Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
My lips curved up into a playful smile at the idea of someone being that desperate to take me for a ride that they’d sneaked their way into the building.
“Keep your panties on,” I called as I reached for the locks. “Unless you’re a gorgeous woman. In which case, feel free to slip right out of th—“ I trailed off as I pulled open the door.
To a woman, yes.
But not one who wanted my dick.
And, fuck, that wasn’t for lack of trying on my part.
Not that my mind was on sex as I looked at the woman standing there in the doorway.
No.
Not even standing.
She was wavering, barely able to stand on her own feet.
And it was no wonder.
I’d been on countless jobs with Cinna.
I’d seen her get into more fights than I cared to admit, saw her take a punch, get a split lip, get kicked or hit.
But nothing, fucking nothing, came anywhere near what she’d been through tonight.
Hell, if it weren’t for her trademark black leather bomber jacket, I wasn’t even sure I would know it was her.
Her face was bloodied, bruised, and swollen beyond recognition. One eye was closed shut. The other was halfway there and full of blood.
God, the blood.
It was all over her too.
In the bruises and the scratches on her face.
Dripping steadily from her nose and lip.
Trailing from cuts all over her hands.
I stood there in shock for a moment, not sure I was actually seeing things clearly.
Because she looked like she’d been jumped.
Like she’d gotten a beat-down from an entire fucking gang.
But she was a fucking mafia capo.
That wasn’t… possible.
It wasn’t until I saw her sway, pitching forward on her own feet, that I snapped out of my disbelief, reaching out to grab her before she hit the floor, pulling her against me as something even more impossible happened.
A sob escaped her.
Cinna.
A woman I’d seen take a bullet with barely a curse and a flinch.
Someone who stood steely-eyed at her own brother’s funeral.
She didn’t cry.
But as my arms went around her, pulling her into my apartment and kicking the door closed, that was exactly what she did as her legs gave out, taking us both down onto our knees just inside the entryway.
Sobbed.
She fucking sobbed into my chest.
The sound came from some deep well, an almost animalistic sound, and it cracked something open in my chest as I listened to it, unable to do anything but kneel there and try to hold her together as she shattered apart.
I wanted to wrap her up tight, to squeeze her pieces back together, because the Cinna I knew would be mortified to be in pieces, but I was too afraid of actually breaking something with the shape she was in.
By the time the sobs subsided and she pulled against my hold, my chest was wet with tears and blood, mingling together into a pink color as it trailed down my stomach to catch on the waistband of my pants.
“I need to get you to the hospital,” I said.
And those eight words seemed to break through the emotional and physical misery she was in.
Her head whipped up, and I saw her eye unfocus as her head likely spun, then clear as she stared right through me, that cutting glance so familiar and somehow more welcome than the tortured one that had been there a moment before.
“No hospitals.”
“Cinna, baby, you’re… you’re not looking great,” I said, having to swallow back the sick feeling in my throat as I looked at her again, taking in more of the damage than I had a few moments before.
“No,” she said, voice fierce but fucking exhausted. Like she was barely keeping herself conscious.
I could grab her, lift her into my arms, carry her downstairs, and force her.
She was weak enough that I could get away with something that, on a better day for her, would have ended up with me sporting a couple busted ribs, a crooked nose, or a broken dick.
But something held me back.
Maybe it was as simple as knowing it would be a betrayal of the trust she was showing me by showing up at my door in this shape.
She could have gone to Renzo’s, the boss’s, house. Rico. Elian.
But she was there.
At my door.
Sobbing into my chest.
And, somehow, I knew that she wouldn’t have done that with anyone else. Not Renzo, the man who took an angry teenage girl and turned her into the first female mafia capo. Not Rico, who she’d fought side-by-side with. Or even Elian, who had a soft spot for women.
She came to me.
She trusted me with the soft side of her she never showed anyone else.
I couldn’t betray her by forcing her into something she didn’t want.
“I need to clean you up then,” I said, gut twisting at the idea of what that might entail. The kind of pain I’d have to inflict on her in an attempt to heal her.