CHAPTER TWO
Mauro
Istared out into the night. Fuck, I wasn’t scared of anything, but now I was acting like a goddamn pussy. Too scared of sleep. Too scared of my mind’s torturous fantasies that only got more creative with every passing day in close proximity to Stella. We’d spent three whole days together so far. I was torn between wanting our time alone together to be over as quickly as possible—to prevent a misfortune from happening—and wanting to prolong it.
Stella was my drug of choice. She was oblivious to my dirty thoughts, to all the ways I’d already fucked her in my fantasies. Today she was still seventeen, tomorrow she’d finally be of age. Finally? Another barrier crumbling, another hit for my dwindling self-control.
Fuck. Father had given me one job: keep an eye on Stella, protect her physical well-being and her honor. The latter probably more than the former. After all, a girl in our circles was judged by her fucking pureness. That was the reason for the disgusting bloody sheets tradition. He still wanted to marry her off to the highest bidder one day. If I acted on my fantasies, that could ruin his plans.
My eyes registered a moving shadow on the premises. At first, I was sure my mind was playing a trick on me. We had an advanced alarm system for the yard and house, which went off as soon as anything bigger than a cat tried to get over the fence. It was necessary because our territory bordered on enemy land, and the Outfit had been attacking frequently since the truce had been broken.
Another shadow, then another. What the fuck?
Glass shattered somewhere in the house. No alarm. Nothing.
I whirled around, grabbed my Berettas from the nightstand, and stormed down the hallway toward Stella’s room, shoving one gun into the waistband of my sweatpants. I barreled inside and staggered toward her bed, grasping her arm. I jerked her upward, and she awakened with a gasp, her eyes wide with fear. Her lips opened to cry out, but my hand clamped down on her mouth. Finally, her eyes settled on my face and her brows pulled together in confusion.
“Attackers are in the house. Come on, I need to get you to the panic room.”
“The alarm?” she asked. I pulled her out of bed when she didn’t move.
“Stella, follow me!” After another moment of hesitation, she finally acted on my orders. Pulling my second gun out, I handed it to Stella. She shook her head. “I don’t know how to shoot.”
“Point at an attacker and pull the fucking trigger, that’s it.”
She took the gun, and I led us into the hallway. “Stay behind me at all times and don’t shoot me in the back by accident. And for fuck’s sake, do what I say, no questions asked.”
She nodded mutely, obviously stunned by my dominant demeanor.
We hurried toward the staircase. Hushed male voices were coming from the living room.
“Quick,” I rasped. I grabbed her wrist because she looked frozen. I hurried down the staircase, dragging Stella after me.
The entrance to the panic room was in Father’s office on the ground floor, the last door on the right, branching off from the lobby. An attacker appeared in the doorway to the living room when we reached the last step. I pulled the trigger and sent a bullet through his left eye. He tumbled to the ground with a resounding thud. I dragged Stella past the body, hearing steps of several more intruders in the living room. I ran faster even though Stella panted desperately behind me. With a hard shove, I pushed the door open, ran inside and entered a code into the keypad beside one of the bookshelves. The floor parted beside the desk, revealing a narrow staircase and an underground panic room.
“Go in!” I shoved Stella in the direction of the opening. She clambered down a few steps.
“Don’t leave me alone.” Her eyes were wide and fearful.
“Down!” I snarled.
She disappeared, and I quickly climbed down as well. Only my head peeked out from the hole in the floor when another attacker glimpsed into the room. Like the first attacker, I didn’t recognize his face. I shot, but he jerked back and the bullet collided with the wall behind him, sending plaster flying everywhere. I pressed the close button, and the floor slid shut within seconds, then I punched a code into the pad that would guarantee no one got down here who didn’t know the correct numbers. A flicker of a face peered down at me a moment before the door clicked shut. Was it the Bratva or the Outfit? Both were giving us trouble.
Gritting my teeth, I turned and tensed.
Stella stood in the middle of the hundred-twenty square foot room, her arms wrapped around her middle, looking completely out of it. Her breathing came out in sharp bursts, panic flickering in her eyes. Her gaze darted around the room restlessly.
“It’s okay. This room is safe.” I tried to calm her, but my words barely registered.
She seemed to be going into shock, her chest rising and falling rapidly. I tore my eyes from her breasts, shoved my gun into the waistband of my sweatpants and moved toward her, carefully prying the gun from her clenched fingers. Pushing it into the back of my waistband, I touched Stella’s cheek. She tilted her head up, her gaze meeting mine. She was more than a head shorter than me, and my protectiveness reared its head. I stroked a few strands of her caramel brown hair from her sweaty forehead.
“You are safe, Stella.”
“You are here,” she whispered as if that affirmed my words.
“I’ll protect you.”
She looked around again. The room was meant for a short stay. Six bunk beds lined the walls to our left and right. The back of the room had a small kitchenette and a narrow closed-off bathroom. Though it was the size of a broom closet, no more. You could pretty much shower while you sat on the toilet.
Right beside the steep ladder was a sofa and a small TV. That was all.
“We’re trapped under the floor,” she whispered, looking up at the low ceiling and swallowing hard. Only a light bulb dangled above our heads.
“Just think of this as a normal apartment.”
“It doesn’t have any windows.”
“A shitty apartment then.”
She giggled nervously. My fingers found her throat and her fluttering pulse beneath her satin-soft skin.
“We won’t have to stay down here long. Soon reinforcements will arrive.” But the alarm hadn’t gone off. I went over to the small console beside the ladder and pressed the alarm button which was connected to our main security system. A red light flashed. No connection. Fuck. I glanced up the ladder, hearing footsteps above us. They couldn’t get down here unless they blasted the entire house into smithereens. But if reinforcements weren’t alerted, Stella and I were stuck down here until our parents returned, and that was in three days. A long time to be stuck in an underground room, especially with your tantalizing half-dressed stepsister. My eyes registered Stella’s flimsy nightgown for the first time. This was a nightmare, and not mainly because of the attackers who potentially wanted to torture and kill us.
“I didn’t hear an alarm,” Stella said, searching my eyes.
Damn. I sighed. For some reason, I never liked lying to her. “It didn’t go off. They disabled it.”
Her eyes darted up to the trapdoor. “But they aren’t going to come in?”
“No, not without a code.”
She nodded, biting her lip, still looking so fucking lost and scared.
I returned to her side and stroked her cheek with the pad of my thumb. Fuck, why couldn’t I stop touching her? “I swear you’re safe.”
Again that small trusting smile, which was giving me ideas and at the same time reminding me that I had a responsibility for Stella. She trusted me, had miraculously done so for a long time.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was past midnight.
“Happy Birthday,” I said.
Stella blinked, her brows crinkling. “If the start of my birthday is any indication for the rest of my year, I’d like to skip it.”
I smiled, shaking my head, my fingers still on her skin. My gaze darted to her lips, the way they curved up in a half-smile despite the anxiety in her eyes. I dropped my hand as if I’d been burned and stepped back, clearing my throat. “I’m going to check everything. It’s been a while since I’ve been down here.”
“Does that mean you don’t have a birthday present for me?”
An image of my head buried between her legs popped into my mind. Not the birthday present she had in mind. I needed to drag my mind out of the gutter. “Not down here,” I got out.