Marked For Love (Mob Romance) (12 page)

She was Giorgio’s property, he had to remind himself, until her father paid for her to be released.

And he was playing a dangerous game.

A week ago, he would have shot her on sight if the command had been issued, and now, he found himself hovering over her bed like some kind of lovesick schoolchild.

It wasn’t as if he’d never lain in the arms of a beautiful women. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t fucked supermodels. But this was like none of that. When he touched Grace…when he gazed into the depths of her conflicted cerulean gaze, he didn’t know if he could kill her.

Not anymore.

It was a revelation that disturbed him as much as it astounded him. How had such a small slip of a girl drilled her way into his subconscious? He thought of her – of the way her parents had treated her and the difficulties she now faced, and it made him want to wrap his fingers around her inept father’s neck.

Even he, who had murdered and tortured his way through his adolescence, at least had the memory of his mother’s love to sustain him.

She had nursed him, held him close to her breast as he’d grown. When he’d cried, she’d been there to hold him, and when he’d been frightened she’d comforted him. Of course, she had also given him to Giorgio – defended the man when he struck him, and let him turn her son into a cold-blooded killer.

How fickle a parent’s love could be.

Reaching down, he drew two fingers gently over her cheek before stroking a dark wave from her brow. There was a softness about her that he’d never seen in another woman. Even his mother, who had loved him as no other woman had, had needed to be hard in some ways to love his stepfather.

Giorgio’s love did not come easy – and Vicente had the scars to prove it.

Beneath his touch, the younger woman shifted in her sleep with a soft moan of dismay. She was having a nightmare.

He had certainly had his fair share of those.

He left her, slipping from the room to make his way into the living area. He would sit up for half the night, watching to make sure she didn’t flee in the night. Considering that her life was on the line, he wouldn’t put it past her.

Anyone with any sense feared death. It was the impetus for life.

The next week passed slowly.

Luckily enough for Vicente, Giovanni hadn’t yet guessed what had transpired between he and Grace, so he and Matteo continued to operate under his orders without a hitch. Vicente didn’t know if he could handle the man’s banter right now. He might see a sexual slip with Giorgio’s five hundred thousand dollar hostage as amusing, but he certainly didn’t.

And if Giorgio found out…well…it was just something the Don could use against him. Giorgio was always looking for methods with which he could manipulate his playing pieces, and Vicente was his prized bishop.

If the Don got into his head that his stepson had feelings for his hostage, it would be all the worse for Grace.

And for once, Vicente found himself against such an idea.

He went into the young woman’s room twice a day to ensure that she hadn’t concocted some impromptu device to aid in her escape, but other than such interactions, he did his best to keep away from her.

She didn’t make it easy on him. Looking at him with those wide, accusatory eyes of his as he searched the room

Two days before the two week period was up, the inevitable occurred.

Vicente didn’t often go very long in one place before a rival mob member learned of his presence. Most of them believed one of the most effective insults to Giorgio Acconci would be to kill the man closest to him.

He had, in fact, dealt with one such interloper before he’d left for Boston.

By the time another arrived, he felt almost overdue.

It happened, of course, while Gio and Matteo were out on their daily rounds. He’d sent them to collect from some of the more infamous gambling halls in Rome while he, as always, remained behind to watch over Grace.

When the assassin came, he caught Vicente decidedly off guard. He was lost in contemplation, his mind with the young woman he’d locked away, when a knock came upon the door of the suite.

It was early – perhaps two in the afternoon – and so he went to answer it without thinking, assuming that it must be housekeeping. When he opened the door, however, it was to be confronted with a small Glock pistol fitted with a silencer.

Vicente hardly registered the face of his assailant as his reflexes reacted instantly. He immediately hit the floor, rolling to the side and under the shots as their low emissions echoed around the suite. Small holes were bored in the glass window across from the door as he crawled behind the couch, withdrawing his own weapon to fit it with a silencer.

Scowling, he listened to the figure enter the room, regulating his breathing so he wouldn’t be heard.

“Vicente.” His hunter’s voice was soft and rife with anger. No doubt someone he had wronged or a family member of someone who’s life he had taken. “Vicente
fucking
Acconci.” The low voice slid smoothly over the Italian syllables. “Come out here. Fight like a man.”

Ironic request, considering that the man had tried to assassinate him the moment he opened the door, which, in Vicente’s opinion, was the fighting method of a coward and not a man. Slowly, he slid along the length of the sofa as quietly as he could, letting the intruder’s footfall convey his position.

He was short and stocky, his tread close. This meant he would be in the lower half of Vicente’s line of sight. His Glock would have fifteen rounds, three of which he had already fired, which meant another twelve before the cretin had to reload. He would have to come up with a plan of attack before those twelve shots were up.

The clever mind Vicente was known to work as his enemy looked for him, overturning tables and shooting at shadows. It always happened this way – a complete amateur set to kill a trained assassin. Perhaps Vicente was just being harsh, but to him, they all seemed clumsy and slow. This one was no exception. His anger made him reckless.

And it was his recklessness that Vicente would take advantage of.

As the man kicked an armchair out of the way, Vicente rose silently from behind the couch, taking aim at the man’s head. The intruder was lucky enough to look up just before he pulled the trigger, and so he dodged wildly, firing back with abandon. Vicente felt a bullet graze his arm, pain searing through the injury as he leapt into the kitchen.

Figglio de puttana
.

Vicente touched his bleeding arm, irritated.

Clearly, this man had already worn out his welcome.

