“What the fuck happened to the feed? I can’t hear a damn thing inside her house. Mobilize the soldiers—right now. Lorenzo may be in there with another signal jammer. Fuck it, I’m going over there myself.” If I found one hair harmed on Jillian’s head, I’d become instantly worse than any serial killer in history. Jack the Ripper wouldn’t have shit on me.

“Damon,” Percy called sternly.

“What?” I barked back. “Are you fucking deaf?”

“You can’t go over there, Damon.”

“What the fuck do you mean I can’t go over there? Of course I fucking can, and I fucking will. Right fucking now. Who the fuck do you think you are to tell me that?”

“I’m sorry, Damon. But we have orders.”

Fuck. Me. He pulled rank on me with my own team.

“Dad called?” I put my hands on my hips and drew in a deep breath, trying to avoid losing my cool any more than I already had.

“Yeah, Damon. I’m sorry, man. He gave a direct order to keep you away from the house today for a while. He said you’d know when the time was right.” Percy wasn’t happy about relaying the message to me, and his angst showed in his rigid features.

“It’s not your fault, Percy. Dad must have something else in play that he’s keeping close to the vest. If he says I’ll know when the time is right, then I’ll know soon enough. He knows I’m not leaving here without Jillian.”

“Does she know that?”

“Not yet. But she will.”

“Think she’ll move back to New York with you?”

I laughed, a short grunt with no humor behind it. “First, I have to get her to willingly walk across the street with me. I’m not even there yet. When I convince her to forgive me, maybe I can employ my entire family to help me get her to move to New York. With her mom gone, I don’t know that she has anything else to keep her here.”

With my plan of attack thwarted by my father, I planted myself on the couch in front of the television and tried to lose myself in something mind-numbing. It didn’t work, though. My thoughts drifted back to what was happening at Jillian’s house, and questions of why my father wouldn’t have told me about it first.

“Fucking hell, Percy.” I flew up off the couch and stomped across the room until I stood over him. All my fury burned in my eyes. “You know, don’t you?”

“Know what, Damon?” His eyes were big and round, his pupils dilated, and his leg jumped from nervous energy.

“My mother is at Jillian’s right now. Isn’t she?”

“Damon, you know Vincenzo doesn’t run his plans by me. He tells me what to do, and I do it.”

“Answer the question, Percy.” I grabbed his shirt and hoisted him up from his chair in front of the surveillance equipment.

“Yes. Lina is with Jillian right now. Vincenzo said we weren’t allowed to listen to what they say.”

“Son of a bitch! I knew it.” I released him and started pacing the floor, running my hands through my hair and trying to figure out my next move.

“Come on, man. You just said you’d get your family to help sway her to our side. If anyone can do it, it’s your mom. She has a way of making all of us do whatever she wants.”

Then I did laugh, a real one. “That way she has about her is called Vincenzo Marchetti. If she doesn’t get her way on one hand, he’s always there to back her up and make sure she gets what she wants on the other hand. The man lives and breathes by her.”

“Then you want your mom in your corner, right? This must’ve been her idea—to lock you out of the conversation so she can assure Jillian she’s not lying to her. You need Jillian to trust the family, Damon. Let her start by trusting Lina.”

“You’re right, Percy. I know you are. Jillian hasn’t had much reason to trust the family, especially me. You know, man, it’ll just be hell admitting my mom had to talk my wife into marrying me.”

“Whoa. You’re already thinking marriage? You just met the girl.”

“The girl is pregnant with my baby. And I love her. I don’t need more time to know she’s the one I want—the only one I want. Apparently, I just need more time to get her to realize that and want to be with me again.”

Over three hours later, the sound in Jillian’s house mysteriously kicked back on, but all I heard was dead bolts locking. We had cameras installed too, but those were only turned on when I was watching alone. If I had caught any of my men gawking at my girl, I would’ve ripped his eyeballs clean out of their sockets. I’d never been a jealous man until I met Jillian. Jealous was the wrong word…I was possessive of her. Not that I thought of her as anything I’d bought or owned, but I craved her. And I wanted her to crave me just as much.

Mama was right when she said I’d know when I met the one.

After telling Percy to take a break, I pulled the headphones over my ears and listened to every sound in her house. From the creak of wood floors to the faint squeak of closing doors, I pictured her every move. When I heard Percy’s snores from the other room, I flipped the switch for the cameras and watched Jillian on the flat-screen monitor. She took my breath away, and just the thought of losing her could bring me to my knees.

I kept vigil in that spot for hours, watching her move from room to room. She’d pick up her laptop, scroll through a few pages, then walk back to the spare bedroom. She held the screen up to the wall and stood back as far as her arms would allow, trying to envision the decorations. Then she’d go back to her desk, scribble a few words, and add to the sketch in her notebook.

She was making so many plans and preparations for a tiny baby—and loving every minute of it.

Before long, she went into her en suite bathroom to get ready for bed, washing her face and brushing her teeth. Then she walked back into her bedroom and sat on the bed. She opened the top drawer of her nightstand, removed a gun, and placed it within reach beside her bed. Did she have a bad feeling? In the weeks upon weeks I’d watched her at night, she’d never done that before.

“Percy, get in here!”

He came rushing into the room. “What? What happened?”

“Something’s off. She feels it. I feel it. You sit here and listen to everything. If you hear a limb scratch her window, you tell me. I don’t care what it is. I’m going over there now, and I’ll sit on her front porch all night if I have to. But I’m not staying here another second when she needs me there. Do not turn on that camera unless I say so.”

“You got it, boss.”

