Page 41 of The Boss's Temptation

I grin. I’m liking Dom more and more. I pull Katrina’s phone from my pocket and bring up the text convo. “Can you read what the Russian parts say?”

He takes it from my hand and studies it. He scrolls up, but then turns red. “Sir, I… is this Mrs. Genovese’s phone?”

“It is. What does it say?”

I nods. “The other number referred to her as a….” He frowns. “Sir…”

“Just tell me, Dom.”

“He’s calling her a whore.”

My teeth grind. My temper flares. But I nod. “Keep going.”

“She’s telling him to leave her alone. Then there’s the English where he asks how things are going. She repeats to leave her alone. Then he…” He looks up at me. “Listening devices?” he growls.

“The last part, Dom,” I growl. “Her response to him asking her to put that shit in my office.”

He eyes the phone. He grins. “She told him to go fuck himself with a screwdriver. It says ‘I’m never doing that for you or anyone. Not to him.’”

I blink. The ice that’s formed around my heart in the last hour beings to crack. “Fuck,” I hiss.

“Sir?”

I stand quickly. “I think I’ve just seriously misjudged something,” I growl. More like someone. “Dom, I need to end this a little short—”

There’s crash and a thunderous bang from somewhere upstairs in the house. My blood chills. I hear the scream, and I start running. It’s Katrina.

I see red mist, and I run blindly through the house. I tear up the stairs and down the hall to Katrina’s quarters. I don’t have a gun on me, but I don’t care. If someone’s trying to hurt her, I’ll kill them with my bare fucking hands.

I crash through the door to her rooms. The first thing I see is an enormous shipping crate sitting in the middle of the room. One of the sides of it is smash in. Or rather, smashedout. Katrina screams again. It’s coming from the bedroom. I roar, and I bolt for the door.

I crash inside and go tumbling into one of the men. I snarl and lurch to my feet. My eyes sweep up, and my heart stops. The second man has his arm around Katrina’s neck. He’s got a gun to her, too. But he barks something in Russian and jabs the gun at me.

I grab the man I’ve fallen over and yank him up. The guy with the gun fires, but it’s his buddy that takes the bullets. The guy cries out as the man holding Katrina backs away towards the balcony.

“Don’t you fucking—”

“Stay back,” he barks in a heavily accented voice. “Stay back, or she dies.” He turns the gun towards Katrina. My heart wrenches.

“You motherfucker…”

He kicks the doors to the balcony open. There’s the sound of shooting outside. I see headlight veering crazily across the front lawn of my goddamn house, right towards the driveway under her balcony.

“Katrina…”

“Back!” The man barks.

“Whoever you are,” I snarl. “I will find you, and I will rip you apart.”

He chuckles. “Fuck you.”

“Micheal!”

My eyes hold hers. My heart screams at me to tell her everything I feel. To tell her I’m in love with her. But the man is dragging her onto the balcony. A ladder clatters against the railing. Another man pops up and snarls at me.

“Katrina,” I groan. Our eyes hold each other’s. “It’s going to be okay,” I hiss. “I’m going to—”

“See you in hell,” the man chuckles. He grabs something from his belt. He pulls the pin out of it and chucks it into the bedroom. I takes me half a second to realize it’s a grenade. The two of them drag Katrina kicking and screaming over the railing as the grenade skitters to a stop at my feet.

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