He was on the cusp of rising to shoot again, when a sound came that made him freeze. The man was trying all of the doors in the suite in an attempt to find refuge. Of course, Gio and Matteo’s rooms would be locked, but there was no lock on either Vicente’s room or the one in which they kept Grace. He hardly believed she would try to sneak right past them in the middle of the day.

Which meant that this attacker would have direct access to her.

Vicente didn’t know which notion concerned him more – that the idiot might free her, or that he might kill her. If he hated Vicente and Giorgio as much as he appeared to, really either option was just as likely.

When the last door on the right was opened, he waited with bated breath for the intruder to make his move. It didn’t take long before Grace’s cry of surprise and fright echoed through the suite. Vicente listened to the clumsy assassin drag her from the room, and when he peeked over the kitchen counter, he frowned deeply at the choice the man had made.

Grace was in her cotton nightgown, the man holding her by a firm grip on her mahogany locks as he pressed his gun against her jaw, expression livid. “Come
out
Vicente!” He barked. “Or I splatter this
cagna’s
brains all over the floor!”

If Vicente had been irritated before, he now found himself truly angry. This little idiot truly had no idea who he was fucking with. If Giorgio found out that he had come into his hotel so blatantly, he would be done for – even if he escaped from here. But, he wouldn’t escape. The man had accomplished the somewhat difficult task of pissing Vicente off, and for that, he would die.

Additionally, he had put his hands on Grace; something that shouldn’t matter as much as it did, but Vicente found that watching the man’s grimy hands grip her voluptuous form riled him in ways he hadn’t even know existed.

“I know you’re in the kitchen, you bastard. Why don’t you just come out so we can get this over with?”

Not very likely. From this vantage point, the man had a distinct advantage over Vicente and there was no where he could go. The kitchenette was an enclosed space and he was blocked in. He would have to wait for some kind of opening.

Five shots left in the Glock.

Vicente refrained from doing or saying anything, knowing that it would only further infuriate his hunter. After about a minute of terse silence, the intruder’s voice rang out again. “You have ten
fucking
seconds, Acconci. Then she’s gone.” Impatient children always issued ultimatums. “ Ten… Nine… Eight… Seven… Six… Five…” Vicente was going to shoot the man over a bar before a shocked shout reached his ears. There came the thud of a distinct struggle seconds before a body slammed against a wall.

Instantly, Vicente rose from behind the kitchenette and took half a second to assess the scene before him.

His assailant was disarmed, back against the wall from where he had stumbled, and he no longer had a grip on Grace. Without hesitation, Vicente took aim and fired, placing a bullet neatly between his eyes.

The man slumped to the floor, leaving a bloody streak along the length of the eggshell colored paint behind him as the light flickered from his eyes.

A short, sharp gasp then caught Vicente’s attention and he turned, freezing in his tracks.

Somehow, Grace had managed to divest his former hunter of his gun. She held the Glock in trembling hands, with the barrel pointing straight at Vicente himself. For a moment, he watched her, genuinely curious.

What on earth would she do?

She could quite literally just pull the trigger, and a lucky shot would end his short, miserable existence. He believed she would. After all, if she stayed in his safekeeping, she was certain that she would die. It was his life or hers.

Steel gray met cornflower blue and locked as Vicente waited for the shot. Grace’s breath came in soft, short gasps and she closed her eyes…before tossing the gun on a nearby couch and fleeing back to her room to close the door behind her with a sharp snap.

Vicente blinked in surprise.

She had chosen to spare him – to spare the man that might one day mean her death; who had kidnapped her and all but raped her.

Striding over to the dead man against the wall, he stared down at him, trying to stir up some semblance of emotion for the life he had taken. Still, he could feel nothing – at least not for his hunter. When it came to Grace, Vicente found himself utterly confused. Why hadn’t she pulled the trigger? It would have meant her freedom. He had no doubt that Giorgio would eventually have found her again, but his death would have bought her precious time.

She hadn’t been afraid. That much he had seen in her eyes.

So why the hell was he still standing?

Chapter Six: Flight

Grace woke from her disturbed dreams with a gasp, her body drenched in sweat.

All she had seen in her mind’s eye since the suite had been broken into two days ago were dead men. She had never seen someone killed before… never seen the light go from someone eyes as he dropped like a stone.

Even though she was sure the intruder would have killed
her
without Vicente’s intervention, his death still haunted her. She hadn’t been out of her room since she’d been dragged out, and she couldn’t help but wonder: was the bloodstain from his assassination still on the wall?

When Vicente had seen that she wasn’t in his grip anymore – that she had stomped on the bastard’s foot and managed to wrestle his gun away by sheer force of will, he hadn’t hesitated for an instant. What she had seen in his eyes…it was cold blooded murderous instinct.

And it frightened her.

He looked enough like the man that had captured her in the park weeks ago that she had raised the gun to point at his chest, her heart racing. She could have killed him. She
should
have. Instead, she’d just stood there, looking like an idiot and shaking like a leaf as she marveled at the weapon in her hand. All it would have taken was one little flick of her finger and it would have been over.

She could have been free.

Instead, she had looked into Vicente’s eyes to find the murderer there and instead discovered something else entirely: the man didn’t fear his own death. On the contrary, he gazed at her as if he expected her to shoot him, and to do so would be to relieve him of something he longed to escape.

It had literally been one of the most life-altering moments she’d ever experienced. Vicente had
wanted
her to kill him. He could have shot her to prevent it, but he hadn’t.