“Too many goodbyes, Dante,” I chide him softly, watching him dress for the third time today, rewarding me with a reverse striptease that’s equally as erotic.

“It won’t be like this for much longer,” he reassures me, sliding his gun into the waistband of his jeans. He straightens up and there’s a strange expression on his face. “I had a vision about making love to you like that the night we first met.”

“Before or after you held a gun to my head?”

He shoots me a look. “You, with your dark hair spilling all around me and your nails shredding my back–”

“Oh, did I hurt you?” I raise the sheet to my face to hide my blushes.

“Sweetest pain I’ve ever felt,” he says, his lips twitching.

“Well it’s not a vision anymore.” I drop the sheet and kneel naked on the bed before him, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist, laying my cheek on his chest, and breathing in the heady, masculine scent of sex, sweat and him. He hasn’t showered and my guess is he has no intention of it. Like me, he wants to keep the smell of us on his skin for as long as possible.

He plants a quick, chaste kiss on the top of my head and unravels himself from my arms. “I need to leave soon and I have to speak to Manuel first. He’s downstairs in the car waiting for me.”

“Please don’t give him a hard time. The kindness you showed him all those years ago has left a big impression.”

“What kindness?”

“You used to stop and talk to him when he was a boy.”

Dante shrugs. “I don’t remember. He must be mistaken.”

“Bullshit. You do remember. Stop dismissing yourself like that. Why can’t you accept that you’re not a total monster all the time?”

“You’re the only one who thinks so,” he murmurs, bending down to catch my lips with his own.

“Will you take your knife back too?”

He frowns. “No, you should keep it.”

“Please Dante. There’s so much security around me now. You’re in more danger than me.”

He considers this for a moment. “Fine,” he says, picking it up off my nightstand and then sitting back down on the bed.

“Return to me,” I whisper, pressing my palms against the side of his jaw, reluctant suddenly to let him go.

“Always,” he says, kissing my lips again. “I’ll be back before you know it.

Unease and despair are lying in wait for me as soon as the front door closes. This isn’t some safe business trip he’s taking. He’s travelling into the eye of the storm to seek out and murder his brother. The more I try and wrap my head around it the more improbable it sounds. Somehow I need to find a way to entice him out of the shadows, to show him that there’s another way, like he’s done for me. Perhaps then his bloodlust will start to lessen.

I flick through the pages of a book to try and distract myself but I see Dante in every line. It’s his fault. He asked me to meld him with all my fictional heroes, to supplant his own failings with their strengths. But Dante Santiago is too complex for that. There is no man, imaginary or otherwise, who can match his beauty, his confidence, his presence. His strengths are too great, his weaknesses too deplorable. He’s the only man I see when I close my eyes…

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know its pitch black and someone is tapping at my bedroom door.

“Señorita?”

“Hang on a minute, Manuel,” I yell, grabbing an old, grey college sweatshirt from the chair next to my bed and tugging it over my head. He knocks again. “Ok. I’m good.”

He enters with a guilty expression on his handsome face. He thinks I’m going to give him a hard time about screwing my best friend.

“Are you hungry? I cooked pasta.”

“What, no hot date with Anna?” I joke, trying to put him at ease.

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head but something tells me he’s not fully onboard with that plan.

“I asked Dante not to give you hard time,” I wail, reading between the lines.

“He didn’t,” he grins. “But my first priority is you, señorita. Perhaps when Señor Santiago returns…”

The cell on my nightstand starts ringing, interrupting us. I tilt my head to see who’s calling but the number’s withheld. I bet it’s Dante on one of his crazy, high security lines that zips around the world forty-eight times before connecting. “Hold that thought,” I say, picking it up.

“Miss Miller?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Eve Miller?”

I pause. Something about the caller’s heavy accent is making the skin on the back of my arms tingle and not in a good Dante-like way. At the same time I hear a faint knocking at my front door.

“I’ll get it,” Manuel whispers.

“Who’s calling, please?” I say, nodding my thanks at him.

The caller chuckles. “You let that good-looking bodyguard of yours answer the door, Miss Miller, and all will be revealed.”

My blood turns to ice.

