Page 86 of Savage Proposal

“They better be.”

CHAPTER 54

Isabella

For all the times that Lorenzo had threatened to lock me up, I was still shocked when I heard the bolt click into place. That shock quickly melted into anger, and I found myself pacing the floor in a way that I thought nobody ever really did.

“I am going tokillhim,” I said out loud. “I am going to drag him down to that creepy murder room and use every single one of those?—”

Rapid pops cut me off. My breath caught in my throat. That couldn’t be what I thought it was. There was no way.

I jerked when the door wrenched open; I nearly threw myself to the floor, anticipating the spray of gunfire. Instead, Amalia stood in the doorjamb, clutching a key in her hand so hard that I thought she might slice open her palm. “What’s happening?”

Amalia’s eyes were large and owlish. I had never seen her in such a state before; she was usually so sharp and unflappable. “I don’t know, but a lot of the guards outside are dead. I can see them from the window. Damian’s gone after whoever is responsible.”

This sounded so sickeningly familiar. “What do we do?”

More gunfire filled the air: this time it was from inside the house. Amalia lurched forward and grabbed my arm. Her fingers gripped me like a vise, and I squeaked but didn’t pull away. “We have to go.”

She pulled me down the back staircase that led directly into the kitchen. Unlike the grandiose staircase in the main foyer, these ones were wooden and steep, and if it weren’t for her hold on me, I might have tumbled down in my haste.

We came into the kitchen, crouching so that we wouldn’t be seen in the windows. Amalia grabbed a key fob from the rack by the back door, ready to make a run for the garage, but I tugged her to a stop. “How are we going to get from here to there?” I asked, gesturing to the kitchen door and what lay beyond it.

Her eyes were far away and a little scary: I had seen the same look on her husband before. “Damian will be keeping them busy.”

“And you trust him?” I asked. “With our lives?”

I wasn’t questioning the man’s loyalty, and we both knew that. I just needed to hear her say that she trusted him enough to keep us alive. “I trust him with our lives,bella,” she said, understanding exactly what I needed. “I trust him with Lorenzo’s baby’s life.”

“Okay,” I said, sucking in as deep a breath as I could. “Okay.”

“When we go, don’t look around,” Amalia said. “Just focus on me and running.”

“Okay,” I said again, and then she opened the door slowly; she kept tucked closely to the doorframe so that she wasn’t leaving herself open. When nothing happened, she sprang into action.She sprinted down the steps and across the lawn, dragging me behind her.

The grass was wet on my bare feet, and I had a split-second to wish that I had put on shoes when I felt somethingwhizzover my head coupled with the loudest boom that I’d ever heard.

“Keep running,” Amalia shouted over the noise.

We made it to the garage, and she wrenched open the door. Once we were inside, she threw the external lock door and pressed the unlock button on the fob in her hands. The SUV on the far side of the garage beeped.

As we picked our way through the garage, we tried to keep down, but we hadn’t quite reached the car when one of the window panels ahead of us broke, and Amalia yelped and hit the floor, taking me with her.

“Amalia?” I crawled to her and cried out when my hand touched wetness. “Amalia, honey, talk to me.” I couldn’t see things clearly, so I ran my hands over her. She had been shot just to the right of center in her torso. I put all of my weight on the bullet hole and racked my brain for what organs could have been hit.

She groaned. “Hurts.”

“I know,” I said softly, not letting up for an instant. “I know, but I need to keep pressure on the wound.”

The garage door was kicked open, and I heard the click of a new magazine being shoved into a gun. The man saw me immediately, and he raised the weapon up and trained it right on my face. “Vstavay, suka,” he snarled.

I didn’t speak Russian, but I knew what he’d demanded. “I can’t,” I said, pleading. “She’ll hemorrhage.”

He scoffed. “Mne vse ravno,” he spat, getting close enough that he could touch the barrel of the gun directly to my forehead. It was hot, near to burning, and I flinched. “Ya pristrelyu tebya, ne teryaya sna.”

The man repeated his demand that I get up, practically spitting on me as he spoke. When I still refused, he slapped me and rocked my head back; I could taste blood in my mouth. I had closed my eyes to accept my fate when there was suddenly a great deal of noise and lights.

Lorenzo and Elio had our assailant on the ground, and they were beating him into the concrete. When I first came to the estate, I’d seen them do something similar and it had made me sick. Now, I could only be grateful that they’d come.

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