Page 32 of Pregnant By the Italian Mafia Enemy

I’d never questioned a mission. Valentino had sent me to kill dozens of people, and I had done it. I’d never felt an ounce of guilt, and I wouldn’t allow myself to start now.

Plus, if flirtation could get me information, it could help my cause. Two birds with one stone.

I took a deep breath and began my senseless flirtation with Dante’s soldier. He was traditionally attractive, but there was still discontent when I looked at him. I didn’t feel the rush of longing that I’d felt while talking to Dante.

I pushed away that animosity and put on a show.

It didn’t take much work to convince him of my interest, and it took even less to have him moving closer.

“You’re really fucking hot, you know that?” he said a handful of times.

Sweat beat at my upper lip and beneath my arms, as I got him closer. He wound his arm around me, and I forced myself to breathe steadily. This was a purely consensual arrangement, and I didn’t need to think back to when another man had been holding me similarly.

I didn’t need to consider what had come of that situation.

I was a different woman now—a stronger, more capable one. This time, I followed through on this flirtation for the sake of information. It was all part of my job.

And Damien? He was nothing more than an underling of Dante’s. I’d killed people in significantly higher positions.

My mouth moved without restraint, only pausing when I heard, “We should take this somewhere more private then.”

My shoulders tensed, and the façade fell away as those words pushed through my mind over and over again. I recognized them from another time and another place, and I found myselffloating between now and then. Damien’s face transformed into a slimmer, leaner one. The smell of his soap transformed into gunpowder and Old Spice. Everything about this moment brought me back to a time when Iwasn’tin control.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Did my voice tremble?

“Come on, baby. I can tell you want to.”

He placed a hand on my upper thigh and leaned closer.

“I—” What could I say? If he wouldn’t have said that damn phrase, I could have gotten through this. I could have kept shamelessly flirting. But now, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

In an instant, a crash exploded to my right, and Damien’s arm left my shoulders. His hand no longer rested on my thigh, and there was nothing but cool air where he’d been sitting. I took a full breath as claustrophobia no longer wracked me.

“Do you have fucking ears?” a menacing voice spoke from behind me.

Damien responded, but I couldn’t make out his words as I turned slowly to face him. Two seats down the bar, Dante stood behind him, shoving his face into the bar top and snarling down at him.

“She said no.”

“She didn’t,” Damien shouted.

Metal flashed in the dim bar lights, and then blood sprayed. I gasped as Damien’s ear came off in one slash, and Dante rested it on the bar top beside him.

“If you’re deaf or dumb enough to think she wants you, you don’t deserve this fucking ear,” Damien screamed, and I winced at the high pitch. “And if you’re ignorant enough to touch her after that, you don’t deserve to keep your fucking fingers either.”

I sat in silence as Dante shoved Damien’s hand on the bar and slammed his knife into it, cutting off three fingers in a brutal plunge that left a fourth half-hanging from his mutilated hand.

Somehow, none of the violence phased me—even as Damien screamed. Even as a few other patrons ran. I only stared, trying to understand why it felt like my throat had been closed off to the air around me. Why did I feel like someone sucked all the oxygen out of the room?

When Dante turned to me, still holding his knife, I met his gaze, mouth falling open.

I had nothing to say.

Even if I did, I couldn’t possibly push it through my lips. Not right now. Not when I felt like I was in another place away from here, one without even a whisper of oxygen.

Dante strode toward me, tucking the gleaming knife into a holster at his side despite the blood that still glistened on the surface. His hand on my upper arm was impenetrable as he pulled me from my bar stool. He didn’t give me a moment to adjust as he tugged me toward the back of the bar, unconcernedabout the screaming patrons and the man who fell to the floor, holding his ear with both his mutilated hand and the other one.

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