Page 100 of Attraction (Mobsters + Billionaires 3)
He tightens his hold on me, sniffing. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t get here sooner.”
“How did you know to come up here?”
“Hopper.”
“His Spidey sense?” I ask, gazing up at him as a weird laugh bubbles up in my chest.
He nods, his eyes holding so much misery. “He got agitated when he found out I let you go to the restroom by yourself. Told me to put eyes on you, said he was going to find Hughes. I never ran so fast in my whole life.”
I shiver. “The last time was this close too.”
“Yeah?” he asks, his voice soft after such violence.
“Yeah. His younger son—who was like a senior in high school, maybe?—walked in and interrupted us. And I ran out of there so fast. Just left that kid in a room with that monster.”
“I have it on good authority that the kid got out of there okay,” Luca says, a strange tilt to his eyebrows.
“Yeah?” I ask, shifting, needing to stand on my own two feet, needing to see for myself.
Still wobbly, I peer around the mirror. A wash of crimson stains an otherwise pristine white sink. Ciaran O’Shea, what’s left of him, is little more than a lump on the floor, Luca’s jacket covering the worst of it.
“Yeah,” he answers, rising with me, pulling me into a gentle hug. “I’ll tell you about it later.” With gentle fingers he tilts my chin in his direction, away from the violent scene. “Are you okay?”
“AmIokay?” I ask, holding on to him. “You just pulverized Ciaran’s head. Areyouokay?”
Luca raises his brow, then spares a glance at the dead body on the floor. “Not the first time I’ve done that. Might not be the last.”
He looks down before continuing, “I’m so fucking selfish when it comes to you. I can’t…I can’t stand the idea of losing you, but I can’t make you live this life.”
His body rounds in on itself, like maybe he sacrificed something of himself to save me.
“You’re not making me do anything, Luca. I’m with you because I want to be. Besides, this isn’t on you. This is my baggage.”
Luca snorts. “My baggage has a body count.”
“Because you are willing to do what needs to be done. You saved me.” I pause, catching my reflection in the mirror. “Ohshit. That’s a lot of blood.”
My lapel on the side of my cuts is crimson. There’s blood splatter on everything white. I take off the bloodied jacket and shirt, and Luca walks me past the body to a sink to wash the blood from my face.
Thankfully it’s not so bad. “Look, just a little over my eyebrow and under my eye.”
“The last time he crushed your eye socket. Did he do it again?”
I touch the affected areas—very gingerly—and shake my head. “Maybe he lost his touch.” Raising my brow at Luca in the mirror, I ask, “Do I want to know how you know my medical history?”
“No.”
He looks entirely unapologetic, which means he had Ryder hack into my medical files. That’s objectively terrible and invasive, and I shouldn’t be flattered.
And I’m not.
At all.
Just like having him kill someone to protect me did not, in any way, make me love him more.
As I pull on my black vest, grateful that I didn’t get any obvious blood on my pants, the door swings open, and Agent Hughes races into the lounge area.
“I followed my father back into the building and then lost him. Anthony saw me and pointed…” His eyes magnetize to the lump on the floor.“What the fuck happened?”
