Chapter Three

Three days, eighteen hours and twelve minutes, sixteen seconds. I couldn’t manage to open my eyes or move my body even though my mind remained active, not shutting off for over a week since I was abducted on my first day in this cursed city.

It was a matter of territory, with two strong power house mafia existing in Italy, all there was to do was dominate until the other caves. They had messed with my overseas business and I was forced to fly in personally and I landed in New York over a week ago.

Buzzing city, bright, busy. Lo odio. I hate it.

My first time away from Rome in years and I knew I didn’t like it. The air, weather, people, road, everything was different and I don’t do different. My car was hijacked and with a club to the back of my head I was rendered unconscious and that was less than an hour since I landed. An obvious trap I saw coming but couldn’t evade. I was out cold just to peel open my eyes to welcome two Italian shits with familiar tasteless tattoos of the Greco family crossing their forearms and they had me tied down. Talk about embarrassing.

Their torture methods were boring enough I could sleep through it. With no way to contact home I was royally fucked because despite my high tolerance to pain, I couldn’t let some spinless Greco scum put a bullet through me and disgrace the Fiore name.

I had escaped easy enough but with a gaping knife wound and half my body beaten, it wasn’t very far I could go in an unfamiliar city before I got caught in a shitty back alley of a shady street. They hated me enough to keep up the heavy beating but I’d do even worse if the roles were reversed so I couldn’t blame them.

I remember thinking I’d really die when I’d black out and when I came around, I was lying in soft fluffy foam. Not dead?

Somehow, I went from a rusty basement painted in red dried up blood and decorated with rotting human meat that hung from the ceiling to a strawberry scented room with colors I could only describe as bizarre but in a week span and I knew which one I preferred.

Someone was here, I couldn’t see her but I could feel her, smell her divine scent, her very prominent presence from the second she’d walked in. I had time, something I didn’t before and I’d started to imagine what she looked like. She sounded American with an accent I couldn’t stand a few days ago but with her, it was a sweet airy voice that I could only describe as angelic after three days of obsessing over every word she uttered to me and don’t get me started on her little giggles when she binged episodes of a show called friends.

I didn’t think I’d been any more frustrated with anything more than the fact that I couldn’t see the spread of her lips and the way her eyes would brighten every time, her every reaction when she would tell me about her job, her mom and her damn ex I had come to hate for the single reason of having a chance with her and fucking blowing it up. Idiota.

My first look at her was like a breath of fresh air, my lungs cleared and it was registered all the way to my brain. Perfezione.

She was an exquisite sight one that demanded you took a picture of but even that won’t do justice to her. I couldn’t afford to look away from her, my eyes blessed with her head tilted and her attention on me. My reaction to her was something I couldn’t control even if I wanted to. My gaze dedicated every detail to memory, like a starving man getting his first glance of what he needs and like one, the urge to feast overwhelmed me. Her long, straight brown hair with short bangs that curtained her fore head. Creamy, ivory skin and I got caught on a single black mark dotting her face just below her rosy lips. Completely unaware of my intense scrutiny, I stifled a groan while she sank her teeth into her lower lip, the plump flesh I now know would hunt my dreams until I’d tasted and savored it.

At my first words to her, she gasped in surprise, her eyes raised to meet mine and everything I thought I knew about my type of women was being questioned under those pairs of hazel eyes.

My steel-like control I could brag with was slipping with every second I was under her spell, even in my beat-up state I wanted her.

A gasp slipped from her mouth as she dropped the cloth back in place to cover me and drew her hands away from me and had them behind her, those hands that I had felt caressing my body, soft and teasing as they purposefully worked on my body. Now she pushed far away from me, just a few steps away from the door. She was scared of me. I did expect that but after our little bonding over blended meals, a new name she’d persistently called me and her talks about herself that I’d looked forward to and grew fond off, I wanted to avoid this phase.

Her heels clicked on the polished wooden floor when she retreated. I watched as she smoothed her green knitted sweater, then the perfect knot of hair at her nape with slender hands. At her movements, her chin rose higher.

She talked a lot to me when she thought I couldn’t hear her. At first, I didn’t mind her filling the silence and it was more of an exchange, she took care of me and I got to listen to her reveal things about herself but I knew I got the better half of our quiet deal. How else would I know just how mesmerizing and insanely cute I find her mind?

Seeing her retreat in fear was understandable. I wondered just how she’d found me and in what state and how brave she was to bring a man especially one like me to her home. To court the interest of a man such as me, Mia eroina.

If I didn’t want to scare her, I knew I had to put in work and be something I’m not, gentle.

“What… What did you just call me?”

Watching her with an amused smile, I couldn’t imagine her seeing me on the blink of death and helping me when her body trembled slightly under my gaze even though she tried to hide it. I want to know more, know everything about this little creature but she is… Fragile, that so that someone like me could break while trying to hold her.

“That_ that word, what does… it mean?” She stuttered out her second question just like the first.

She looked like she was about to bolt away from me and I wasn’t making it better by keeping quiet and watching her like a creep.

