CHAPTER FOUR

El

PEOPLE WERE STARING.

I’d attended school for three months last year.

Three months of torture.

I rode with Dante every day.

And every day the door slammed in my face before I could get out of the car, let alone say, “Hey, could you keep it open?”

I wasn’t allowed to drive.

See? Prison.

Everyone seemed so… happy around me, like they were just waiting to finish college so they could be unleashed upon the world.

Like the world was waiting for them to finish so it could show them its greatness.

But all I knew was pain.

Darkness.

Running.

So when girls screamed around me, when they danced and joked, took selfies in the stupid quad, and then stared at me like I was an alien — I looked away, and tried to blend in with the trees.

And when that didn’t work…

I just… looked down at my feet and watched where I was going.

I was living an absolute nightmare, surrounded by complete strangers who knew nothing about me and an adopted family who only took me in because they had an ounce of humanity and knew that if they didn’t, I’d most likely be killed for what I knew.

Flashes of crowns invaded my vision as I stopped walking.

And the stars.

Always the stars, written in ink, written in blood across marred skin, across my own. I tugged the sleeve of my white oxford shirt down and sighed as a stinging spread down my veins.

I was safe.

Safe.

Safe.

Safe.

Nobody knew who I really was here — they never would.

And he was dead.

The monster who had touched me was dead.

If only the saying wasn’t true — where you cut off one head — two often appear and I knew better than anyone that the monster I’d shared a bed with was a mere taste of what the Petrov family stood for.

I started walking again, even though bile rose up in my mouth and threatened to make me puke all over the sidewalk; I kept my head down, I kept myself small.

I focused on the cracks in the cement as I slowly made my way toward the business building.

And stopped when two boots moved in my line of vision.

I moved to the right, the boots followed.

I went left. Same thing.

Finally, I lifted my head and locked gazes with ice blue, ice that burned and froze all at once, ice blue that did nothing to hide the hatred, the anger¸ the barely controlled rage — all directed at me.

I lifted my chin.

“El.” Dante spat my name more than said it, and slowly wrapped an arm around me. His muscles flexed like he was pissed he had to touch someone so… tarnished. “Walk with me.”

People were staring.

Probably more at him than me.

He was a god among men.

A man among silly boys who were still growing into their bodies.

Dante Nicolasi was easily the most beautiful and horrible person I’d ever met in my entire life. Looking at him was physically painful and touching him — well he’d never touched me until today.

Which meant he was either going to kill me or he was using me for something.

My body shuddered both with the need to get closer and the need to fight for my life and run.

Was this how it was going to happen?

Without the protection of the Family back at the house?

With Dante by my side?

Would he snap my neck?

Inject something into my skin?

Throw me off a building?

Or just beat me into submission?

And why didn’t anyone else notice the way his rage was barely kept in check? Even during family dinners he looked ready to throw a knife at someone.

Dante wasn’t just angry.

He was anger itself.

And part of me wondered if that was all he knew.

Just like all I’d known was fear.

By the time we reached the building, I was shaking. “Did you need something?” My voice came out smooth, indifferent, cold.

He barked out a laugh, his nose colliding with my neck before he whispered in my ear. “I need you as a human shield.”

I swallowed back the ache in my throat. “So Italian royalty lives, and the Russian whore dies?”

It was out before I could stop it.

Dante didn’t as much as flinch when his cruel smile dipped toward my face. “Finally admitting how you spread your legs for the enemy.”

I casually reached my arms around his waist, my fingers stretched toward the knife I knew he always kept in his pocket. I used my body, went to that place I swore I’d never go to again.

This was survival.

Nothing more.

When my body arched up toward his, his eyebrow lifted in a mocking gesture that gave me pause. “It’s in my backpack, nice try though, if I didn’t already know how much you hated me, I’d almost believe I could slam you against the wall, lift up that plaid little skirt and make you—”

He stopped talking then.

I barely had time to register what was happening, before five guys very slowly made their way toward us.

Talking around us stopped.

Dante pulled me into him, hiding us near the shade of the building as he watched over my head. Anyone looking at us would think we were getting ready to make out rather than slit each other’s throats.

“Whatever you do,” Dante breathed down my neck. “Don’t look over your shoulder.”

I exhaled a shaky breath as he pulled me tighter against him, his cologne hit my nostrils making me feel weak for thinking how nice he smelled, how strong he felt, how much of a lie it really was.

Talking started again.

Dante slowly pushed me away just in time for one of the five guys to turn, and give him a mocking bow in front of at least a hundred people.

As if Dante knew he was going to challenge him, he smirked and stepped out of the shadows — but not before shoving me back against the wall as if to say stay — and approached him.

Gasps sounded around me.

“What the hell is he doing?” someone whispered. “You don’t approach them, you don’t talk to them!”

I rolled my eyes. All five of the guys had stopped by then.

Each of them was at least six feet in height, two had blond hair, and the other three had sandy brown hair.

Sure, they were fit.

But all I saw were Eagle Elite uniforms.

And then one started taking off his jacket.

He rolled up his sleeve, slowly, inch by inch, as if he was afraid of getting a bloodstain.

And on his forearm.

A crown.

With three bloody stars above it.