Page 61 of Brutal Vows

I turn my face toward the elevators, my insides going cold. If she thinks I saw too much and invaded her privacy, she’ll push me even further away.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

Chilled to the bone from her tone, I turn and meet her eyes. I can’t decipher the emotions I see there, so I lean into our bond.

I find nothing. Either she’s shielding me or I broke something. Both options hurt my heart.

“I’m going to work,” I answer.

“I thought everyone working during the shooting was on mandatory leave for the rest of the week,” she says.

The accusation in her tone makes it sound like it’s my fault no one informed me.

“No one told me. They called me in to help with your first patient of the day,” I say.

Her knuckles turn white on her bag strap. My heart quails, preparing for a verbal attack. She rarely gets this worked up, but when she does, it hurts.

“Maybe our coworkers wouldn’t leave you out if you weren’t so standoffish. Maybe if you tried to make friends, you wouldn’t be such an outcast,” she says as she crosses her arms over her chest.

“What? I’m not—”

“No one would care if you transferred, so if you’re still afraid the Russian guy is going to come back for you, then just leave.”

I blink at her, unable to breathe past the pain lancing through my heart.

“You’re nothing but a curse anyway,” she snarls before pushing past me and stomping down the hall.

The world stops spinning, launching me into outer space. There’s no oxygen, even though my lungs expand. No gravity despite my rubbery legs carrying me down the stairs. No sounds despite my voice telling Samantha I had an emergency and won’t be coming in today after all. No light even as I stumble into the brightly lit laundry room.

I float to the back row and pace back and forth a few times, waiting for something I can’t name. My brain refuses to processmy sister’s words even though my soul agonizes over every syllable.

A boot scuffs against the linoleum. My senses slam into overdrive and my hackles rise as the same eerie sensation from last night in the hallway returns.

Someone is watching me.

Panic floods my brain and I snap into the present with painful clarity. I peek between the machines but see no one.

A shadow crosses over the end of the aisle, but when I turn, nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Massive arms close around my midsection, pinning my arms to my sides. I open my mouth to scream only for a hand to clamp over the bottom half of my face and pin the back of my head against a rock-solid chest.

I bring my knees up to my chest, forcing my attacker to accept my weight and adjust his balance, but before I can drop my legs and slam my heels back at his shins, he twists my neck and forces me to look up at his face.

His handsome, furious face.

Ermanno.

I sag in relief.

Chapter 16

Ermanno Mancini

She melts against me, and for a moment, I almost give in and snuggle her closer, but then her sister’s words echo in my mind.

“You never mentioned a Russian man,gattina,” I snarl.

She squints up at me in confusion until her adrenaline drops to a manageable level. A stubborn glint enters her crystal-green eyes, so when I lift my hand away from her face, I know I won’t like whatever she says, but her safety and the Russo family’s relies on her answer.

---