Page 30 of Under His Protection

“For fuck’s sake.” I shook my head as the soldiers dragged the waiters outside. “I know, Nina.” That she could assume I would blame her for any of this was ridiculous. “I know you didn’t do anything.”

All she’d done since running into me was agree to fake date me. Right now, I had to punish these men for daring to touch what was mine, pretend or not. Because I had a very serious issue of seeing Nina as mine.

And no man would live to touch what I called mine. Ever.

12

NINA

Nina

After a week of hiding at Dante’s mansion and waiting for him to need me to act like his girlfriend, this roller coaster of a night threw me off.

“This way,” Romeo said as he ushered me toward a car.

I hadn’t seen Dante’s son in years. Many, many years, but I recognized the boy he once was in the man who led me out of Escott’s and to an SUV with blacked-out windows.

“Yeah,” I replied breathlessly, worn from the rush to flee and the speediness of how things had changed so quickly.

The expectation to get ready to play pretend for the dinner. Dante’s blinders to my presence before dinner. The extreme opposite of his affection and kisses after it.

And then those two waiters finding me in the hallway, lost on my way to the restrooms because this place was enormous. They capitalized on the fact that I was alone, and with two of them, taller and stronger, I was outnumbered.

Fear and anger meshed, but it ended up as an overwhelming sense of panic.

If Romeo hadn’t arrived when he had.

If Dante hadn’t come to find me…

Shuddering at how closely I’d come to being violated—or worse, raped—was a hell of a hit to come down from. My skin stung, bleeding slightly from their nails when they clawed at my dress. My cheek burned from the backhand the taller guy gave me when I threatened to scream. Warm liquid trickled over my cheek. It wasn’t a tear, but a spot of blood. They’d broken my flesh, and the physical reminder of what happened somehow grounded me. Pressing my fingers to the cut was a motion that helped to pull me from sinking into my head.

“Thank—” I swallowed, then cleared my throat. My mouth was still too dry to speak as I followed Romeo to the passenger door. “Thank you. For…”

“You’re welcome.” He opened the door, frowning at me as I held up the torn scrap of fabric that those waiters tugged from my neck. “Here.”

He didn’t need to open the door any farther. Constella guards flanked us, and more stood behind me. They were a wall, surely protecting me from Escott’s. With how unsettled and weary I was, I would’ve wedged myself through a slim gap of the door’s opening. I wanted to get out of there—now.

But what about Dante? I paused long enough to cast a worried glance back at the building. I wasn’t scared for him. He could handle those men. Dante was older, stronger, more muscled. But I couldn’t shake the anxiety sinking in.

“I didn’t encourage them,” I told Romeo as soon as he got in the car and put it in gear. “I didn’t… I didn’t do anything. I was just going to the bathroom and they cornered me and?—”

He lifted his hand to gesture for me to stop. “No one’s blaming you for anything.”

“Okay. But I just wanted to say it.”

He huffed a dark laugh as he loosened his tie. The Romeo from my childhood was always a serious boy, but the man he’d become wasn’t any different. His aura, his presence, was a somber, serious one. “I came to the dinner late, but I noticed them checking you out.”

I frowned, watching his profile.

Glancing at me but keeping his focus primarily on the road, he seemed just as confused as I felt. “You were… watching me?”

“It’s been a long fucking time since I’ve seen you, but yeah, I watched you. Or I guess I noticed you.” At a red light, he studied me. “It’s been an even longer time since my father actually dated someone or brought a date to anything. So, yeah, color me surprised to see him at dinner with a woman.”

I winced. Dante struggled with the act of having a woman in his life, and Romeo’s wording made me wonder if the sexy man was really that clueless and rusty.

“He hasn’t dated anyone since my mother died.”

“Whoa.” I blinked, not expecting that. She passed away before I was even born, so that was one long dry spell. As handsome and attractive as Dante was—not to mention his obvious expertise in pleasing a woman—I knew he hadn’t been celibate all this time. Yet, I didn’t know how to interpret his breaking his dry spell with me.

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