Page 91 of Savage Proposal

I took his phone and started playing from two hours beforehand. I watched it double-time, and sure enough, the cameras caughta crew of men. One clearly looked at the camera and waved. Artem’s men weren’t trying to hide themselves in the slightest. I could see the wolf tattoo on the waving man’s arm.

They were answering my fire with a bomb. They were dead men.

A man walked into view, and I nearly broke the phone with how hard I squeezed it. I handed it back to Damian. “Scroll in so that I can see him,” I said, pointing.

He did as I asked, and when the image became clearer, we both swore out loud. Santino Rossi outside of my casino with Artem Volkov’s men. “Goddamnit.”

CHAPTER 58

Isabella

Icouldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet. My eyes ached from the tears that rained down my cheeks; everything felt swollen.

“Breathe,” Cristian said softly. I could feel the weight and heat of him beside me, but his voice sounded so far away.

I forced myself to look at him. “You knew Sienna,” I said. “You knew that she and I—” My stomach rolled sickeningly, and bile splashed at the back of my throat. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Cristian gave me a saddened look. “It wasn’t my place to do that.”

My eyebrows wrinkled inward. “Not your place?” I shouldn’t be so hurt that Lorenzo’s people had allowed him to lie to me; they werehispeople, not mine.

I didn’t have any people. I couldn’t even claim my own mother and sister. They had left me alone with a fucking monster. My hand came to cup my baby bump.I’m not alone, I told myself. I would never be alone again.

“We all stopped seeing Sienna a long time ago,” Cristian said. “You are different from her in so many ways.”

I shook my head. “Stop,” I pleaded. For all of his training in the seminary on comforting people, he reallysuckedat it.

“My brother hasn’t been this happy in a long time, and that’s all down to you.”

“Yeah,” I scoffed. “Since Sienna’s death, right? He’s been so miserable that none of you have even been allowed to say her name.”

Cristian nodded, but when he went to take my hand, I snatched it back. “You didn’t know him before,” he said, hands hanging pathetically in the air for a moment before lowering them again. “He used to be so free with his smiles, but after Sienna died, it was like that part of him died too. But with you…”

“I’m bringing him back to life?” I asked. “He found himself a spare, so everything is okay again?”

Cristian’s pained expression was even more pronounced now, and where I might have been moved to comfort him in return before, I felt nothing now. The tips of my fingers were cold, and it was spreading up my arms. Maybethiswas shock. How much trauma could one person experience in a lifetime before there was irreparable damage?

I looked right behind Cristian’s head. One lamp had survived my tirade. I glanced from it to the man making the worst attempt at comfortever, and back again. Moving on instinct, I reached for the lamp and, taking advantage of Cristian’s surprise over the sudden movement, I brought it down on his head.

The hit broke the skin on his scalp, and his hair became wet with blood, and I watched his eyes go hazy before they rolled back in his head. Cristian collapsed forward. I almost let him fall to the floor, but I couldn’t bethatunkind, especially given that I probably gave him a nasty concussion.

When I shoved him so that he was flopped across the couch—feeling only the slightest bit of vindication that he was staining Sienna’s precious loveseat—I felt a painful tug low in my belly. I gasped and grabbed at my bump, holding it until the sensation eased.

Once I could move again without that flash of pain, I ran for the kitchen. I needed keys, and I needed to get the hell out of here before Lorenzo came back. All of the keys to the vehicles in the garage were on a hanging key rack right beside the kitchen door. I grabbed one that didn’t have a name like Rolls Royce or Maserati before I shoved my feet into a pair of tennis shoes that were beside the door. They were Amalia’s, and they were too small, but I could make it work until I got back to my apartment.

I didn’t have any identification. Lorenzo had taken my purse months ago, and I hadn’t gotten it back, but I had my birth certificate and social security card, plus a little emergency money in my dresser. So long as nothing had been ransacked, I had enough to start running. I would need to get a new ID eventually, and I would have to find a way to make money, but I was resourceful.

I just needed to get as far from here as possible with the least amount of people knowing about it. I refused to drag anyone into my mess; I would figure it out as I went.

I glanced back at the kitchen that I had come to regard with such fondness. It was the heart of the Vitali home. I bid the room a silent goodbye and headed out into the night.

Luckily, I had grabbed the key fob for a nondescript sedan that I had never seen anyone drive. I knew that as soon as Lorenzo came home, I would be on a time limit. I had to move quickly and judicially if I had any hope of escaping with my life.

Steering down the long driveway, I steeled my nerves and did everything that I could to drive at a reasonable speed. Getting pulled over right now wasnotan option.

Halfway to my apartment that tugging pain was back in my abdomen, and tears were stinging at my eyes. “It’s okay baby,” I murmured, rubbing at my belly as I navigated the streets. “We’re going to be just fine.”

With each painful jolt, my resolve waned more and more. What the hell was I thinking? Not only was Lorenzo going to kill me outright, my chest ached at the idea of never seeing him again. What he had done was impossible to get my head around…but then there was that hurt that had nothing to do with physical pain.

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