He’d never forgive himself. Whatever else he was — playboy, Dom, criminal — she knew with absolute certainty that he’d never shed the guilt of her disappearance. It’d eat him up inside until it killed him, one way or another, and it would be all her fault.
Furious at the injustice of it, Francesca swung her heel backward with every ounce of her conviction.
He probably didn’t mean to let her go. It felt like reflex when her kidnapper grunted and pushed her away, his messed uphand snapping to his crotch like he could retroactively protect it from her assault.
Francesca fell to the floor on her hands and knees. Feet trampled her instantly, striking her sides and legs as she attempted to crawl away. They only let up when her attacker lurched toward her again, clearing a path with swings of his muscled arms.
She made the mistake of looking back. He snarled at her, his face turned an awful purple color. A meaty fist curled tight and swung back. She ducked low, one arm covering her head like it’d save her from the blow.
A roar reached her before the fist did.
Francesca flinched backward, her arm falling, as a god’s vengeance descended on her attacker in the form of one Milo Amauri.
The bat came first. Luis’s half-brother had incredible form. He swung that brutal weapon like he was made for it.
The attacker’s headshattered.
Blood, bits of bone, and chunks of brain matter exploded through the air like the world’s worst firecracker.
The people around her scattered, screaming, as Milo raised a leg to kick the mostly headless corpse over. She couldn’t hear him but she could see his lips form the wordsfuckerandtouch women.
And then, like the dead man didn’t even exist, Milo stepped over him to scoop her up.
A little shell-shocked and splattered in things she didn’t want to think about, Francesca didn’t second guess throwing her arms around his neck. Using one arm, Milo hauled her up against his chest until her feet didn’t even touch the ground.
Pointing the business end of his bat at the terrified people in his way, he bellowed, “Move!”
No one hesitated, but there wasn’t much space for them to go. A narrow pathway opened up for her rescuer to shove his way toward the doors.
A new kind of panic set in, pricking like hundreds of little needles through the relief of being saved.
“Luis!” she cried into his brother’s ear. “What about Luis?”
Milo burst through the doors and into the dark stairwell that led to the upper floor. The walls shook with noise from the basement, and more people began to push their way past them, desperate to get out of the rapidly deteriorating situation.
“He’ll be fine,” Milo grunted. His long, powerful legs took the steps two at a time, like her weight didn’t even matter.
“What happened? I heard he won, but?—”
Elbowing past an escaping vampire, he lurched into the hallway of the first floor. “Fucking Malachi is a sore loser. Must’ve given orders to have his men attack if his proxy lost. Someone shot that weasel Easton and then took a shot at my brother.”
Her stomach bottomed out. “Is he?—”
Milo squeezed her middle. A paltry but much appreciated comfort as he kicked a door open. They burst out into what had to be the side of the mansion. The air was sticky with humidity. The heat of the day had soaked into the earth and radiated upward into the night sky, filling the air with the scent of dirt, blood, and water.
Hiking her up his chest a little farther, he adjusted his grip on his bat and took off at a lope across the manicured yard. In between steps, he asked, “You think that’s the first time someone has taken a shot at my brother? Dodging bolt shots is basically his favorite pastime. Right next to pissing people off enough to make them want to shoot him.”
As much as she wanted to ask more questions, like how Luis would get out of there or where they were going, it wasimpossible to form words when she was being jolted by a giant’s massive steps every second. Francesca pressed her face into Milo’s neck and clung on for dear life.
The sounds of chaos disrupted the otherwise peaceful night as more people fled or brought their conflicts out into the open. The stench of smoke reached her, as did the whine of a bolt gun powering up some ways behind them.
Francesca didn’t know Milo. She barely knew Luis. But when he swung her into the passenger’s seat of a low-riding muscle car and told her to hold his bloodied bat, she didn’t hesitate to trust him. That thing she recognized in Luis was in him, too — a core of something good and kind that defied the brutal world it’d been born into.
He slammed her door shut before he dove for the driver’s side. Seatbelts weren’t even a thought when he peeled out of the long gravel driveway, narrowly dodging running vampires and other vehicles frantically attempting to escape.
Gravel sprayed out behind them as they screamed out of the iron gate and onto the lonely road that led to the worst mistake of her life.
Squeezing the gory, nail-spiked bat to her chest like a teddy bear, she warbled, “Where are we going?”