Page 69 of Corrupted Deception

The muffled sound of retching came from across the warehouse before he could reply.I took a step in its direction, but he put a hand on my shoulder.

“She’s a brave girl,Signor,but I don’t think she’s killed often,” he said, his eyes pinched with concern.

My heart clenched.

“No, she hasn’t,” I replied. “Charlotte isn’t a killer.” If there’d been any doubt, the way she’d hesitated with Carlos Mendoza had made that clear.

Aurelio nodded and dropped his hand, and I followed the sounds to the bathroom door where Ray was whining unhappily.

I paused there and scratched his head while I turned back to Aurelio.

“Get the bodies into the SUVs and drive them around back, out of sight,per favore.”

“Of course,Signor,” he said and immediately headed toward the door.

“All right, Ray; you keep watch,amico.I’ll take care of the tempest,” I said, talking to the damned dog just like Charlotte did, like he actually understood me.

But the moment I slipped inside the bathroom, I paused. She was bent over the marble toilet, her back to me, holding her hair back in one hand. She looked small and almost fragile, and it made me want to beat the fuck out of the dead man. But even more than that, the urge to hold her and comfort her was like a living thing inside my veins—not a feeling to which I was accustomed. It was one of the things I’d liked about Charlotte; the girl had never been clingy and needy like so many of the other girls I’d known.

“Go away, Cielo,” she said without looking up at me.

All right, so she still wasn’t needy. But that decided it. She fought, and I fought back. That was the way it had always worked between us.

I took a step further into the room and closed the door behind me. I crouched down behind her, my heart aching as I watched her dry-heaving into the toilet.

In between waves she shook her head, still gripping the toilet like a lifeline. “Believe it or not, most women don’t really want people staring at them while they’re throwing up last week’s dinner,” she sniped, her voice laced with discomfort and more than a hint of her usual snark.

I chuckled. “You’re notmostwomen,tempesta.And you know I don’t care what you want.”

Her pained groan in response made me wince. I had no fucking clue what I was doing when I tentatively pulled her hair from her grip and smoothed it back while her stomach continued to revolt.

“I should have left the voltage flowing and electrocuted your ass,” she muttered in between spasms.

When the retching finally subsided, she slumped against the cool bathroom floor. I reached over to the sink, grabbed a washcloth, and soaked it under the faucet.

"Feeling better?" I asked quietly as I offered her the cloth to wipe her face.

She nodded weakly. “Like a million bucks.”

As she shifted, I sat back right there on the bathroom floor and gathered her into my arms, supporting her weight, and cradled her close. She leaned her head away, but otherwise didn’t object. It surprised me that she put up no fight, made me worry they’d done more than rattle her.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said, her tone obstinate.

I could feel her shivers, her racing heart. I didn’t think she was talking about the vomiting.

I stroked her back, my fingers moving in soothing circles.

“I’ve killed before, but it was… it was kill or be killed, you know?—like in the Central African Republic…” her voice trailed off. “I executed those men today, Cielo,” she said, her voice cracking, a vulnerable sound, which was not something I’d ever imagined she could be.

The dead men scattered around her warehouse had made her crack. They’d found a way to break through her storm-laden exterior, and it made my heart pound harder. It called up the urge to paint the whole god damned world with the blood of the men outside.

“They deserved to die,tempesta,” I said, feeling like truer words had never been spoken,“and you did it far more humanely than I would have.”

She let out a scathing breath, but said nothing, and after a moment, she leaned her head against my chest, finally surrendering to my hold on her.

Vulnerable. Soft. I’d never held her like this, never imagined something could feel so inexplicably right.

As I held her trembling form in my arms, her head resting against my chest, something inside me shifted. It was a sudden, overwhelming awareness of the depth of my feelings for her, feelings that had lurked beneath the surface for a decade but had in no way been dulled or dimmed.

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