply hearing that story. She could barely force herself to listen to how it came out that he’d also authorized an assault on Dante De Salvo’s home in an attempted assassination of his fiancée. She wanted to scream at learning that when the assassination failed, Tristán himself had made a second attempt, in public.

Her moronic half-brother had personally gone up and put a knife to the Dragon’s fiancée’s throat. It didn’t matter at that point that the woman had escaped with barely a bump on the head. The damage was done.

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