Page 21 of Unholy Night
"Okay." She pulls back to look at me. "So what, exactly, am I? "
"Addicted," I say simply. "And addictive."
7 - Natalie
Watching Tomas kill should horrify me. Instead, I’m wet between my thighs, gripping his backup gun, ready to murder anyone who threatens him.
The morning light filtering through the already-shattered kitchen window reveals carnage outside. Three Santos scouts lie dead in the snow from Tomas's earlier defense. But they were just the beginning. Through the broken glass, I track him moving through defensive positions like he was born to it. Leonardo's warning gave us maybe forty minutes, and we've used every second preparing.
I thumb off the safety without thinking. My hands know the weight of his Glock now, know the trigger pull. Muscle memory that shouldn't exist.
The sound of engines breaks the morning quiet. Multiple vehicles approaching fast through the snow. Return fire erupts from the tree line. They're here, the rest of the Santos force, surrounding him like wolves, and something feral rises in my chest. A possessiveness so violent it makes my hands shake.
Mine to protect. Mine to defend. Mine to kill for.
I'm at the door before conscious thought catches up, booted feet crunching over broken glass. The weight of his Glock feels right in my grip, natural, like it was always meant to be there. My mind whispers about lines that can't be uncrossed, oaths I swore to uphold. But that voice is distant now, drowned out by the thundering need to keep him alive.
The door opens silently. Icy air slams into me, stealing breath, but I barely feel it. One shooter has flanked wide, trying to get an angle on Tomas's position. He hasn't seen me yet, focused on his prey.
I sight down the pistol the way I've watched Tomas handle weapons, mimicking his stance. Breathe in. Hold. Squeeze.
The recoil jolts through my arms. The shooter drops, his rifle clattering against the ice as he falls.
The Glock is still warm in my hand. I watch him fall—a man whose name I'll never know, whose family will never understand what happened in these woods. My hands should be shaking. I should feel something breaking inside me, some fundamental piece of who I used to be shattering like ice.
But all I feel is the fierce satisfaction of the threat eliminated, the savage joy of protecting what's mine. The prosecutor who spent all those nights building airtight cases, who believed in justice and law and order—she would be horrified. She would drop the weapon and run. But that woman feels like a stranger now, like someone I read about in a case file. This is who I am with him: someone who kills as easily as she once wrote briefs.
The gun weighs nothing in my hands now. Natural as breathing, Tomas said about killing. He was right.
Tomas spins at the sound, sees me in the doorway, and something wild flashes across his face. Not anger. Not fear. Pure, possessive pride that makes heat pool low in my belly despite the violence, because of it.
"Get back inside!" he roars, but I'm already acquiring the next target.
The second shooter turns toward me, rifle swinging up. Too slow. I put two rounds center mass, watching him crumple. This new version of me, this creature born of blood and obsession, only thinks: good, one less threat to him.
The third shooter opens fire, bullets chewing into the doorframe inches from my head. Wood splinters shower across my skin. I drop back, heart hammering not with fear but with something darker. Adrenaline and arousal twisted together until I can't tell them apart.
Through the chaos, an engine roars. A black Range Rover tears through the tree line, bespoke matte paint job immediately peppered with bullet holes. The driver's side window explodes, but the vehicle keeps coming, plowing through a snowbank.
Leonardo.
I recognize him instantly. Same dark beauty as Tomas but wilder, red-haired, unhinged. He crashes the SUV into two Santos soldiers, their bodies disappearing under custom wheels with wet crunches. Then he's out, laughing as he fires in wide arcs, no strategy, just mayhem.
"You fuckers want the Rosettis?" Leonardo screams, blood already streaming from a graze on his temple. "Come and fucking take us!"
More gunfire erupts. More soldiers emerge from the woods. So many more than the three scouts. They'd been waiting, watching, planning this assault. The morning explodes into full warfare.
Tomas grabs my arm, yanking me back inside. "Basement. Now."
"But Leonardo…"
"Can handle himself. Move!"
He pushes me toward stairs I hadn't noticed before, hidden behind what looked like a pantry door. In the basement I didn't know existed, fluorescent lights buzz against concrete walls lined with enough weapons to outfit a small army. This was never just a cabin. This was always a fortress, a fallback position for when the family's violence came calling.
Tomas dresses me in tactical gear, lightweight and bulletproof. White, for camouflage. He presses a rifle into my hands, his body caging mine as he shows me the basics. His chest presses against my back, breath hot against my ear, and even surrounded by instruments of death, my body responds to his proximity.
"This loads like this," he says, hands over mine, guiding. "Safety here. Shoulder it properly or the recoil will knock you on your ass."
