Keeping his bride

Nicholas

I PUSH GINO Carbone’s lifeless body off of the woman.

Then, I wipe the blade of my knife off on the dead man’s shirt before securing it back inside my suit jacket.

“What about in and out undetected did you not understand?” Aldo hisses in my earpiece.Text © by N0ve/lDrama.Org.

“Just a minor complication,” I mutter.

“A dead man is not a minor complication, Nico,” he chides.

“He was hurting Lina.”

“You don’t even know if the girl is Lina.”

“Well, even if it’s not her, he was still hurting an innocent woman.”

Aldo has no response to that because he knows I’m right. In the end, I had to intervene. There was no other way.

I reach down and press my fingers to the girl’s neck. There’s a pulse, but it’s very faint. “I need to get her out of here,” I inform Aldo while grabbing a blanket from the bed and wrapping the poor girl in it.

“And how the fuck do you propose we do that, Nico?” he asks angrily.

Obviously, nothing is going as planned at this point, and I know Aldo hates it when things deviate from a certain path. But it’s too late to turn back now.

“You’re gonna have to work some magic, man,” I tell him before scooping the woman’s limp body into my arms. Her head falls back, and I stare down at the heart-shaped birthmark on her neck just below her ear. “Lina,” I gasp, my chest aching. A million different emotions flood through me just then all at once. Fuck, I can’t believe I finally found her.

“It’s her?” Aldo asks, and I can hear his fingers tapping rapidly on his keyboard.

“Yes, it’s her,” I manage to say. Swallowing hard, I cradle Lina against my chest, holding her tightly.

“There’s a service entrance,” Aldo says urgently. “You need to hurry, though. The guards are going to be doing their rounds soon. All of the video is still on loop, so they won’t see you on the cameras, but I can’t protect you from running into the wrong guy.”

“Got it.”

“Coast is clear in the hallway. Go out of the room and turn right. Go to the end of the hall and down the staircase.”

I follow Aldo’s instructions carefully. I stop when he tells me to stop. I disappear into various rooms when he alerts me to a guard nearby. And my chest doesn’t stop aching until we’re finally out the back entrance of the mansion and onto the street. It takes sheer willpower and a lot of luck, but I manage to carry Lina the whole five blocks back to the van without incident.

“Were you followed?” Aldo asks when he pops open the side door. His dark hair is disheveled like he’s been running his hands through it for hours. I probably took ten years off of his life tonight by pulling all the shit I did, but I don’t care. It was worth it. I would do anything, and I mean anything, to save Lina.

“How the hell should I know?” I hiss before gently setting Lina’s limp body down on the floor. The blanket falls open, revealing her bloody dress and the bruises beginning to form on her arms and temple, and I cringe at the sight.

Aldo’s eyes grow wide. “Okay, okay. We need to get the hell out of here before someone discovers his body. After you left, I took off the looping video and cleared the entire security system of all the footage for the past few hours since you arrived. When we get back to the compound, I’ll work on the CCTV footage in the area, but I might not be able to erase everything. Someone could have already seen you carrying her for that distance and reported it.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” I growl before closing the side door. Then, I run to the driver’s side and jump into the seat and slam the door shut. Ripping off my mask, I throw it to the floor. Then, revving the engine, I pull out of the parking spot and speed down the street back towards the compound.

I glance back at Lina lying on the floor, and I have to blink several times to make sure I’m not imagining her. “You’re safe now, Lina,” I tell her softly. “I’m taking you home.”

The moment Aldo and I return back to the compound that we call home, I see a huge, dark figure standing in the driveway.

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.

I park the van and step out. Benito walks over, tall and menacing with tattooed-covered muscles. He is my father’s number one, and he’s a huge, mean-looking son of a bitch, but he holds a soft spot in his heart for my family and my family alone. He’s actually my godfather and has always been like an uncle to me, watching over me and protecting me over the years while I was growing up.

His huge muscles bunch under his t-shirt, threatening to rip the seams as he stares me down. Aldo climbs out of the side of the van and shuts the door. I can practically see him trembling from here.

“Tell me you two weren’t just at Berlusconi’s party in Manhattan,” Benito starts.

I glance at him and give him a one-shoulder shrug.

“Goddamn it, Nico!” he practically roars. “I hope to fuck you didn’t have anything to do with Carbone’s son being dead.”

Damn. Word travels fast.

I wince at his accusation, and I can’t even meet his eyes. I’m not scared of anyone, but I am scared of Benito’s disapproval. I always want to make him proud. And my actions tonight are going to bring a lot of repercussions; ones that I haven’t even had time to think about yet.

“You better have had a damn good reason,” Benito hisses.

“I did.” Slowly, I walk back to the van and open the back doors before moving aside.

Benito steps closer, checking out the cargo, his eyebrow suddenly arching in surprise. “Who the fuck is that?” he questions.

“Selina McCall.”

His head whips to the side and he meets my eyes. “Your Selina?”

“Yes.” I turn to look at the blonde beauty sleeping in the back. “She was at the party. Gino was hurting her. Hell, he might even have killed her if I hadn’t intervened.”

“How do you know it’s her?” he asks, and I can hear the unease in his voice, because I’ve been wrong before. I’ve

saved what seems like a hundred Se ina McCalls before, claiming they were her before finding out they weren’t.

“It’s her,” I tell him confidently. “Not only the eyes but the same birthmark on her neck. I’m a thousand percent sure it’s Lina.”

“Holy shit. After all this time…” Benito’s voice trails off as he shakes his head. Then with a grim voice, he tells me,

“We’ll deal with your father’s wrath when he gets home.”

“You’re not going to call him?”

“And risk ruining their anniversary trip? No fucking way,” he grunts. “They’ll be home in a few days. We’ll figure out what to tell them by then.”

I nod my head in agreement, and then I glance over at Aldo, who emphatically nods. He doesn’t want to piss my father off either.

“Your team is freaking out over Gino Carbone’s death,” Benito tells Aldo. “I suggest you guys cover Nico’s tracks to lessen the fallout from tonight.”

“Right away, sir,” Aldo mumbles before jogging off towards the part of the property that houses the underground network of computers, servers, and IT equipment.

“Carry Selina inside,” Benito starts. “I’m going to phone the on-call doc and tell her we need her ASAP.”

I give him a nod before I lean down to scoop Selina into my arms. Her head lolls against my chest as I carry her into the compound. It’s hard to believe that after all these years she’s finally home where she belongs.