Page 51 of Brutal Legacy

“To Casa Nera. It’s time for you to meet the King of Atlantic City.”

“Renato? He doesn’t scare me, just so you know.” I followed him out onto the dark street. My neck throbbed a little where he’d injected me. “I knew him when he was younger. He doesn’t scare me,” I repeated, maybe more for my own reassurance than anything else.

My mercenary just shrugged, his eyes alert and checking every corner.

“Maybe he’s not the one you should be worried about.”

16

ELIO

Iwas glad I was wearing black when we walked through the cheap motel I’d been hiding out in near the private airstrip. It concealed the blood just enough not to freak out the bored clerk on duty in the small hours of the night.

Georgia was silent for once. So, that’s all it took to shake her confidence. Slaughtering ten men in front of her. Good to know.

We got into the double room, and I locked the door behind us. I’d been keeping a low profile and hiding from the cops for days since Georgia had given them a detailed description of me. Luckily, they seemed to lose interest in both of us when they worked out who the dead body was in Georgia’s apartment.

It was no big surprise they’d pulled her building’s security detail, as crappy as it was. The LAPD didn’t care about the murder of a man like the loan shark who’d broken into Georgia’s apartment in the night. They were glad he was dead. One less lowlife to manage on the streets.

Still, I needed to get us out of here. The Ravellis were stepping up their efforts, no doubt seeing how Georgia, their leverage, was about to slip through their fingers.

I moved farther into the room and started to strip down.

“What happens now?” Georgia asked. Her voice was faint. She’d seen a whole lot of nightmarish shit in the last few days, probably more than her entire life put together.

That wasn’t my problem.

“Now, we wait while our flight gets rearranged.” I pulled my soiled shirt over my head and flung it toward the bathroom.

Georgia was staring at me in alarm. “What are you doing?”

“Taking a shower, what does it look like? What, you need one, too?” I turned to her.

Her gaze hit my torso and slid down and around. Thank fuck that I’d only had a couple of tats back in my youth, and now, combined into sleeves like they were, they were pretty indistinguishable.

“Don’t tell me you’re an environmentalist? You want to save water and shower together?” I stepped closer to her. “Isn’t that what all the kids are up to?”

I wasn’t quite feeling like myself. I was exhausted, adrenaline dumping out of my system. In the week since I’d been back in contact with this woman, I was feeling more things than I’d allowed myself to feel for over a decade. It was untenable. I felt like a kettle, overfilled and destined to boil over.

Georgia wet her lips, and I couldn’t fucking look away.

“We’re not kids anymore,” she said quietly, her gaze darting around my face.

I knew what she was looking for. She still suspected me of being Elio. Of course she did. She wasn’t stupid. Despite the changes in us over the years, her gut told her the truth. But something was throwing her off, maybe even more than the contacts. She’d never imagined that the Elio she’d known could become a man capable of the bloody acts I’d committed tonight. That, more than anything else, told her that her instincts were wrong.

“Hmm, guess not.” I turned away and grabbed a fresh towel, heading to the bathroom.

As soon as I was inside, I turned the lock and leaned on the cool surface, letting the sudden drop in temperature cut through my heated thoughts. I glanced down. I was fucking hard as hell. It wasn’t anything unusual to be hard after a tough fight. A celebration of life. Your body urgently demanding you go and pass on your genes immediately, in case next time, you don’t walk away.

But that wasn’t why I was hard right now. There was no point in lying to myself.

I was hard right now because of the woman in the next room and the way she smelled. The way her body fit against mine. The way her lips had shone after she’d licked them.

Fuck.

I turned the shower as cold as it would go and stepped in. My breath left me as the freezing water rained down on me, shocking my system.

I was more than flesh and biology. The dark hell that I’d lived had broken fundamental parts of me, and it had all been because of her.

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