Page 107 of Beautiful Enemy

“You’ve done the same for me.” She ducks her chin to her chest. “Why does this feel like a goodbye?”

I sit up and kiss her gently. “Because it is. If you somehow manage to make your way back to me, I’ll know I won because you’ve decided to become mine fully. And that’s better than any vengeance.”

“Dante.” She kisses me back. It’s a soft, lingering kiss. None of the passion from earlier. Now, it’s just filled with heartache.

A loud bang from the front of the house makes us break apart.

“What the fuck?” I reach for my gun on the nightstand table but find that it’s not there. It must be on the floor with the rest of our clothes.

Before I can reach it, footsteps run through the house. Multiple pairs.

And then, they enter the bedroom.

It’s Sergei and Viktor.

Chapter Eighteen

Nadia

The sight of my father and fiancée shocks me to my core.

How did they find us? Why did no one stop them from coming? Where’s Matteo?

None of those questions matter though. What matters is that they’re here and they lookangry.

Dante lunges for his gun and raises it but Viktor does the same. “I will shoot you,” Viktor warns. “Don’t be stupid. You’re outnumbered. You have no defenses.”

“I don’t care.” Then Dante fires. His shot misses as Viktor jerks out of the way. Viktor quickly fires back and lands a shot straight to Dante’s shoulder, knocking him back onto the bed and forcing him to let go of his gun.

“Dante!” I shout, hovering over him.

Blood seeps from his wound. “I’m fine, baby. Just a shoulder shot. I’ll survive that.”

“You won’t be alive for long,” my father growls. He rushes over to the bed and reaches out to grab me when he stops, his eyes raking over my naked body. “You… you were havingsexwith him?”

“He was raping her,” Viktor says so confidently like he knows what happened between me and Dante. Except nobody knows because what Dante and I have is unexplainable.

Dante lets out a cold laugh that I can tell is tinged with pain. He’s just good at not showing it. “I wasn’t raping her. She gave herself to me willingly. Isn’t that right, baby?”

I freeze. Everything inside of me refuses to move. How am I supposed to move when my father and Viktor are here and Dante is shot? None of this is good.

The sight of my father puts me right back into my home growing up. How scared I was of him. How I would have to walk on eggshells around him every night. How I would cry myself to sleep because I was worried so much for Anya. He terrorized me.

“Nadia?” Dante asks.

My lips don’t even open. All I can do is stare at my father with wide eyes.

Father huffs. “She doesn’t even know what to say. You’re right, Viktor. He was raping her. She’s scared into silence.”

Viktor narrows his eyes and trains his gun onto Dante. “You are going to pay for this. I am going to slowly torture you until you beg me to end your pathetic excuse of a life.”

“I don’t have a pathetic life. You do. I stole your girl away from you and on your wedding day no less. Who’s the pathetic one here?”

I don’t see it happen until it’s too late. Viktor whips his gun across Dante’s head, knocking him onto the bed. It doesn’t knock Dante out but it does leave a nasty red welt behind.

“Shut up,” Viktor hisses. “You don’t get the right to speak to me. You don’t get the right to even speak in Nadia’s presence. You’ve tortured her for weeks now. You are going to die.”

That brings me out of my icy cage. “Don’t. I don’t want him to die.”

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