Page 31 of The Bodyguard's Vow

Before he could react to my half-joking ultimatum, Domenico’s phone let out a shrill alarm.“Cazzo!”

After gently setting me on the mattress, he slid off the bed to stalk over to the armoire against the wall to our left. When he flung the doors open and revealed four monitors connected to the security system, I gasped.

“Wow, this security system has all the bells and whistles. No wonder you weren’t worried about anyone sneaking up on us when Rafa showed up tonight.”

“I would never have brought you here if it wasn’t.” He quickly tossed on a pair of dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and hiking boots. I followed suit and dressed in a pair of sweatpants and one of his shirts before sliding a pair of running shoes onto my feet.

Then he grabbed his Beretta and Glock, not bothering with their holsters, just shoving a couple of extra magazines into his pockets. The one for his Beretta held fifteen extra rounds, while the Glock’s capacity was six.

“Forty-two bullets? That’s a lot of firepower.”

“I’m not going to fuck around when your safety is on the line.” He yanked open a drawer beneath the monitors and retrieved the suppressors for his pistols. Then he grabbed two stiletto switchblades, following that up with one of the burner phones Dante had mentioned. He tossed the device at me. “It may turn out that your brother’s timing was impeccable becauseshit’s about to go down. Send him a text to let him know we could use some help.”

I turned on the phone and pulled up the messaging app. Luckily, my brother had made all of us girls memorize his number so I was able to punch it in and send an SOS.

“Done. What else can I do?”

Domenico captured my mouth in a quick, deep kiss that took what remained of my breath away. Then he stroked his thumb over my cheek as he ordered, “You’re going to keep your sweet ass inside while I take care of the problem.”

I wasn’t a fan of twiddling my thumbs while the man I loved put his life in danger to keep me safe, but that was an argument for another time. Right now, I needed to do whatever I could to help him stay focused on the problem at hand. “I can do that.”

“Thank you,sole mio.” He darted into the closet and came back out with a bulletproof vest. “And you’ll wear this while you’re doing it.”

I thought it was overkill, but I didn’t want him to worry about me. “Okay.”

He gave me another brief kiss and promised, “I’ll be quick.”

Shaking my head, I waved him off. “Take however long you need. Just come back to me in one piece.”

“Will do.”

After removing the shirt I’d pilfered from him so I could put the bulletproof vest on underneath it, I rolled the desk chair from the corner so that it was in front of the armoire. Then I plopped down to catch the show.

Watching Domenico in action was bloody…but it was also a thing of beauty. He instinctively knew exactly which approach to take with each man he needed to take out. And there were a lot of them, nearly a dozen at my last count.

The first three dropped after being shot. All it took was one bullet each—to the head, to the heart, and to the neck. Afterleaving those bodies in his wake, I watched Domenico stalk his next two victims up close and personal. That way, their deaths didn’t alert the other bad guys, who were only ten feet ahead of them, to the danger my man presented. He snapped their necks and slowly lowered them to the ground before pulling his guns from his waistband again and aiming them at the back of the other two guys' heads.

A quick pull of each trigger, and both men’s dead bodies dropped. Domenico didn’t slow his pace to check any of their pulses. He was too familiar with dealing death to worry about missing. And he was on a clock…determined to kill all of them before anyone could get to me.

His motivation worked wonders for his body count. After another three minutes, he was up to nine.

I’d never been a nail-biter and had complete confidence in Domenico’s abilities, but I still chewed on the tips of my reverse French manicure while studying the monitors. The stress of the past few weeks must have taken more of a toll than I realized because I felt as though I was almost about to jump out of my skin. I needed Domenico in here, with me…where we’d be safe together.

When he took down another guy with a quick swipe of one of his stiletto blades across his neck, we were that much closer to what I wanted.

“Ten down and only one more to go,” I crowed, doing a little dance in my chair.

My celebration came to a sudden halt when an unfamiliar deep voice corrected my count from behind me. “You’re wrong, Gabriella DeLuca. There’s one man you didn’t include in your tally. Me.”

I had been so focused on the lethal show that Domenico was putting on that I completely missed the fact that someone had gotten into the room with me. If I made it out of this alive, I wasin for a long lecture about situational awareness—something that had been drilled into my head since I was a little girl. But in my defense, I hadn’t thought it was even possible with the kind of security system Domenico had in place. Something must’ve gone horribly wrong for this guy to have gotten inside.

Swiveling my chair, I glared up at a face I only recognized because I had researched his name from the safety of my cousin's home in New York eighteen months ago. “Douglas Snyder.”

His lips curved into a smile that was somehow both sinister and pleased. “You know who I am.”

“I do,” I confirmed, willing my voice to remain steady despite being scared out of my wits.

“Good.” He lifted his arm to point his gun at my head. “Then you get that I’ll happily blow your brains out if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

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