He made a face like the answer should have been obvious. “The last time I laid eyes on you, you were barely out of diapers and I was just a kid myself. There had been barely any photos of you circulating as you got older, and none that I would have ever needed to see.”
She understood his meaning perfectly. He’d only needed to see the photos of his targets. And he was also right about the lack of photos of her. Her father’s bodyguards had always done a good job of shielding her and her mother. They had seldom even traveled in the same vehicle as her father.
“And if you had known who I was?”
“Sasha…” He ran a hand through his hair. “Couldn’t you tell? It wouldn’t have mattered. One look at you and I was a goner.”
At least her fear that he’d purposely targeted her was finally and completely assuaged. They had really just been two people in Verona, drawn to each other in a way she had never been drawn to anyone before. Perhaps, it would have been easier to let him go if he had gone after her on purpose. This, however … this was torture.
She meant it when she told him that she wouldn’t let him kill her father, but she also knew that if her father found him here, Rome would die. She couldn’t let that happen either. It would destroy her. “You’d better get out of here before my father finds you here and kills you.”
He invaded her space then, backing her up with his mere presence until her butt hit the balcony table. With his face inches from hers, he asked, “I need to know why you ran from me in Italy. Did you know who I was?”
Sasha nodded. “I saw your driver’s license that morning. I figured we were a conflict of interest.” She shrugged.
Her head jerked in the direction of the living room when she heard a noise, and suddenly, she had her hand around Rome’s wrist in a vise grip to keep him from using his gun. She knew she wasn’t strong enough to hold him, but she’d beg if she had to. She’d beg her father to spare Rome, too. Fortunately, the noise turned out to be her father’s cat.
They both let out an audible sigh of relief. He gently removed her hand from his wrist and held it in his. That’s when he spotted the ring he had bought her still sitting on her right hand. She had thought about getting rid of it, but it was all she had left of him. Parting with it would have been like letting go of him all over again.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
“It never is, is it?”
He let go of her hand and brought their foreheads together, and placed his hand on the nape of her neck. “I mean you and me.”
“This isn’t going to end well,” she said right before he kissed her, hard, passionately. She wrapped her arms around his neck and poured three month’s worth of grief into their kiss. It felt as natural as breathing to have their lips and tongues reunite. It had been their separation that felt unnatural.
Sasha had heard about the great Valentin assassin. Boris Valentin’s greatest treasure was his son, a son who ghosted in and out before the target even had a chance to know that he was coming for him. If Sasha hadn’t been there, her father would have already been dead. And the moment Rome released her, he disappeared, just as quietly and easily as he had arrived … like a ghost.
A glimmer of hope pierced her heart, though. Maybe the two of them could end this feud between their families once and for all, she thought. Sasha would find a way to protect her father now that she knew Boris had put a hit out on him. And now she understood why her father had been pacing. He must have known, too. Something must have happened to make things escalate into a full-on war, but despite all that, even knowing that most likely she and Rome were doomed to end badly before they had really started, she couldn’t bring herself to stay away from him.
She was way too far gone for that now.
