Page 52 of Savage Heart

And suddenly, with those words, everything I’ve done comes rushing over me. “I killed him, Alaric. He said he was going to keep me here and marry me off again just like you said he would. He grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving, and I grabbed the first thing I could find. I killed him!”

Tears flow down my cheeks and I begin to hyperventilate, making what Alaric’s saying impossible to understand. I’m a killer. I’m going to be wanted here and back in the States and everywhere else in the world. I’ve made sure I will never have a happy day again.

He hurries me out of there, and on the way downstairs, we pass one of the housekeepers I know from living here. Her expression fills with concern, and I follow her gaze to my shirt covered in blood.

Alaric pushes past her and rushes me out the front door out into the sunlight that I’ll never experience again if I’m put away for my crime. Fear flows through me at the very thought of not being able to enjoy a sunny day or waking up next to the man I love again.

I killed my brother because I refused to live looking over my shoulder for the rest of my days, but that’s exactly what’s going to happen now. How could I have done this?

Alaric talks into his phone as we rush toward the hotel, ordering the person on the other end of the call to have a car ready to take us to the airport. “Don’t worry, Sienna,” he calmly says in my ear as he drapes his jacket over me to cover the evidence of my crime. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”

But for how long is the question. How long before the authorities find me here in Italy or back home in the United States and put me away for the murder of my brother?

How long do I get to remain free before I must pay for my crime?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Alaric

She’s slept for three days straight. Tossing and turning, Sienna talks in her sleep about never seeing the sun and wanting to see snow just one more time. I don’t know what she means since she hasn’t spoken about what happened yet. All the way back here on the plane, she sat curled up against me, her eyes closed like she feared opening them again and seeing Matteo there at her feet with those bloody scissors jutting out of his neck. Her body alternated between trembling uncontrollably and resting heavily against me as if she couldn’t do anything else but lean on me.

My beautiful assassin did what I planned to do and in much more fantastic fashion. I would have only put a bullet into his brain. Sienna stuck those scissors in so hard they almost came out the other side of his neck.

I gently stroke her hair splayed out around her head like a reddish-brown halo as I think about how scared I was as I ran to the Rossetti villa. I never doubted how strong she can be, but I knew how easily her brother would lock her up until he found another man willing to pay the price to marry her. I was willing to kill him to protect her, but I never dreamed she’d handle it all by herself before I got there.

Sienna’s eyes slowly open, and she looks up at me like she isn’t sure how I’ll react. She doesn’t have to worry. I loved her before she killed someone. I love her more now.

“Feeling any better?” I ask with a smile, hoping to show her nothing’s changed between us.

“Where are we? The hotel?” she asks, confused after the past few days of sleep.

I shake my head. “No. The island where I live.”

The rest of my explanation remains unspoken. Where you live now. I can’t risk her being found by the police if she goes back to Connecticut, so when we left Italy, I brought her to my home.

She lets out a heavy sigh and closes her eyes. “I killed someone. How do you live with this?”

I don’t know how to answer that question. I just do. I did when I killed the first time defending someone I cared about. I did when I started working for Helix and it became a job and not just something that happened because I didn’t want to see someone hurt.

I live with it because it’s who I am. A killer.

“Are you hungry? I can get you something to eat,” I say, sidestepping her question entirely for the time being.

Sienna shakes her head and looks up at me again. “No. I don’t think I could keep anything in my stomach right now.”

“Okay. Just let me know when you want something, and I’ll get you whatever your heart desires.”

She curls up against me like she did the entire flight back here and rests her head in my lap. “I just want to sleep. I don’t think about it if I’m asleep.”

I want to tell her that she didn’t do anything wrong, but I know she won’t believe that. I do, though. Matteo Rossetti took her from her home just days before her graduation, robbing her of one of the most important moments of her life, and then kept her tied to a chair in a room for days before handing her over to a man known for his cruelty to women. And for what? Money? Killing him was an act of self-defense. She may not believe that now because the act is so fresh in her mind, but she’ll see that someday.

And if she doesn’t, then I’ll have to make sure she does.

This is why I wanted to be the one to kill him. She’s strong but knowing what she did is a weight I didn’t want her to bear.

I sit there silently as she falls back to sleep, but it isn’t long before she quietly says, “Alaric, I need to know how you deal with this.”

Looking up at me, she looks so small and fragile that I want to say the right things to put her mind at ease. I just don’t know if I can find the words.

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