Page 143 of The Serpent's Bride
My pulse roared. No. No, no, no. “You used me to bait him.”
Angelo’s eyes glittered. “Finally.”
The room tilted around me. All of it. Every call. Every soft word. Every warning. Every promise of escape. A trap. Not for me. For Leo. And I had walked straight into it. My throat burned.
“He’ll kill you,” I whispered.
Angelo’s smile faltered. Just a little. Good.
“He will try,” Edoardo said. “That is the point.”
I looked between them, terror giving way to something sharper. Rage. Not the wild kind that made me reckless. The cold kind. The kind Leo carried so effortlessly.
“You’re afraid of him,” I said. Angelo’s jaw tightened.
I laughed once, breathless and ugly. “You are. Both of you. That’s why you needed me. That’s why you didn’t face him yourselves.”
“Careful,” Angelo said.
“No.” I stepped away from the door. “You’re cowards.”
Edoardo’s face darkened. Angelo moved first, crossing the space between us fast enough that I barely had time to react. His hand closed around my arm. Hard now. Pain sparked beneath his fingers. I gasped, but I didn’t cry out.
“You should learn when to stop talking,” he said.
I looked up at him. “And you should learn not to touch another man’s wife.”
Silence. The words left me before I understood them. Another man’s wife. Leo’s wife. Angelo stared at me. Then he smiled.
“There it is,” he whispered. “That’s what I wanted to know.”
My stomach hollowed. I had given something away. Something I hadn’t even admitted to myself. A sound came fromsomewhere beyond the suite. Low. Distant. Not thunder. Not the city. A shout. Then another.
Angelo released me and turned toward the door. Edoardo set down his glass. The air changed. I felt it before I heard anything else. A pressure in the room. A violence gathering outside the walls. My breath caught, and every inch of my skin seemed to wake at once.
Leo. I knew it was him. I knew it with a certainty so deep it terrified me. The first gunshot shattered the silence. I screamed. The lights flickered.
Angelo swore and grabbed me again, dragging me back from the door as more noise erupted outside. Heavy footsteps. Men shouting. Another shot. Glass breaking somewhere far too close.
Edoardo pulled a gun from inside his jacket. My blood turned to ice.
“No,” I breathed. The door shook. Once. Twice.
Then Leo’s voice came through from the other side, low and lethal enough to strip the room bare. “Open the door.”
Angelo’s grip tightened on me. The door shook again. Edoardo raised the gun. I couldn’t breathe.
Angelo leaned close to my ear, his voice a whisper. “Now you get to see what your husband really is.”
The lock exploded. The door flew inward so hard it hit the wall. And Leo stepped through the smoke and splintered wood like something dragged out of hell. His suit was black. His eyes were worse.
Blood streaked one side of his jaw, not all of it his. A gun hung loose in his hand. Behind him, men moved in shadows, but I barely saw them. I saw only Leo.
He looked at Angelo’s hand on my arm. Then at my face. Something in him broke. Not loudly. Not visibly. But I felt it. The whole room did.
“Take your hand off my wife,” Leo said.
Angelo smiled. And Leo raised the gun.
