Page 16 of Filthy Little Regrets

My bladder trembles.

Vito caught me eavesdropping. There’s a dead body. I’m a witness they didn’t expect. I think we all know how this ends.

“Cassia,” Mace growls into my ear.

His voice should be a relief, but my heart seizes with the realization that he was here, with the men who killed... What was his name? Luca. The guy whose bank account I hacked into and stole from. He’s dead because of me.

This is my fault.

Guilt skewers me, turning me inside out. This is nothing like what I had done to Ryker and Rayce. I knew they both deserved it. I did my research. I had time to prepare for their deaths, and even then, I didn’t actually watch them die. I didn’t see their lifeless bodies.

“You know this broad?” Vito snaps, gun drawn and hanging at his side.

When did he take that out? Is he going to shoot me? My stomach revolts, bile rising. I swallow and press into Mace, the only person in the room who might help me. I wanted to uncover his secrets, to understand what he was hiding so I knew exactly who I was dealing with, but now I wish I’d left it alone.

The arms around me tighten. “This is my fiancée.”

My entire body is trembling, but those words stop the shaking.I’m sorry. What?

Vito’s eyes assess me, then narrow on Mace. “Since when are you engaged?”

“Since today,” he says, turning me away from Luca’s lifeless form, pinning the front of my body to his. His eyes sear into mine in warning, and my chest heaves as panic settles in.

“What are you saying?” Vito asks.

Mace smooths one hand up my spine, burying his fingers in the strands of my hair and tugging my head back so I’m looking straight at him. My heart stumbling over itself, I bounce my eyes between his. There’s a flash of something in his gaze, maybe regret, only it’s there and gone before I can analyze it. My lips part to ask a question, but suddenly his thumb is there, stroking over my bottom lip.

Shut upthe pressure of his touch says.

“She’s going to be my wife,” he murmurs, his gaze breaking away from mine to stare down the man with the gun. “Wives are protected.”

“But,” Vito says slowly, “she’snotyour wife.”

“Yet,” Mace says, voice dangerously low. His next words yank a pin out of a grenade and toss it into the middle of the room. “Kill her, and we’ll have a problem.”

Silence follows, so heavy and oppressive, it squeezes my lungs until my hard pants fill the space, everyone suspended in some violent in-between. Vito has a decision. Shoot me and Mace and see how Darius Astor reacts, or let me live and take the risk of my snitching.

The weight of Vito’s gaze feels like a thousand knives digging into my back. My skin pebbles and every hair rises, instincts telling me not to give him my back, but I don’t think I can look at the body again without throwing up.

“Are you tying your life to hers?” Vito asks.

He doesn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”

“Make it official and keep her in line.”

“Done.”

My heart jackhammers.

“Good. Now, get her the fuck out of here,” Vito snarls.

Mace glances at me, and I grip hisshirt, terrified, relieved he found a way to save me, but more than anything, confused. What the actual fuck is going on?

Mace practically carries me out of the room, slipping into the conference room across the hall and closing us inside. The weight of my unspoken questions teeter on the edge of the silence stretching between us. Heart slamming against my rib cage, I take a shallow breath, trying to steady myself, but it’s not easy after everything that just happened.

Most concerning of all is that the idea of marrying him is far more terrifying than seeing Luca’s dead body. Reality settles in my blood like a frigid winter’s breeze.Mace’s embrace is suddenly stifling. Every instinct screams at me to fight against it, to keep from drowning in a life that isn’t mine.

Prying his hands off of me, I whirl around and take a few steps away on weak legs. “What was that?”

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