A burning heat tore across the curve of her shoulder, snapping Alessa back to the moment. As if her ears had unclogged, she was immediately overwhelmed with too many loud noises. Booming, bursting explosions she knew to be gunfire and something above them that sounded like tires squealing, and shouting. Definitely shouting.
Not all of the shouting was outside the cab of the SUV.
“Get the fuck down!” Rocco hauled her down to the floor between the seats, and with concerning ease he maneuvered her still-disoriented form completely between his knees. The motion wedged her rather tightly between his body and the back passenger seat, her legs stretched awkwardly around his.
Alessa blinked, hard, as the cacophony finally developed identifiable layers. And with that came the realization that she had likely been shot. “What the hell—”
“‘What the hell’ is my question!” Rocco snapped. He pressed one hand firmly—almost painfully—over the burning area on her shoulder and raised his other arm. “We don’t have time for that right now, so stay thefuck down.”
Alessa winced, but she wasn’t sure if she was more winded from the discomfort in her arm or the hard truth in his words. She wasn’t showing her best. And now the underboss of the family she was technically only visiting was having to usehergun to shoot at a target she couldn’t even see, which meant that target had an angle on him, too.
No sooner had the thought stabbed another knife into her pride than the shooting came to a sudden, jarring stop.
Rocco blew out a breath. “Get Ignazio loaded and let’s get the fuck out of here!”
Ignazio?Of course. Ignazio should have been defending the side Rocco had just been shooting through. The side where the bullet that had clipped her had obviously come from. Alessa looked up at Rocco, but found she didn’t know how to ask.
Would it be her fault for zoning out? For having a goddamn panic attack in the middle of a fight?
She’d certainly seen men blamed for less.
Rocco hauled her straight up, onto his lap, as the back hatch of the SUV popped open. He used the back of his hand to brush her hair away before carefully peeling down one shoulder of her shirt. The sleeve material was stickier than it was supposed to be, more from the blood of her wound than the Vegas heat.
Alessa craned her neck to see the hit for herself. She’d surely had worse, but it would be smart to get eyes on it as quickly as possible. Except then she wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or further humiliated, because by all accounts, it was a scrape. The bullet was surely lodged in the seatback behind them.Not even top ten.
Rocco made a low sound like a growl and tilted his head back and to the side, toward where Emanuele and another man struggled with a groaning Ignazio. “Bring me the goddamn first aid kit, too.”
Movement in the backseat paused.
Alessa refrained from smacking herself. “It’s all right,” she started.
Rocco whipped forward again. “It isnotfucking all right. None of what just happened is fucking all right.” He curled an arm wholly around her waist as if she had made any effort to climb off—as she should have—and tugged her closer with a hand at her nape. “We’re going to talk about whatever the fuck that was. As soon as you’re patched up and I’ve calmed down.”
Emotion threatened to clog her throat and Alessa ducked her gaze. “I’d rather not.”
“I’d rather you weren’t bleeding.”
She looked up again as Emanuele settled in the driver’s seat. It had been her intent to roll her eyes and say something snarky, but Rocco’s expression was so dead-set serious that the plan itself withered away before she could put it into action.
“First aid kit,” Emanuele said moments before something landed with a muted thud on the seat in her periphery. “Need any help?”
Alessa’s gaze drifted to the unassuming box.
“No, just drive,” Rocco replied. He adjusted his grip enough to grab up the box, and by the time the SUV was straightened on the road again he had an antiseptic wipe torn open. His eyeslifted back to hers. “This is just until we can get a doctor over to look at it properly. That might be an hour or two.”
“I can clean it myself, really,” she said, softer than she’d meant.
He ignored her completely.
Chapter seven
Letting Go
“Alessa already told meshe found a name,” Dante De Salvo greeted when the call connected. Even through the speaker on Rocco’s phone, the other man’s voice was smooth in a cool, unaffected, chilling kind of way Rocco never felt as though he personally achieved.
He didn’t let it rattle him. That, or the fact that it was arguably inappropriate for him to be making this call altogether. “I know,” he said. “I was with her when she called. This isn’tabout that.”
“Oh?”
