Page 160 of Vow Of Fire

When, not if.

I nodded, and then Orlov and I walked out into the storm together.

41

KISS ME IN THE RAIN

Evelyn

“Get up,” Vincent snapped.

“Where are we going?” I asked, my stomach dropping.

“Somewhere where your body won’t immediately be found.” He had a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

The river, in other words.

“You lied,” I blurted out, desperately trying to buy myself a few extra minutes. If I could just keep him talking, Dante might figure out where I was. “This isn’t about the money.”

His jaw tightened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s about Valentina, isn’t it?”

His gaze darkened, but not before I saw the flash of bitterness.

“You were in love with her, weren’t you? But she didn’t love you back and you couldn’t stand that. You never forgave her.”

“Shut up,” he rasped, his hand tightening around the gun.

Oh God. Was this it? Was I going to die before Dante could get to me? Tied to a metal chair in a freezing warehouse. And all because a crime family had used my gallery for their own evil purposes.

Chloe had tried to warn me. She’d said he was dangerous, and boy had she been right. But I don’t think even she knew how dangerous.

My heart broke thinking about him. About how we’d left things.

I knew this was all his fault, but the thought of never seeing him again was unbearable. I loved the man who brought me coffee in the morning without asking how I took it because he already knew. The man who touched me with such tenderness despite the violence he was capable of. The man who’d looked at me like I was something he wanted to devour.

I even loved the darkness in him. The possessiveness. The rage. The lonely, broken parts he hid behind expensive suits and cold silences. The man who listened to dark country in the early hours of the morning because he was haunted by demons. They were my demons too.

A sob escaped me even though I tried hard to hide it. Of course I’d known, deep down, it could never work between us, but the romantic in me had hoped we could rise above all that and find our own kind of happily ever after.

I sniffed. Obviously I was delusional.

Get involved with dangerous men and this is what happened. You ended up in a filthy warehouse with a gun to your head.

Vincent’s finger began compressing the trigger.

I sucked in a breath, bracing myself for the coup de grâce.

“I’m sorry, Evelyn,” he said, gesturing with the gun for me to get to my feet. “But this is how it has to be.”

Slowly, I stood up. My knees felt stiff and immobile, or maybe that was the fear, but either way, I struggled to stand upright.

“Come on,” he huffed, gripping me by the arm and hauling me toward the door.

My wrists were bruised and grazed from the ties, but I hardly felt it. My eyes were on the barrel of the gun in his other hand, knowing that in any moment the bullet inside would be blowing my brains out.

I choked back a whimper. Out of all the ways to die, I never in a million years thought it would be like this.