Taboo Flames (The Sicilian Sins #2)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

Aurora

I step into the mall dressing room with a dozen dresses slung over my arm.

Usually, when I do this, I’ll be surrounded by my friends as we try on clothing after clothing, but after what went down at the concert and Gio’s warning, I’ve been doing my best to steer clear of them.

So here I am, alone in the dressing room and trying on the dresses I took hours to pick out.

Now that I know Giovanni likes me in dresses, I want to stock up on them to tease him as often as I can. I have hopes that, in the near future, there is going to be a repeat of what went down two nights ago.

I look at my reflection in the mirror with a smug smile. I am still wearing scars from that night on my neck and breasts, and I never want them to fade.

I end up dumping the first two dresses, keeping the next three, dumping the following four, and keeping the rest.

The final dress I try on looks good, but the shade of green it comes in is not quite right.

“Excuse me,” I poke my head out of the dressing room and address one of the attendants. “Can I get this dress in blue?” I hold it up. “A size four, please.”

She nods mutely and takes it from me before hurrying away.

A brief moment later, there’s a knock on the door. Frowning, I unlock the door, surprised she returned so quickly. I’m pretty sure that particular dress is on the other side of the store, and it should take her at least a couple of minutes to get to and back.

“That was really?—”

With a shove, she pushes the door open and stalks in.

“Hey, what are you?—”

Before I can say more, she grabs me harshly by my shoulders and yanks me into her chest, slapping a hand over my mouth.

I try to scream, but it is muffled, and my head suddenly feels woozy. It’s then that I notice there’s a piece of cloth in the hand pressed over my nose.

Panic claws at my chest, and I rear my head back and bash it into her nose. I hear a sickening crunch, and she lets out a loud howl as she releases me.

I push away from her and stagger out of the dressing room, knowing that at any moment, she’s going to recover enough to come after me.

I don’t hesitate to dig out my phone and dial Gio’s number.

“Princess, this isn’t a good time?—”

“Help me,” I croak.

His voice is sharp when he barks, “Where are you?”

Before I can reply, the phone drops from my weak hands, and the screen goes black as it hits the floor loudly. I leave it there, knowing it’s now all but useless.

The store I’m at is at the farthest end of the mall, and the closest exit to it leads out to an alleyway. I don’t think about the implications of being trapped in an alleyway. In fact, I don’t think at all as I make my way toward it.

Just as I exit into the alleyway, I hear loud footsteps behind me.

I whirl around and see the attendant following after me. In my frantic state, I trip on my high heels and fall to the ground, scraping my elbow against the hard concrete.

She smiles triumphantly as she rushes toward me. I scream weakly, but thankfully, at that very moment, a cop car pulls up at the mouth of the alleyway.

At the sight of the cop car, the woman freezes in her steps, shoots me a dark glare, and runs off in the opposite direction.

All of a sudden, the door leading to the alley bursts open, and Carlos, Gio’s man who has been in charge of watching me, rushes through, gun drawn.

His eyes flash with panic when he sees me on the ground.

“Miss Vitale!”

“Where’s Gio?” I ask feebly.

“On his way. Let’s get you inside.”

He helps me to my feet and leads me back inside the mall. I shiver in terror as I’m suddenly surrounded by concerned mall security and attendants.

I feel like I can’t breathe, and their presence isn’t helping. Just when I think I’m going to pass out, I hear Gio’s voice.

“Give her some fucking space,” he barks harshly.

The crowd around me immediately parts, and there he is, larger than life, angry, and terrifying.

He’s in black pants and a black dress shirt that’s open at the collar to reveal the tattoos around his neck.

As soon as he’s close enough to me, I jump up into his arms.

“Gio,” I whisper, “you came.”

“Of course I came.”

His arms wrap around my body, making me feel safe and owned.

“You’re safe now, princess,” he says in a low voice before tucking me under the crook of his arm.

“Boss,” Carlos begins, “I didn’t catch sight of?—”

The rest of Carlos’s words end in a groan as Gio’s fists fly back and slam into his jaw.

I gasp in shock. “What are you doing?”

“You were supposed to be watching her. Where the hell were you when she was being attacked in a public mall?” Gio seethed.

He turns to face one of the attendants and demands, “Get me the manager in charge. Someone’s either about to lose their fucking job or have their eyes fished out of their sockets with a plastic spoon.”

His words cause the attendants to scatter away in fear like cockroaches.

“I’m sorry, boss,” Carlos says slowly and warily.

“No, you’re not,” Gio snaps, “but you’ll soon be. I’ll make sure of that.”

A man in large, framed glasses approaches Gio with an easy smile. “Good day, sir. I was told that?—”

“You have two options,” Gio interrupts him with a fierce look. “Either you start running now and spend the rest of your life in hiding, or I’ll decapitate you right now, and you can live the rest of your miserable?—”

“Gio, stop,” I mumble weakly. “You’re scaring me.”

