Page 1 of Her Keeper
1
PENNY
God, this was bad.
In fact, fuck that. This wasn’t bad. It was so much worse than that. So horrible, so terrifying, that I didn’t even have a fucking word for it.
Partially because I’d never been in a situation like this before, courtesy of everyone in my life having sold their souls to keep me out of the underworld.
Until I ran headlong into the deepest depths of that underworld and, like a complete idiot, fell in love with the guy I was supposed to be spying on. Then got caught.
“Michael,” I gasped, working hard not to struggle against the hand he had wrapped around my throat. “I swear on everything, it’s not what you think. But you’ve got to listen to me. I know more about everything than you think I do. You might think you know what I know, but you have no idea.”
Okay, that might have been a stretch, but I had to say something to get him to let up on the pressure.
I had to say something to stop him from looking at me like I’d just killed his dog, his best friend, and his mother, all in one afternoon. I’d hoped he had feelings for me, but I hadn’t thought they could be that serious. Hell, 90 percent of my mind had thought that I was just another girl to him. Just another one-night stand. He might have been like this with all of his assistants, for all I knew.
But the way he was looking at me right now told me that I’d meant a whole lot more to him than I’d realized.
And now he thought I’d sold him out. He was furious, his eyes burning with cold blue fire and his face flushed with blood, and I could feel his fingers trembling around my throat. His breath was harsh, his skin burning against mine like he was being powered by flames of rage. He looked exactly like someone who was about to kill the rat he’d found in his office.
And that rat was me.
Only it wasn’t.
Only it was.
Look, I know exactly how it looked. I do. But the truth was, it hadn’t really been my fault. Monica Hart, reporter extraordinaire, had decided she wanted to do an exposé on the Rossi family. And she’d found me and forced me to be her accomplice. I didn’t know what her beef was with the Rossis—or the Brennans—and I’d never asked. I also didn’t know how she’d found me, since both Rossi and Brennan clans had done everything in their power to keep me, their designated good girl, hidden from the eyes of the press. Sure, we’d all been friends when we were in high school, but since we graduated, Sloane, Brooks, Joseph, and even Michael had gone out of their way to keep me hidden.
But Monica had found me—maybe because she was an investigative journalist and did that for a living—and when she did, she’d been prepared with blackmail. A night I’d spent with Tony Caruso in college, being the stupidest college girl ever born and sleeping with the guy I knew no one in my family would approve of.
It had been terrible, by the way, and I’d been regretting it ever since. I didn’t even think about it often. But that wouldn’t help if Monica exposed me to Sloane, Brooks, Joseph, or Michael. Or their dads. It would look like I’d been sleeping with the enemy, and even worse, the man who was now dogging Michael’s every step, imposing on his territory and shooting at the Rossi and Brennan soldiers every chance he got.
I mean only a rat would sleep with a higher-up from another family.
And like Michael had just said, the Rossis didn’t let rats live.
Terrified of Monica outing me for having spent the night with that slob, I’d agreed to get into Michael’s operation and start passing her information, but I would swear on my very life that I’d only done it for the best of reasons. Monica had been on a mission, and if I didn’t help her, she would have found someone who could. She would have inserted someone else into Michael’s private life.
At least if it was me, I could control the flow of information.
As I was quickly realizing, though, passing information to anyone was enough to get you killed. Regardless of how harmless that information had been.
And the worst part—the worst part—was knowing that he’d trusted me. He’d thought I had his back and that he could tell me anything. He’d taken me into his home, into his bed, and made himself vulnerable to me.
He’d had feelings for me. I could see that much, now.
And I’d had feelings for him. I’d known I was falling for him and I hadn’t stopped it. I’d continued to come to work, breathless with excitement at the thought of seeing him, and when he slammed the door and shoved me against the wall, his mouth on mine and his fingers in my hair, I’d opened up for him.
When he’d pulled me into his lap, I’d melted against him, hot and ready.
I’d been falling in love. And now I’d ruined it.
Which accounted for the sharp crack I could feel running right through my middle. That would be my heart breaking, I thought, clinically cool and disconnected. That would be me realizing that he didn’t love me enough to let me live.
“I could kill you,” he snarled, as if he was reading my mind.
“You don’t want to do that,” I gasped.
