Page 142 of Vow Of Fire

I took a shower and fell into bed, not expecting to sleep. So it was a shock when I woke up around noon to find Evelyn gone.

Rushing into her room, I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw her belongings were still there. The suitcase she’d been throwing things into last night lay open in the corner of the room.

Trying to appear like I didn’t care, I asked the guard at the front door where she’d gone. They knew better than to let her leave alone and unprotected.

Il Lupo.

She’d gone to see my grandfather, as previously arranged. Kyle had taken her.

I was surprised. In light of our argument, I didn’t think she’d bother to keep the social engagement. She owed no allegiance to my family now; I’d seen to that.

As I climbed into the scalding hot shower, I thought about what that meant.

Either she’d agreed to go along with my plan to move her to a safehouse, or she didn’t want to disappoint my grandfather. He might be retired, but he wasn’t someone you wanted to disappoint. Despite everything, Evelyn was aware of that.

If she was with Kyle, it meant she was safe. And that she was coming home to me afterward.

My heart tightened at the thought of seeing her again, even if she did hate my guts. I didn’t think too hard about what that meant.

37

IL LUPO

Evelyn

The last thing I felt like doing was going to see Dante’s infamous grandfather, but since I was stuck here until the annoying oaf that was Dante Marcelli decided to take me to a safehouse, I couldn’t find a reason to refuse.

Besides, I’d liked the old fox, and I’d sensed he’d liked, or at least approved of, me.

So when Kyle came to pick me up at 9 a.m., I made sure I was ready. In any event, it beat waiting for him to wake up. One thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want anything to do with the man, not after what he’d said to me last night.

As far as I was concerned, he and I were finished. Finito.

And there was no way I was moving to a safehouse, I thought sourly as I made my way downstairs with an ever-alert Kyle by my side. I pictured an impersonal, nondescript property somewhere off the grid, and shuddered. The cabin had been bad enough.

I was a willing participant in his family’s diabolical take-down scheme now, and no longer a victim. I absolutely, one hundred percent refused to be treated like one.

“I’m sorry you had to give up your Saturday to drive me around,” I apologized to Kyle, as we climbed into the SUV. He was missing out on important family time.

“It’s not a problem,” he said, shutting the door after me.

I liked Kyle. For a former soldier turned mercenary, he was surprisingly well-adjusted. Apart from the minor issue of working for Dante Marcelli, of course. But that questionable life choice aside, he seemed like a genuinely decent man.

I’d learned over the last couple of weeks that his wife’s name was Lilian and that their baby boy, Astro, turned six months old next Tuesday. Apparently he’d been conceived while they lay stargazing in the back of Kyle’s pickup truck somewhere in rural Pennsylvania.

The huge ex-military tough guy had actually blushed when he told me that part.

It was so romantic, and I was so not imagining Dante doing something like that. The guy didn’t have a romantic bone in his irritatingly beautiful body. And definitely not in a stargazing kind of way.

No. Dante was more a “strip me naked and ease my tension on the kitchen counter” kind of guy. The thought made my insides tighten.

No. No. NO.

I was absolutely not going to think about the last time he’d made me come. Or the last time we’d slept together after the shooting. How tentative he’d been. How patient. As if he’d wanted to erase the horrors of the parking garage attack and replace them with something life-affirming.

I shook my head. I was giving the bastard too much credit. He’d probably just been thinking about sex. Using the opportunity to his advantage.

Ugh. There I was doing it again. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the gorgeous idiot out of my head.