Page 41 of Owning Nicci

I want him dead, butIwant to be the one to kill him.

I think, after what happened tonight, that we might just want to kill each other.

Pressing my hands over my ears, I try to push out the sounds of what’s happening downstairs. I hear another rattle of gunfire, a man’s hoarse cry, and what must be a body hitting the floor. More boots, slapping against wood, coming upstairs?—

Upstairs. I shrink against the bed, trying to make myself smaller, to hide away from what’s happening. From whoever is about to burst through that door?—

I hear the lock rattle. A man’s voice curses outside, rough and impatient. I hear the slam of his boot against the door, the wood cracking, and I hear a thin, high-pitched cry of fear. It takes me a moment to realize that it came from me.

The door crashes open, and I bolt up from where I’m sitting on instinct, looking for a place to run. The man coming through the door is tall and muscled, dressed in black fatigues, a gun in his hand. He comes straight for me, and I bolt to one side, tryingto dart away from him, but he catches me easily with his arm around my waist.

“Gotcha,” he breathes into my ear. “The whore forbothValenti brothers now. Gotta say, I don’t usually fuck something so well used, but I think I’ll make an exception right now.”

That snaps me out of my terrified haze. I feel his other hand sliding down to the front of my jeans, and I twist in his grasp, one thought pounding through my head as all the training that I’ve gone through with Savio comes rushing back.

I willnotlet another man do this to me.

I’ll fucking kill him first. With my bare hands, if I need to, since I don’t have any other weapons. I drive an elbow back into his stomach, ramming it hard against the flat muscle there, and I throw my head back, slamming it against his face as I twist again in an effort to get free of him.

“You fuckingcunt!” he screams it, and I see blood pouring from his nose as I wrench free. I close in on him again, slamming my knee into his groin as he tries to grapple me. I need to get to his gun. If I can get his gun out of his hand…

“Bitch,” he rasps, his arm wrapping around my neck, that same move that Savio used on me that I haven’t been able to figure out how to get out of yet. I try to slip out of it, but he’s bigger and stronger than I am, and he throws me down onto the bed, his arm tightening around my neck as his hand goes for the front of my jeans again.

I buck against him, bringing my leg up hard between his, and he grunts, shaking his head. “Stop fucking figh?—”

I never hear the rest of that sentence. A deafeningcracksounds from the doorway, and suddenly there’s blood on me—on my face—and something thicker, too. I look up, horrified, and see part of the man’s jaw hanging free, blood and teeth and gore leaking from his face as he falls to one side, choking on his own blood.

“Nicci!” Savio’s voice comes from the doorway, and I clamber out from under the weight of the man’s body, flinging myself to the floor as nausea overwhelms me. I don’t have time to think about how Savio might feel about me throwing up in front of him. It rushes up, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I double over, and I’m momentarily lost to the awful feeling rushing through me.

I’m jerked back to awareness when I feel Savio lifting me up from the floor. He puts an arm around me, and I realize he’s helping me toward the bathroom. I want to fight back, to tell him not to touch me, but it feels like all of the fight has drained out of me, along with the vomit on the floor.

“I’m going to get you cleaned up.” He pushes open the bathroom door and reaches for the snaps on my tank top, but there’s no lust in it the way there was earlier, in the car. He undoes my shirt carefully instead, strips off my jeans and my underwear, and tosses them to the floor. “Sit,” he instructs, moving me to the side of the tub, and goes to turn on the shower.

I wrap my arms around my waist, feeling myself start to tremble. I can’t stop thinking about all those nights at the Gilded Lily, all the men who got to speak to me, touch me, the way that man did. No one ever stopped them.Icouldn’t stop them. But Savio stopped him—Savio saved me, and I both hate him for it and think I might…

I squeeze my eyes shut, stopping the thought before I can finish it. He saved me because that man was about to touch something that wasn’t his. Because Savio didn’t want hispossessiondirtied by another man. Not because he cares. But when Savio finishes adjusting the hot water and turns back to me, the look in his eyes is something that almost seems like caring.

It’s more intense. More frantic. He walks back to me quickly, dropping his gun on the counter as he looks down at me.“Are you hurt?” His hand touches my chin, lifts my face, his gaze raking over every inch of my naked body. “Are youhurt,principessa?” he repeats it more urgently, the second time.

I jerk my hand away from his face. “If I am, it’s because you hurt me, back there.” It’s not entirely true. I’m sore from how roughly Savio fucked me, and I will be for a couple days, probably—but he didn’t really hurt me. I expect him to say something back, to reprimand me and remind me of how I’mowned, but he just frowns, looking me over again.

“He didn’t hurt you?”

Letting out a sigh, I shake my head. I’m too tired to keep talking about this. “No,” I say flatly, and Savio lets out a breath that sounds like relief.

He straightens, walking over to the linen closet to take out a towel, before looking at the hook next to the shower—seemingly realizing that there’s one there already. He holds the towel in his hands briefly before setting it down, and for that moment, he almost looks lost—like he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

I stare at him, running over the events of the night in my mind again. I’m struggling to come to terms with the fact that all of this happened in one night. It feels like it should have been three.

“What happened?” I manage. “Who was that man?”

“There were four of them.” Savio runs a hand over his face, and it’s only then that I see the blood speckled on his skin, that I realize there’s more of it on his clothes, too. “I killed three of them downstairs. The other one managed to get up here, to you.”

I shudder. “Because of the Crows?”

Savio shakes his head, reaching out to test the water again. “I don’t think any of them have the connections for something like this. This was different. I think it was…” He hesitates. “I have a feeling that it had something to do with Gallo’s mafia.”

I frown, confused. “Antony Gallo? What?—”

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