Page 47 of The Boss
Rocco blinked. “What?”
“Apologize,” Leif repeated. “To the girl you used as a shield.”
Rocco’s eyes slid toward the kitchen where a trembling face peered around the door. For a second, she thought he might do it. Then he smiled, slow and wicked. “No.”
Leif sighed like a man deciding on a tie. “Magnus,” hesaid.
Magnus didn’t ask what. He just moved. Two steps and Rocco’s face met the table with a wet thud. The wire tangle smashed flatter. The knife in his thigh jolted. He made a sound like something breaking deep in a well, ahollow crack that echoed and made everyone nearby wince.
“Apologize,” Leif said again, conversational.
“I’m—” Rocco sucked breath through blood. “I’m sorry,” he said to the kitchen door, the words torn out like stitches. “I’m sorry.”
The server started crying. Magnus’s hand eased. Leif’s didn’t.
“Good,” Leif said. “Now we’re done.” He looked at Mariah and something in his face softened in a way that hurt her chest. “You alright?”
She should’ve said yes. She said, “Touch me,” because the storm in her skin needed a place togo.
His hand left Rocco’s throat and found her cheek, thumb sweeping her bottom lip. The room disappeared. The rain didn’t. It kept falling, acool roar against the windows, asheet down the panes. He didn’t kiss her. He just held her face like it was something he owned and protected and worshipped if worship were a word he allowed himself. Heat rolled low and deep inside her. Rocco tried to move. Magnus’s hand said don’t.
“Later,” Leif murmured, voice full of dark promises. “I’ll remind you who you belong to later.”
“Now,” she whispered, wild and reckless because she could taste the copper of fear and the sugar of relief and they made a drug she couldn’tname.
He smiled, aslice of hunger, and let his thumb press into her pulse. “You’d start a war in a wine bar?”
“I’d start anything with you,” she said. It was a mistake. It was the truth. It made him go very still for one long second, then breathe out like a man who’d been holding something back for hours.
“We’re leaving,” he said. He looked at Magnus. “Giftwrap him.”
Magnus’s grin flashed. “With a bow?”
“Use his tie,” Leifsaid.
In three movements Rocco was upright and then not, arms wrenched behind him, jacket yanked down, wrists bound with silk that cost more than some people’s rent. He staggered, bleeding, spitting curses, and Leif’s men closed in like a weather system. They moved him to the door with the politeness you use when taking out trash. The patrons who hadn’t fled parted without realizingwhy.
At the threshold Rocco twisted and found Mariah with his eyes. Blood had made tracks through his hair. Hate and hunger burned in the same look. “You’ll regret it,” he said, voice raw. “You’ll miss me when he puts you on a shelf like the rest of his pretty things.”
She rose, stepped into the water pooling on the floor, and walked close enough that the collar of his shirt brushed her shoulder. “I’m not a thing,” she said quietly. “I’m the reason you’re leaving this place alive.”
Leif’s hand slid around her waist and drew her back against him, claim and shield. “Out,” he told the men. The door opened. The storm outside swallowed Rocco like a mouth.
Silence fell in stages. Someone shut off the sprinklers. The rain stuttered and died. The piano man swore and lifted the lid to assess the damage to his day’s work. The server in the kitchen took a first unbroken breath. People started laughing the way people laugh when they didn’tdie.
Leif didn’t move for a heartbeat. His body became a wall behind her, heat and strength and the kind of control that made the inside of her thighs ache. He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You did well,” he said. It wasn’t praise. It was a verdict.
She turned in his arms, slid her hands up his chest, and fisted them in his shirt. “I want to go home,” she said, meaning his home, meaning the place where his hands would finally do what they’d promised since he’d walked into herlife.
He looked at her like he was choosing to live and already knew how. “We’re going,” he said. He glanced over her head. “Settle the room,” he told Magnus. “Pay everybody’s bill. Double the server’s wages for the night. Make the cameras forget.”
“Already in motion,” Magnus said, amused and efficient. “And the car’s at the back. Dry.”
Leif took her hand and laced their fingers so their brands met. Heat flared, aprivate lightning. She squeezed back because she had to. They walked through the ruined dining room, past the glittering wreck of glass and water, past the people who didn’t know what they’d almost been inside of. The server who’d had a blade against her ribs met Mariah’s eyes. Mariah stopped, reached, took the girl’s hand in both ofhers.
“You’re safe now,” Mariah said. “Go home. Don’t come back until you forget tonight.”
The girl nodded, shaking. “Thank you.”
