Sia sat in the dark vehicle for only a moment. She watched Trygg stroll casually toward the entrance of the station, her irritation growing with each passing second.
What just happened?
She’d felt the sizzle of awareness that had ignited between them when she touched him, and she knew he had too.
Yet Trygg, a behemoth of a male whose lethal glower and deep, gravel-rough voice made even the warriors of the Rome command center stand a little straighter when he was around, had practically scrambled to get away from her.
Right after ordering her to be gone when he got back.
She knew if she left she would never see him again. He would make sure of that now.
Because somehow, in spite of the fact they couldn’t seem to avoid locking horns or struggling for the upper hand, she and Trygg had connected. And it had scared him.
It scared her, too, especially when she was still licking her wounds from the last time she’d allowed herself to get close to a man.
But Sia wasn’t the type to run.
She preferred to face her problems head on.
And the biggest problem she had right now was the stubborn, overbearing Breed male who seemed to think he had to take on the world and all of its troubles single-handedly.
Sia stared daggers into the back of his covered head as he fell in behind a cluster of bikers who were just entering the station. Even with his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved into his pockets, he stood out like a tree among shrubs.
Not that he couldn’t handle whatever happened once he got inside. She trusted his skills were every bit as stealthy and lethal as his reputation proclaimed them to be. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t anxious.
He’d been gone only a few seconds and the wait was already killing her.
“Dammit.”
She shook her head on another exhaled curse, then hopped out of the vehicle. Her plan for how she might help him took shape in her mind as she walked the first few steps over the dark pavement. Reaching up, she vigorously mussed her hair, then tore her sleeve loose at the shoulder. For good measure, she also ripped one side of her blouse wide open, exposing her lace bra and a fair amount of bare skin.
By the time she neared the station in her disheveled state, she had managed to make tears well in her eyes and force her breathing into a panicked, rapid pant.
“Aiutami! Aiutami! Per favore!”
Every head turned as she rushed inside, screaming for help in fluent Italian.
Every head, including the dark one that towered over most of the others in the busy lobby.
She didn’t dare look directly in Trygg’s direction as she carried on about being attacked just outside the station, but she felt his hard eyes boring into her in the second before she collapsed dramatically on the floor. No less than a dozen officers—Breed and human alike—hurried over to assist her.
She kept up her ruse, using all of the Atlantean allure at her disposal. Just to be safe, she also made sure to show just enough skin to keep her male audience’s attention riveted while several officers ran outside to look for her assailant and still more crowded around to offer her water and comfort while she pretended to fade in and out of consciousness.
She didn’t know how long to continue with the act. She’d lost sight of Trygg almost immediately and could only hope he’d had enough time to locate the evidence room and retrieve Rosa’s belongings as a couple of kind JUSTIS officers helped show her to the ladies’ room so she could compose herself enough to file a report of the “assault.”
Sia waited in the restroom for several long minutes before peering around the door to find the corridor quieted and empty. Ducking out, she hurried to the nearest side door and made her escape into the adjacent alley.
Trygg was waiting there for her, his scowl firmly in place and his bulky arms crossed over his chest. “Nice work. Very convincing.”
“Thank you.” She lifted her bared shoulder and offered him a satisfied smile. “It almost seemed too easy. Maybe being Atlantean in this world has its advantages.”
He grunted. “Don’t ever do something like that again.”
He strode away from her, his boots thumping on the pavement, his pace agitated. Sia marched after him. “Why are you upset?”
He wheeled on her, his hands clamping around her biceps in a grip so fierce he shook with it. “I told you not to come inside.” He ground out the words, his eyes crackling with sparks that told her just how hot his anger was. “I told you to leave because I don’t want to be responsible for you, Sia.”
“You’re not responsible,” she snapped. “I’ve been taking care of myself for longer than you’ve been alive. In case you’ve forgotten, warrior, I’m immortal. If someone wanted to kill me, they’d have to be determined enough to take my head.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t be hurt,” he shot back angrily. “Do you have any idea what I thought when I heard your voice behind me in there? I thought something had actually happened to you. I thought Santino or one of his men—” He broke off on a harsh curse. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter what I thought. It was just an act and you played it well.”
She blinked, utterly stunned. “You were afraid for me, Trygg?”
“Afraid?” He scoffed, those glowing flecks in his eyes blazing now. “I’m mad as fuck, woman.”
His grasp tightened on her arms, almost to the point of pain. When his lip curled back from his teeth, all she could see was the razor-sharp points of his elongating fangs. But as enraged as he surely was with her, his eyes kept darting to her mouth. She watched his nostrils flare, his harsh face as terrifying as she’d ever seen it.
And yet she was certain that the worst this deadly Breed male wanted to do to her right now was kiss her.
Do it, she thought, all but daring him to as she lifted her chin and stared unflinchingly into his fiery, wild eyes. Her heart raced at the idea, her pulse drumming from both leftover adrenaline and the even stronger rush of arousal that spiraled through her as she held Trygg’s heated gaze.
