Page 92 of Delivered to the Devil

“A man named Ricco tracked you down for me. Gave me your address.”

“And then what? Did he help you get into the country too?” I curl my hand around the back of her neck, and I can’t hold back my anger as I lower my voice and tighten my grip. “Or were you foolish enough to drive across the border yourself?”

She shakes her head against my chest. “His… associate helped me.”

“And how are the two of them associated?”

She lets out a heavy sigh. “A biker club.”

“Fuck!” I exclaim, digging my fingers so hard into the sides of her neck that she yelps. “You can’t get involved with people like that.” I pull her out to look her in the eyes, needing to see if she’s telling the truth when she answers my next question. “How did you pay him?”

“Cash. Seventy thousand Danish crowns,” she mumbles, lowering her gaze, clearly knowing that’s not what I mean.

“What else?”

She tries to dismiss me with a shrug, but I’m not going to let this go before she tells me the full truth.

“What else?” I demand, giving her a shake. “And don’t tell me you got all that for seventy thousand. I know this business, Rebecca.”

She stares down at her hands, clearly unable to face me as she says, “A night with Ricco.”

A feral growl escapes me, and all my muscles coil tight, adrenaline spiking in my veins as I’m preparing for a fight. Her eyes become frightened as she looks back up. I think she’s afraid I’ll hurt her, and part of me wants to, but a more pressing part of me wants to hold her. Take care of her and protect her. So I do that. I pull her into me and hold her, letting the feeling of her slender body appease the rage boiling inside me.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“Don’t lie,” I growl, tightening my grip around her to the point where her breathing becomes shallow. I hold her there for a while as I struggle to rein in another wave of rage, and it’s still simmering when I pull her back out to stare her straight in the eye. “Don’t. Ever. Let another man touch you again. No fucking man puts his hands on you unless I say so.” I shake her by the neck to force the message into her. “Do you get it?”

She nods, and her face flickers with this strange mix of fear and something that looks like relief that makes me want to throw her onto her back and fuck her brutally even as I hug her tight. But I’m afraid I’ll lose control with my temper still raging inside me, and I don’t want to hurt her. Not like that. So I settle for holding her, feeling how her rapid heartbeat calms as she snuggles into me. It soothes my urge to rip something apart and punish her, and I gradually come down too, loosening my grip on her and caressing her instead.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” I finally say as the anger morphs into a nagging sort of defeat. “I should try to get you out again, but I can’t make myself do that.”

“Then don’t.”

“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is if Gabor finds out that I’m hiding you here?”

“I know,” she says.

“He thinks I got rid of you—that you’re dead.” Silence hangs heavy in the air as I consider how to explain this to her. The danger of her being here. “He’ll want us both to pay if he finds out you’re still alive. Which he will, eventually, if you stay here.” He won’t kill me. I’m too valuable. But the thought of him killing Rebecca… I simply can’t take it.

“I’m sorry,” she says, seemingly at a loss for words.

“If someone finds out that I’m hiding you here, he’ll have no choice but to react.” I rub my forehead, then drop my hand to the couch with a sigh. “I could try to get us fake IDs so we could skip town. But it’s risky. Nothing slips under Gabor’s nose around here. And we’d be watching our backs for the rest of our lives.”

“You said he wants to keep things clean. No dead bodies and all that. Isn’t there a chance he’ll let us go. Hunting someone down must mean lots of trouble—lots of resources.”

I let out a humorless chuckle. “Sure, if it was only you. But if I betrayed him like that—disobeying a direct order, then taking off…” His eyes darken into black pits. “He’d want to cut me into tiny pieces and feed them to the pigs.” He’d want revenge of the worst kind. This strange connection we have goes both ways. Gabor is the only person I’d trust with my life, and he feels the same about me.

She clutches my shirt, pressing herself close to me. “What then? I need to know.”

“I don’t know. I might have a plan, but it’s dangerous for us both, and I haven’t fully thought it through yet.”

CHAPTER 43

“Blessed Be”

by Spiritbox

Rebecca

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