“Manuel, stop!” I scream, flying from my bed, not bothering to hang up. “Don’t open the door!”

But it’s too late. It will always be too late.

The next few seconds play out in horrific slow motion. Manuel’s hand is still resting on the handle, his profile half-lit from the light in the hallway outside, when I see his expression switch from surprise to anger. At the same time his other hand dives under the back of his shirt for his gun. The next thing I hear is a dull roar and a distant, piercing scream. The back of my bodyguard’s head explodes in a cascade of crimson as his body is propelled backwards into my living room, coming to rest sprawled out across my broken glass coffee table.

More seconds tick.

I can’t take my eyes off Manuel’s dead body. There’s nothing left of his head other than a bloody, bleeding stump. Reality hits me like a hard slap to my face and my stomach roils in revulsion.

“My brother’s whore, I presume?”

Recognizing the same contemptuous voice from the call I drag my gaze upwards. Three men are standing in my doorway all staring at me but I only see one. He’s tall and rail thin, olive-skinned with slicked back dark hair, a solid jawline and the same razor-sharp cheekbones that I’ve kissed a million times… I meet his cold, unflinching gaze as random thoughts slice my mind like shrapnel from a detonated bomb.

He’s in Colombia.

Dante promised me.

Is my security detail dead too?

“You’re a hard woman to track down, Eve Miller,” Emilio Santiago sighs, stepping further into my living room. “I tortured every single man in Dante’s compound and I still couldn’t get the location of your little rat cave.”

Revolted, I watch him rake his gaze up my bare legs and then linger over the heavy swell of my breasts beneath my grey college sweater.

“Well, he has taste, I’ll give him that,” he murmurs and his men laugh.

“W-what are you doing here?” I stutter, tugging down my sweater to cover as much exposed skin as I can.

He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he transfers his gun to his other hand and calmly shuts the door behind him. “Do you know who I am?”

I nod weakly.

“Good. That spares us the painful, drawn-out introductions.” He glances around my small apartment, wincing in distaste at the colorful chaos of my overloaded bookcase, my collection of mismatched well-loved furniture and the dark bloodstains spreading across my favorite cream rug. “I’m afraid I don’t share Dante’s affection for this country, Miss Miller. I loathe both the place and the people.”

“Go back to Colombia then,” I whisper earning me a tight smile, but it’s one that never reaches his eyes. It doesn’t even come close.

“Oh I’m planning on it. Just as soon as my business here is done.”

“I can’t help you, I don’t know where Dante is,” I say quickly, inching backwards towards my bedroom.

“I know you don’t.”

My steps falter.

What does he want with me then?

At the same time I realize I’m still clutching my cell. I angle my wrist away from the men and slide it carefully behind my back and out of view. If I can somehow get to my room and barricade the door shut it might buy me enough time to call for help.

Emilio looks faintly amused. “Would you like to hand over your cell phone now, Miss Miller, or do I have to break every one of those delicate little fingers in the process?”

I stare back at him all wide-eyed and innocent, though my heart is pounding right out of my chest. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Diego, please show her how I deal with liars.”

I cringe backwards as the largest of his two men makes his towards me with an unpleasant expression on his face. Ripping the phone out of my hand, I see a blur of his fist before my left eye socket explodes in a blaze of blinding agony. He throws me to the floor as my hand flies to my face to staunch the heat that’s radiating like molten lava down through my jaw and up into my hairline. When I pull my trembling fingers away again they’re drenched in blood.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Not so pretty with a broken cheekbone,” Emilio sighs, a note of quiet satisfaction in his voice. “Still, I know how much my brother enjoys inflicting pain on his bitches. I’m sure you’re used to it by now.”

“How did you find me?” I gasp, choking down the urge to vomit again. I can’t seem to think straight. Any minute now I’m going to pass out.

“Dante shouldn’t put so much trust in his confidantes.” Emilio crouches down on his haunches and brings his face level with mine. I recoil in horror against the wall. His cold, dead eyes are even more terrible close-up. His aftershave is bitter and overpowering and my stomach starts roiling all over again.

“Time to leave, sweetheart,” he grins, “and, guess what? You’re coming too.”