After a long moment, he made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, then his grip fell away. The air between them still pulsed with unresolved desire, but Trygg’s face was a mask of indifference now. “We’re finished here, Sia. I’ll drop you at the shelter on my way back to the command center.”
His tone was flat, all business. He’d returned to warrior mode as they’d walked to the waiting SUV, and she should probably be thankful for that. Hadn’t she messed up her life enough without adding to it by getting involved with a crude beast like Trygg?
Except he wasn’t crude, nor a beast.
And she was involved.
Like it or not, they were bound by a common goal—unraveling Rosa’s secrets.
“What about the evidence?” she asked once they were seated in the vehicle.
“What about it?”
“Did you get Rosa’s things?”
His nod was curt as he started the engine and rolled into the river of evening traffic. “I got them.”
“Let me see!” She could hardly contain her excitement. He reached inside his leather jacket and withdrew a bulging large brown envelope. She grabbed it out of his hands and broke the seal. “Have you looked inside?”
“Not yet. After I snatched it, I was too busy wondering if I’d have to save a certain Atlantean’s reckless ass.”
Sia smirked. “Fine ass, you mean.”
He nearly choked, swiveling a confused frown on her. “What?”
“Isn’t that what you said last night outside the shelter? I believe you said I had a fine ass.”
He scowled, but words seemed to fail him. Sia shrugged, pretending she wasn’t taking far too much satisfaction in his flustered reaction. She opened the envelope and reached inside.
“There’s not much in here.” She carefully spilled the contents into her lap. Rosa’s wallet, which contained only a handful of euros and her ID. Her phone. A gold locket on a delicate, broken chain. “I never saw Rosa without this necklace on. It must’ve fallen off when that bloodsucking monster strangled her.”
Trygg glanced at her as they approached a red traffic light. “What about the phone? Power it up. Let’s see who she’s been talking to recently.”
Sia tried, then shook her head. “It’s asking for a passcode.”
He didn’t touch the device, but a small vibration buzzed her fingertips. “Try it now.”
“Showing off, vampire?”
He smirked. “You’ll know when I am.”
The phone lit up in her hands, unveiling the home screen and a photo of Rosa holding Angelina in her arms on a bright, sunny day. The baby was wrapped in a pink blanket, and Rosa’s expression was one of pure happiness, captured in the midst of a joyful laugh. Sia traced her finger around the mother and child, her heart squeezing with sadness.
“What do you want me to search for?” she murmured.
“Phone calls, messages. Anyone she communicated with on a regular basis, but also any anomalies. Even a one-off phone number or text could be the lead that will bring us closer to her connection to Santino.”
As Sia scrolled through weeks and months of incoming and outgoing calls in the phone’s history, she thought back to the photo of Rosa and her baby. “You don’t suppose she was involved with him, do you? Santino and Rosa. Could they have been lovers?”
Trygg chuckled as he turned the SUV onto the street where the shelter was located. “Highly doubtful.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because Roberto Santino prefers men in his bed. The younger the better. He’s even paid for boys when it suits him, according to our intel on the sick fuck.”
A brutal edge crept into Trygg’s rough voice as he relayed that last bit of information. He’d made it no secret that he despised the criminal for his proliferation of Red Dragon and other drugs, but this charge against Santino seemed to resonate someplace deeper in Trygg.
Sia wanted to ask him about it. She wanted to know so much where he was concerned.
But Trygg lived behind steep walls. She was seeing that for the first time tonight. Where before, after she had first arrived from the colony, she had dismissed him as a menacing brute. With his forbidding looks and surly attitude, she had been only too happy to avoid his dark glares and off-putting silence.
Now it just made her want to know more.
As an Atlantean elder, one who had spent all of her long life safely cocooned behind the veil that shielded her kind from violence and bloodshed, the idea that she might be intrigued by one of the Breed—and a warrior besides—would have been laughable. That she could actually be attracted to one of them? Well, that would have been beyond horrifying.
Yet she felt desire and then some for Trygg.
She studied him as he pulled up in front of the shelter.
As soon as they were parked, he pivoted toward her. He held out his hand, the big broad palm open. “I’ll take that phone now, Sia. And the rest of those things.”
“No.” The refusal slipped past her lips before she could stop it. She shook her head. “No. I’m not going to give it up. This evidence belongs to me as much as it does you or the Order.”
“Like hell it does.”
“I helped you get it tonight and you know it. At least be man enough to admit that—”
He flashed his fangs at her. “Oh, I am man enough, Sia. Man enough for anything you’ve got in mind.”
“You don’t frighten me, Trygg. And like it or not, we’re in this together.”
His expression darkened. “Damn right I don’t like it.”
“Good. Then at least we agree on something.”
She slid the phone and the rest of the contents back into the envelope. Then she hopped out of the vehicle, closing the door on Trygg’s vivid curse behind her.