Page 195 of Breaking Rosalind
If Rosalind thinks I’m going to endure another vegan breakfast, the joke’s going to be on her. Leroi’s tough love helped us mend a few bridges, and we all had breakfast together this morning as a family.
I walk toward the cafe with a spring in my step, eager to see my little pet. Things between us might have started out badly, but I can tell her distrust of me is softening.
Rosalind could have used the time we spent apart to extract Miranda from her new academy and walk out of my life forever, but she didn’t. For all her protests, she can’t ignore our spark. She’s drawn to me, just as I am to her. Deep down, she wants me to convince her to stay.
It’s only a matter of time before my brothers see her as an asset and welcome her into the family.
As I step into the cafe, I’m hit with the scent of freshly brewed coffee. The woman who served us yesterday stands in front of the counter with a mop, but there’s no sign of Rosalind.
She pauses to greet me with a pained smile. “Your girlfriend fainted.”
My gaze snaps to a door that leads to an inner room, and I wonder if she’s lying down, dazed from being exposed to so many chemicals. “Where is she?”
“A doctor caught her before she fell and took her away.” The woman’s features fall as she completes her sentence, as though she’s realized she’s describing an abduction.
“Which way?” I growl, my heart slamming against my ribs like it wants to wring her neck.
She points to the right. “He said his medical bag was in his car.”
I’m already bolting out of the store and racing down the hallway toward the parking lot. Stores whizz past in a desperate blur. Matty Galliano must have taken her for one of his sick games. The bastard laid low to make me think he was dead, so I could drop my guard.
Sweat breaks out across my brow as I burst through the exit and tear down the stairwell. I can already predict what I’ll find. Rosalind, in the back seat of my car, stabbed to death.
Just like Tania. Just like Allegra. Just like he tried to do to Sofia.
Then there’ll be a team of homicide detectives ready to arrest me for her murder. Panic spikes as my feet pound down the concrete steps and dread wraps around my neck like a noose.
I can’t allow him to hurt Rosalind. She’s only just freed herself from the Moirai and hasn’t even connected with her daughter.
Shit. What will I tell Miranda?
I slam open the door to the lot’s top level, sprint to the Lamborghini, and fling open the passenger-side door. The front and back seats are empty, untouched. My chest loosens with relief, which only lasts until I hear a scream.
Jerking out of the car, I scan the parking lot to find a black van parked thirty feet away beside another exit. Adrenaline kicks me in the gut, and I lurch forward.
It’s Galliano.
Racing toward the van, I pull out my gun. Light streams out from between its back doors, broken by the occasional movement. Fury mounts, roaring like a wildfire in my veins. Blood rushes between my ears. If he’s laid a finger on my Rosalind, I won’t care how many snipers he’s got trained on my head.
I try the door. It’s jammed. I shoot at the lock, sending its mechanism flying across the concrete floor. With one hard yank, the door opens.
Inside are two gurneys. Rosalind lies naked on the right with an eviscerated corpse on the left. In the middle, a gray-haired bastard who isn’t Galliano whirls around with his pants around his ankles. His erect cock bobs, its reddened crown a moving target.
In the split second it takes to aim the gun, my rage revolves around my mental clock face from nine to twelve and then to one.
Time slows. My mind falls silent as I pull the trigger.
The bullet speeds through the van’s interior, piercing his shaft and slicing it clean in half. As the top of his cock flies off in an arc of blood, the man crumples to the floor with a shriek.
Time snaps back to normal. Without realizing it, I’ve freed Rosalind and I’m now strangling the screaming man with a garrote I’ve fashioned from the corpse’s small intestine. His eyes bulge. His mouth opens and closes like a gasping fish. His blood-soaked hands fumble uselessly at his throat.
“Cesare,” Rosalind yells through the haze.
“What?”
“Let go of my best friend’s guts.”
My gaze darts to the naked figure lying eviscerated on the other gurney. It’s Britt. I release her intestines and step out of the pool of blood with my palms raised in surrender.