Page 79 of When She Tempts (The Fallen)
Before I get a chance to rise, a pair of familiar leather shoes come into view. When I look up, I see they belong to a very angry Giorgio.
“Hel—”
He leans down, wraps his hand around my biceps, and hauls me to my feet. His hold on me is so rough, it’s almost bruising.
I frown at him. “What’s going on?”
“What the fuck are you doing here, Martina?”
The raw anger in his voice sends blood away from my face. His eyes are hard and dark with ire.
“I just came with Polo to get some air.”
“You came here to get some air.”
“Yes.”
He jerks me closer. “Are you stupid?”
Hurt blooms inside my chest at his words. “No.”
He flashes me his teeth. “You’re living on ten acres of land. That wasn’t enough fresh air for you?”
“We barely left the property. We—”
He shakes me, making my hair spill into my face. “Anyone could have seen you driving here!”
“No one saw us,” I protest, jerking my arm out of his grip. “We drove straight here from the castello.”
He grabs me again, wrapping both of his hands around my biceps and practically dragging me into him. “Youcannotknow that. Did any cars pass you?”
Did they? “I-I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Of course you weren’t,” he growls.
Anger drips into my blood. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
He snarls, turns me around, and pushes me out of the greenhouse. “There’s a camera at the stoplight five minutes from here, which means it likely got a picture of you. Do you understand what that means?”
“Not really,” I confess as we near what I presume to be his car.
“It means that unless I manage to erase any trace of it quickly, someone might use it to track you down to this precise location.”
He jerks open the passenger door and stuffs me inside.
“Sal has an army looking for you,” he continues as soon as he gets into the driver’s seat, “and this is exactly the kind of idiotic slipup that might give him what he needs.”
My stomach drops.Shit. As we back out of the lot, I notice Polo’s truck. “Polo is still there.”
The temperature in the car plummets. Giorgio’s eyes are on the road, but I can’t miss the grind of his jaw. “Polo should have known better,” he says in an icy tone. “Now, he’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
“I was the one who asked him to take me,” I say weakly.
“I’m doing everything I can to make sure no one knows you’re with me, while you do the exact opposite. Do you know what Sal will do to you if he finds you?”
I swallow. “No.”
“He’ll use you to get Damiano to surrender. Sal knows how much your brother loves you, and he’ll exploit that weakness to its maximum extent. Do you know the kind of man our don is? He doesn’t have morals. There’s nothing that’s beyond the pale to him. He’s a murder and a rapist, and he’s ruined countless lives. If he gets his hands on you…” He slams his jaw closed and strangles the wheel with his hands.