“You brought me here and did all this_” I lift the shirt she had me put on and pointed to my bandage and healing injury. “You even fed me and let me sleep in your bed, I remember you cursing me out for that.” The corner of my lips lifted remembering just how she said ‘I give you a day to wake up and get out of me bed, the sofa is so uncomfortable.’

“How? you were unconscious,” her tone took that of disbelief and her twinkling eyes went wide.

The foreign movement of my lips as they spread even wider into a pleased smile and an urge to draw more reactions from her. I was drunk on even the smallest things I could get from her. “I’m a great listener, you said that yourself Mia eroina.”

“You keep calling me that. My name is Yelena.” She stood straighter, announcing herself.

“Because that’s what you are Yelena.” My heroin.

Her name on my tongue felt so right, I wanted to whisper it into her ear and feel her shudder under me. Thinking of that wasn’t helping my current state of arousal go down.

She struggled not to but her eyes dropped to the tented sheets.

Have I ever struggled this much for control? “Looking only makes it worse Yelena,” my voice husky as I tried her name again.

As if angry with herself she snapped her gaze away, looking at anything but me.

I’d come to learn the hard way that nothing goes for nothing. This fascinating creature had saved me without a catch. She didn’t know me or what I was capable of and from how she looks at me like she’d want nothing more than for me to be out of her life.

For some reason I wanted to tell her that was not going to happen. Not when she also had a dark glint in those gazes, eating me up.

“I-I was merely caring for you,” she answered.

I needed to know. “How did you get me here, you saved me.”

Her cheeks turned pink and that started my very unhealthy obsession to seeing her skin flush.

I tried to sit higher in the bed, then grimaced in pain. The knife wound had healed considerably but still was a bitch to deal with.

“Don’t move so carelessly, I just changed your bandages.” Her angry tone was like music to my ears. I deluded myself thinking she worried about me.

Taking a small step away from the door and closer to me, she asked, “Who are you?”

“I believe I asked you a question first.”

“Your accent, I’ve not heard it before. I’m just curious.”

How could I not answer when she played my strings like a pro. “Pietro Fiore.” Just a name, it won’t hurt anybody. “I’m not from here, I’m sure you already guessed that.”

Blooded and brought up in Italy, Rome. My roots run deep so much so that some who render me old fashioned.

“Where did you find me? I’m finding a hard time understanding why you’d bring me in and take care of me when you’re scared of me.”

She flinched, confirming my words. Don’t be scared I won’t hurt you.

“It was in an alley, there were some guys there.”

I doubt Greco’s scum let me go so easily.

“Then you saw me get beat up.”

“Badly. I was just on my way from work when I saw you and… I wasn’t sure what to do when they got out a gun I panicked and did something really stupid…” I told you she talked a lot and I’ve come to learn it happens when she’s nervous.

I didn’t mind listening one bit, my curiosity growing with every second to a point I was a willing prisoner to her effortless charms.

My brows were raised in wonder when she spoke with her expressions on display and left me wondering how could such a person exist. Even scared and faced with an opportunity to run, she’d still did all that. Her light shines so bright in my eyes, so damn bright that my darkness wavered in its presence. There was a funny feeling in my chest that had me placing a hand against it. I may have had internal injuries because my usual steady heart even in horrid dangers, sped up. The feeling was unreal and her every word seemed to be the problem.

Her face paled seeing me clutch my chest. “Are you hurt? Maybe you broke some bones.”

I wasn’t sure about that. The Greco’s had beat half to death but I’d had worse and got out with nothing more than serious cuts and bruises. My body having being trained to be hard as steel for years but the hotness in my chest wasn’t a bad one, it was calming and light. I still needed to get it checked.

“You didn’t go to a hospital or the police.” That would have been a problem.

“I figured I shouldn’t and those people will come looking for you again.”

Of course, they would, keeping me a life just meant they weren’t safe and the things I would do to them. Its time those repulsive Greco family knew their place. I’d kept them around only because they remained out of my business for so long but now, they messed with a lot more than that. If it had gone wrongly Yelena wouldn’t be here. The though sent pure anger down my veins.

“Do you make it a habit to risk your life like that.”

She let out a dry laugh. “I’m not that selfless… I thought about running and pretending I didn’t anything, I just couldn’t”

“That would be a better choice next time. Those men are way worse than you think, if you were caught, they would do things that made the devil look like a saint.” I was no better but I don’t torture women, I give them easy deaths.

It was just small talk but she’d eased a bit, not as much on guard and she no longer stood so far away. Silence rested between us and I could see the questions swirling in her mind about me but she wasn’t going to ask. She wants me gone and her next words proved that.

“When will you be gone.” No sugar coating it.

The GPS tracker in my left arm must been reactivated since I escaped the ware house that jammed the signals which meant I had about a day before her apartments gets raided. A day I would spend with my new found paradise in the form of Mirabella and I wasn’t planning on letting go. She would love Rome as much I do because it would be her new home, by my side.