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"Try to pretend you don't like it," she said, her returning smirk lighting up his blood. Maybe he did like it.
Rafael followed his strange savior out of the building and into the shadows between shipping containers.
"Where are we?" he whispered. He thought they were still in Rome. How long had he been knocked out for?
"Sicily. All the airports are being watched. We are taking you out a different way so they can't get you," she whispered. She held up a hand to stop him from going further and peered around the side of the shipping container. Rafael glanced over her shoulder, getting another lungful of her perfume. It smelled expensive. He tried to focus and counted at least ten men with guns, all guarding a container loaded with wooden crates.
"I'm only going to say this once. Stay here until I come back for you." The mercenary stared him down. "I mean it. No heroics. I'm trained for this, and you aren't."
"I can help. I can fight," he protested.
"I'm sure you can, but you're not going to." She pinched his cheek. "Be a good boy and do as you're told."
"What will I get in return?" he asked because he never could keep his mouth shut.
"You will get to live with all your favorite parts still intact." She didn't wait for him to respond; she melted into the shadows, leaving him holding a baton with a sweaty hand and an awkward tightness in his pants.
Angela della morte. That was what he was going to call her. His angel of death.
Rafael peeked his head out only enough to watch whatever happened next. He saw men pulled into the shadows, disappearing with a gloved hand over their mouths and a blade sinking in their necks.
Bile rose in Rafael's throat. He had seen violence but not on this scale. His angela appeared atop the shipping container before leaping off, swords drawn. She twisted mid-air and took the heads off two men with machine guns before landing.
Who the fuck was this woman? Rafael hadn't known his father was acquainted with anyone like her. More than a simple mercenary, that was for sure. She cut through the remaining men, bullets flying around her but never making contact. Rafael's brain screamed for oxygen and drew in a shaky breath, his broken ribs aching. His angela gestured to hurry up, and he scrambled from his hiding place.
"You obey orders well for a man. That's good," she said, taking a crowbar off a corpse. She wedged it under the lid of one of the wooden crates. She poked around the stuffing, pulling out bricks of cocaine until only the shredded newspaper was left. She looked up at Rafael. "Get in."
"Absolutely not," he said. He hated small spaces.
She raised one brow. "I said, get in. This is how I'm going to get you out of here. Now, you can go willingly, or I can break both of your legs and toss you in there. Your father said he didn't want you shot. He didn't say anything about other injuries."
He knew she would do exactly what she was promising without batting her long lashes.
"You are charm itself," Rafael muttered, climbing into the crate.
She grabbed the top of the lid to pull it back down.
"Wait!" he said. Rafael grabbed her by the face and quickly kissed her. She made a surprised sound that he swallowed down. After a moment, her lips moved against him, and everything in his world was suddenly okay. Rafael finally pulled back and stroked her cheek lightly.
"Thank you for the rescue, angela della morte."
She smiled once, dazzling him before her head crashed into his face, and his world darkened.
When Rafael woke again, he was back in Rome with a busted face. He never saw the golden hair of his angel again.
Twenty-two years later, Rafael Asellio would sometimes wake from dreaming of that night with the smell of her perfume in his nose. He could smell it again now as he stared at the simple white card in his hand. It was worn around the edges, with only an embossed head of a female statue wearing a helmet and a phone number on the back. He could still feel Michele's shaking fingers as he pressed it into Rafael's hand.
"Only call this number when you have…no other choice," Michele whispered, his voice a deathbed rasp. Rafael had thought the pain of the cancer had finally broken his father. He had put the card in the back of his desk drawer and forgotten about it for the past ten years.
It wasn't until the evening that Rafael learned his two business partners were funding a hit on him that he really felt he had no other choice left. The carabinieri couldn't help; the Costas owned them too.
Like his father, Rafael had done everything he could to not have mafia connections in their business. When he had taken over the company, he had slowly weeded out anyone who looked slightly suspicious, but by inheriting the company, he also became a part of an unbreakable agreement with his father's two business partners. The company was owned by all three of them and could only be inherited by their male heirs. Michele had been the first to die, and Rafael had taken his place.
The problem was that Rafael was forty-six years old and had no heir or wife to give him one. The other two partners couldn't get into bed with the Costa family unless Rafael agreed or they killed him. So they had put a bounty on his head in the hope it would either put enough stress on him to give in, or he would die, and his third would be split between them. He wouldn't go down without a fight, but he didn't know who he could trust, even amongst his own men.
Rafael stared at the card again. He wondered if this was the mysterious organization that his angela della morte had worked for all those years ago. Was she still alive? And would they know how to track her down? Rafael laughed softly at the thought of trying to find her for a date. She would probably break his face again. He rubbed at the scar across the bridge of his nose, his only reminder that she had existed at all.
Rafael drained his wine. He had no one else to turn to but whoever the white card belonged to. Rafael pulled out his phone and dialed the number.
