Page 138 of Devil's Tulip

We get into the elevator, and I tighten my grip on Michael as it shoots up, the babies shifting around in my belly like they’re wondering what the hell is happening.

When the doors slide open right onto the penthouse floor, I’m surprised to find the Nightshades men, Elira, and their collective security detail all gathered in the great hall, their expressions tight with tension.They weren’t waiting for us. Something’s wrong.

“Why weren’t you answering your calls?” Maximo snaps, waving for the men to pile into the elevator. Elira walks towards me, and I let go of Michael to lean in and hug her as much as my protruding belly allows.

“Because we were almost here. Did something happen?”

“There’s a hot raid going on in our respective places of business right now,” Rafael states with unnatural calm. “Didn’t you get a call from your men at the office?”

As if summoned by his words, Michael’s phone begins to ring, and my husband’s handsome face transforms into impenetrable stone.

I lean closer to check the caller ID and see Lorenzo’s name flashing. Michael answers, and because I’m pressed against him and his secretary is yelling, I can hear every word blasting through the speaker.

“Fuck, Michael, I didn’t realize my phone was on silent. We’ve run into some trouble back at the office—we need to go,now.”

“Give me a moment.” Michael hangs up and faces his brothers. “Do we know who it is?”

“FBI, and the person leading the raid is Emilia,” Romero answers, shaking his head slowly like he still can’t believe it.

Emilia? Almost instinctively, my eyes snap to Rafael, searching his face for a reaction. But he remains outwardly calm, his expression bland like he couldn’t be bothered by all this.Yeah, right. There’s no way he isn’t bothered.

“We need to leave. Now,” Rafael says calmly, adjusting his jacket as he walks towards the elevator and presses the button. The doors slide open almost immediately, and he goes in, turning to face the others with a single raised brow.

Romero joins him, and Michael drops a hard kiss on my forehead. “You’ll be safe here,” he murmurs before pulling away to join his brothers. Maximo also whispers a quick goodbye to his wife before following them.

Then the doors slide shut, and they’re gone.

“Emilia is an FBI agent?” Elira’s wide eyes meet mine. “I’m not sure what Michael’s told you about her, but to Rafael, I think she might be the one. The one who got away.”

I shake my head slowly. Rafael and an FBI agent?

BONUS EPILOGUE

RAFAEL

Five years ago…

“Well, well, well… What brings the great Rafael Moretti to my humble abode?” Neil Gallagher’s smirk crawls across his face while he rolls his unlit cigar between his fingers.

I pick up the lighter on the table and flick it on. “Business, Gallagher. Purely business.”

He raises a single brow as he leans forward, touching the cigar’s tip to the flame. The tobacco catches, glowing ember-red, and the sharp scent of burning leaves fills my nostrils. I snap the lighter shut, watching him take a deep pull before blowing the smoke directly into my face—a cheap power play that almost makes me laugh. I don’t even blink.

“Is that so?” He finally drawls after two more long drags. “And might this business concern a certain feisty little lass I currently have in my… care?” His voice drips with insinuation and it takes every ounce of my considerable control not to lunge across the table and shake the information out of him.

He’s a smart one, I’ll give him that.

But then he had to be—to successfully claw his way up from a lowly foot solder to the boss of his own mafia outfit, with no familial or royal ties to smooth his climb. “Funny you should mention that, Neil. Yes, it was brought to my attention that you have in your possession something that belongs to me.”

“Ah, but you see, the lass got a wee bit too curious, started stickin’ her pretty little nose where it don’t belong. I can’t just be handin’ her over all willy-nilly like and—” He cuts off abruptly when one of his men appears at his side, bending to whisper urgently into his ear.

Neil stiffens. His eyes, previously heavy-lidded with false ease, now burn with rage as he glares at me. “Ye wouldn’t have anything to do with her sudden disappearance now, would ye boyo?” His Irish brogue thickens, his temper rising with it.

Fuck. “She’s gone? You mean you lost her?” I launch myself from the booth, cursing viciously. My phone is already in my hand as I sprint through the club, dialing my investigator—the one who I tasked with watching her here in Boston.

He was supposed to make sure nothing happened to her—well, nothingmore. Because the last I’d heard, my little trouble maker had gone and gotten herself kidnapped.

“Bryan–”

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