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AS SHE RUSHED PAST me, I dove towards Roger to take control of the situation. I’d had some fight training – I needed to, in this line of work – and there was no way I was letting him get away with what he had just done to Nadia.
I shoved him against the wall, slamming his head back so hard that his eyes glazed for a moment. All I could feel was my burning rage, coursing around my body, demanding my attention, and I intended to do everything I could to deliver on that.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” I growled to him as I grasped his hair and pulled him back to look at me. I could see the fear in his eyes, but I noticed his hand dipping for something at his side. Glancing down, I spotted a gun, and I snatched it before he could even get close.
I shoved him down to his knees. What the fuck did he think he was doing here, with a gun, trying to steal Nadia like that? He didn’t own her. If I hadn’t been here, something terrible would have happened, and the thought of that was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Shit, I didn’t even want to consider that – so soon after we had been together for the first time, too.
The gun in my hand, I brought it to his temple and pressed it against his head. He wasn’t holding himself together at all. I could see the tears streaming down his face, and he was shaking from head to toe, like he couldn’t believe this was happening. The anger was still screaming at me, telling me there was only one way to deal with this lowlife, that I had to pull the trigger and get this over with before I walked out of this building. It was what my father would have done. It was what anyone in my place would have done. I pressed my finger on to the trigger, testing it, considering it...
And then, I dropped the gun back to my side. I knew I had to deal with this the right way, if I was going to be able to continue building this reputation that I was making for myself, one where I wasn’t just this crazy mobster willing to murder anyone who crossed him. Roger’s head slumped to his chest, his breathing hard, and I reached for my phone and dialed Mauro.
“Where the hell are you?” Mauro demanded, as soon as he picked up.
“I’ll text you the address,” I told him. “Send down some of the cops we have on our payroll. I need them to take care of something for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s nothing that’s going to get us into trouble, don’t worry,” I assured him. “I need them to come here and pick someone up. Can you do that for me?”
“I can,” Mauro replied. He knew there was little point in arguing with me, that I had made my mind up and that was the end of it. At least I wasn’t going to have to fight to get this guy arrested. I was sure, judging by the look of him, that he would confess the moment he got the chance, too horrified by what he had done to pull off anything else.
My men finally arrived, and the two of them took control of Roger while I went to see how Nadia was. She was cowering at the end of the corridor, and she looked as though she might throw up at any moment. As soon as I got close to her, though, she practically fell into my arms, hanging onto me for dear life.
“You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” she breathed, and she squeezed me close. I almost wanted to bring up what she had said to me when she left my office earlier, ask her if she really meant it, but I knew now wasn’t the time. She needed my help, and I was going to do all I could to give it to her.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, pulling back and lifting her face gently in my hands so I could get a look at her. She didn’t look physically harmed, but I could see the fear in her eyes, the panic at what had just happened, and I couldn’t blame her for that.
“No, I don’t think so,” she murmured, tucking her hair back behind her ear. “Just... shaken, I guess.”
“It’s okay,” I murmured to her, and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I can handle this now, you don’t have to worry about anything.”
“Thank you,” she replied, and she leaned against me. I could feel her trembling, and I wished I could take some of the fear from her, just lift it from her mind so she could know for sure that she would be safe. I had her now; nothing was going to happen to her.
The cops arrived, and I explained to them as best I could what had happened – this crazy stalker had rolled up out of nowhere, and decided that he was going to steal his favorite dancer for himself. They took notes of everything, until I was satisfied that they had heard out every little detail of this case and were going to take it seriously. I knew how easy it was for guys to just brush off some bullshit that they pulled with dancers, since cops didn’t exactly have a lot of time for women who shook their ass for money, but I wasn’t going to let them treat Nadia that way. I was going to make sure that Roger got what was coming to him, so we could put all of this behind us once and for all.
Once the cops had hauled Roger off, I turned back to Nadia. She was leaning next to the door, staring off into space.
“Are you okay?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“No.”
“You should stay with me tonight,” I told her, and she furrowed her brow at me.
“What?”
“I have security, I have CCTV, you won’t have to worry about a thing,” I explained. “Just for tonight.”
She peered at me for another moment, and it suddenly hit me how this would come off.
“And I’ll give you your own room,” I added. “Of course.”
“Of course,” she murmured. She looked relieved. I knew why her head would have gone there – even though I didn’t want to exploit this awfulness to get her into bed again, after what Roger had just done, it was natural that she wasn’t exactly totally sold on trusting guys right now. I hated that she’d been through so much, hated that I hadn’t been there to stop it from the moment it started, but this was the closest I could offer her to a chance to escape.
“I need to leave a note for my dad,” she explained. “I think he’s down at the store right now, I – I don’t want him to know that any of this... you know. I think it would just stress him out.”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t find out,” I promised her. I meant it. I would do anything she needed from me right now, as long as it meant that she wouldn’t stay here. I didn’t want her stuck in this place any longer than she had to be, not after what that guy had just done to her.
She nodded.
“Okay,” she murmured. “Can we get out of here, then?”
“Of course we can.”
I was expecting her to put up more of a fight about me taking her away from here, but I doubted she was going to be able to argue much given the stress of everything that had happened. She ducked into the apartment and scribbled out a quick note to her father. The cops wanted to talk to her, but I promised they could the next day – for now, she needed to get out of here.
We made our way down the stairs to the car Mauro had sent for me. I knew he would be expecting me to come right back to the club to deal with whatever it was that was going on there, but truthfully, I couldn’t do anything else tonight.
I just wanted to make sure she was okay.
The fight seemed to have left her for now, all that spark that usually had her pushing back against me dropping like it had never been there in the first place. I hated to see her like this, but I knew she wouldn’t just be able to get over what had happened to her. Fuckers like Roger, they thrived on making people afraid, making it so they had nothing to rely on by way of safety or self-protection.
“Will you send someone to keep watch over the store?” she asked me. “On my father?”
“Of course I will,” I assured her, and I opened the car door for her to get in. I knew the two of us had a long way to go back to my place, and I wanted to get her there sooner rather than later. I didn’t want her to have to stay at the apartment for a moment longer than she had to, and there was no way I was going to make her wait here, when she had just endured what she had.
She deserved some peace for tonight. And I was going to do everything I could to make sure she got it.