When I’d first moved to Louisiana to watch over her, I bought a house that was only two streets over from hers. Closer would’ve been preferable, but the one I found was already empty. We could’ve persuaded another owner to part with his home, but that would’ve aroused too many suspicions in her small town. The extra attention would’ve hurt more than helped.

Under the cover of night, I moved between the houses, following my route I established on day one. Avoiding dogs, fences, and security lights, I arrived in Jillian’s backyard completely undetected. Percy was in my ear on a small two-way transmitter, feeding me information about what he thought she was doing from the sounds he heard.

Movement in the ornamental shrubbery caught my eye, and I crouched in the shadows to scope out the threat. When he moved again, my blood ran ice cold. An intruder, dressed in all black with a ski mask over his face, slowly reached up toward Jillian’s window. Lorenzo had sent an assassin, but he had signed his own man’s death warrant instead. When I got my hands on him, I wouldn’t need a gun or cement shoes to finish him off. I wanted the pleasure of watching the life drain from his eyes.

I slid my gun out of the holster and attached the suppressor, silent and deadly just like I was trained to do. Then I moved closer behind him, keeping low to the ground, staying light on my feet, but picking up speed as I went. Before he knew I was behind him, I grabbed him in a headlock around the neck with one arm and placed the barrel of my gun against his head with the other.

“Don’t. Fucking. Move.”

He nodded, as much as he could with my choke hold secure around his throat.

“Are you here to kill Jillian?” I asked calmly. Walk right into my trap, dickhead.

His eyes darted around the yard, making me wonder if he had backup somewhere I hadn’t yet seen. He tried to stall, not wanting to give me an answer. Not knowing which reply would get his brains blown out of his head.

“Answer me.” I closed my arm tighter around his neck with a swift jerk.

He nodded again. “Yes,” he croaked.

“That’s too bad, fella. Do you know who I am?”

Another single nod.

“Then you know what I do to men who try to hurt my family.” The unmistakable smell of ammonia filled the night air, causing my eyes to drift down to his crotch. “Excuse me, but did you just piss yourself? You’re a hit man, for Chrissakes. Have some dignity. Fucking amateurs, crawling around at night, getting picked off by real hit men. It’s embarrassing, really.

“Back to what I was saying. That’s too bad—your being here to kill my girlfriend and all. That means I have to kill you now and get rid of your body tonight. I was looking forward to finally getting some sleep.”

The big guy started flailing, trying to break free from my hold. His adrenaline spiked, and the fight-or-flight mechanism kicked in. He wanted to fight and flee, no doubt about that. He would disappear into the night if he could just break my stranglehold around his throat. In our scuffle, and my carefulness not to shoot myself with the angle I had the gun trained on his head, he managed to break free.

No matter, I could still do what I had to do to protect Jillian whether he was on his feet or on his knees.

“Lorenzo has a message for you,” he taunted with a smug expression.

“Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

“He said to tell you her time is coming.” He pointed toward the window to Jillian’s bedroom. “But it won’t be slow or easy or painless. He plans on having some fun with her first. Said he bets she’s a real screamer in the sack, and he wants to hear her scream his name before she dies.”

“I have a message for Lorenzo. You tell him I said he’s not man enough to make her scream.” Then I leveled my gun at him and shot him between the eyes. His body fell limp to the ground, and I stood over him, firing another round for good measure. “On second thought, I’ll tell him myself.”

“Cleanup crew is on the way, boss.”

“Thanks, Percy. I’m going in to stay with Jillian now, whether she likes it or not.”

“Good luck.” Percy chuckled in my ear, and I couldn’t help but smile along with him.

I knew exactly what he meant. She was just as likely to use her gun on me as she was to let me into her house. Maybe after I explained the very real danger she’d just narrowly escaped, she’d change her mind faster.

I raised my fist to knock on her door, but it swung open before I reached it. She had her gun drawn, aimed directly at my chest, so I jumped to the side and held her wrist in my hand. “Whoa, doll. It’s just me.”

“Damon, what the hell are you doing sneaking around my house in the middle of the night? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

I released a loud, long sigh before I explained the reason behind my presence. And the man I’d just murdered in order to keep her safe. The blood drained from her face and her hand fell to her side, still tightly gripping the gun, but her finger was a little too close to the trigger for my comfort.

“Here, doll. Give me the gun, and let me help you sit down. You don’t look so well all of a sudden.” She released it into my grasp without argument, and I tucked it into the waistband of my pants. Then I scooped her up in arms, stepped inside with her glued to me, and locked the door behind us.

I had every intention of only taking her as far as the couch when she met me at the door. But I changed my mind the moment she wrapped her arms around my neck and plastered her body against mine. She shook all over and her teeth chattered—the fear that gripped her was all too real. Instead, I made my way down the hall and to her bedroom. After I deposited her on the bed, I double-checked the windows, closed the blinds, and drew the curtains together.

Then I moved her to the guest bedroom, away from the windows on the back of the house that offered too much of an easy access to her. The only window in the spare room was smaller and higher off the ground. When she was tucked in, I lay down beside her on top of the covers and draped my arm over her.

“Rest now, doll. I’m not going anywhere tonight. I’m right here to protect you.”

She buried her face in the crook of my neck and eventually drifted off into a fitful sleep. I, on the other hand, got zero sleep. With one man down, they’d come back with reinforcements. My men already knew the drill, but I wouldn’t take any chances with Jillian’s life by dozing off and getting caught unaware. Several times during the night, her whole body jerked, and she awoke with a stifled scream. From the few times she talked in her sleep, I knew she had nightmares about someone breaking in and getting to her.

Not on my watch, doll.