Hearing my voice, he snaps his head down to look at me. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you sound like that?”

“There was something in the cloth,” I reply softly.

“What cloth?” he demands.

I’m unable to answer as the world spins and swirls around me, and I begin to fall. The last thing I see is Gio’s panicked look before everything fades to black.

When I come to, I’m in Gio’s bedroom, and he’s barking threats at someone. I blink slowly until the room comes completely into focus.

“Look, she’s awake,” a man says in an exasperated voice.

“Princess.” He kneels beside the bed until we’re at eye level. “How are you feeling?”

“Stop threatening people,” I tell him.

He snorts. “You must be feeling fine if you’re giving me orders.”

“She inhaled a bit of the chloroform, but not enough to do any major damage,” the other man in the room said. I assume he’s a doctor.

“There’s bound to be a bit of a headache and disorientation. Anything other than that, or if it persists past tonight, don’t hesitate to let me know,” the doctor says.

“Goodnight,” I tell him politely.

Giovanni just grunts. The doctor sighs and walks out.

“A doctor? Really?”

“You passed out,” he says as a way of explanation.

“I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”

He merely frowns. “Are you up for a bath?”

“Did you get my clothes? The ones I picked before I got attacked?” I ask.

He shoots me a dark, scathing look. “That’s not what’s important right now. You were attacked in broad daylight.”

“Help me sit up, please,” I tell him.

He handles me like I’m made of extremely fragile glass as he helps me into a seating position. I look down at myself for the first time since I woke up and see that I’m in another one of his shirts.

“I think I need to shower,” I mumble.

He immediately lifts me into his arms and carries me to his ensuite bathroom with the enormous, jetted bathtub. There, he places me on the covered toilet before going to turn on the taps to fill it.

“Do you want bubbles in your water?” I raise my brows in surprise. I never imagined Gio would ever ask me such a question. He’s more accommodating than usual, and I like it. I can’t help but think about the look of fright on his face just before I passed out.

Does he care about me more than he lets on?

I study his broad back as he sets the temperature in the tub.

“No, it’s fine.”

As the tub fills, he strips me naked and then drops me carefully into the tub full of skin-soothingly hot water. I sigh as it laps against my skin.

“Good?” he asks.

“Perfect,” I mutter.

“I promise I’ll find out who did this to you.”

“I may know who did this, actually.”

His expression goes from soft and open to dark and dangerous. “Start talking,” he bites out.

I swallow nervously. “It all started at that masked party. There was a guy and a girl. I think he was her pimp, and he didn’t look nice at all.”

“Don’t tell me you interfered,” he groans exasperatedly.

“Of course I interfered,” I say hotly. “She didn’t want to go with him, so I grabbed a baton from the security guy and beat the shit out of him.”

“Let me guess,” he says drolly. “He was the one who came after you during the party. The so-called long story you mentioned.”

I winced. “Well, yeah,” I drawl, “but there was also a box at my dance studio office with a mysterious note and a dead bird inside, and I swear I was going to tell you, but you were —uh—otherwise occupied at the time.” I blushed, remembering watching him with his hand wrapped around his cock.

He stares at me in confusion.

“You were pleasuring yourself,” I explain, my eyes looking everywhere except at him.

His brows pull down low, and he grabs the washcloth and presses soap onto it. “And let me guess again, there wasn’t a right time to bring it up since then?”

He drags the cloth over my skin softly.

“Something like that,” I tell him quietly.

“What did the note say?”

“Something about paying the debt I owe. I still have it if you want to take a look at it. I threw away the mutilated bird though.”

He gives me a small smile, then asks, “And this woman who attacked you?”

“I didn’t see much of her. She had blonde hair and brown eyes. She was about my height, but that could be like a million other people in the city.”

“We’ll find her,” he says confidently, his eyes meeting mine with fierce determination. “And when I find her and those other bastards, they’ll wish they had never bothered to mess with you.”

The dark promise in his voice causes goosebumps to rise up on my skin. I’ll really hate to be on the other side of Gio’s wrath, and I feel a mild sense of pity for the woman and the pimp.

“You hungry?” he suddenly asks, and I know it’s a way for him to distract himself from his rage.

I shake my head and answer, “Not really. I’m just exhausted.”

Gio drags the washcloth down over my breast, my nipples pebbling at the sensation, and then down to my stomach. I hold my breath in anticipation, but he doesn’t go further down. I pout at him, which he pointedly ignores.

He wraps my hair in a towel, then lifts me out of the tub and pats me dry with another towel.

Finally, he pulls another of his shirts over my head and leads me back to the bed, where he tucks me in with care.

“You’re being so sweet that it’s weird,” I say as he tucks me in. “A good weird, I think.” Then I giggle. “Would you sing me a lullaby as well if I asked?”

“Go to bed.” He presses a kiss to my forehead and adds, “I’ll join you in a minute. I just need to drain the tub.”

“Okay,” I mumble tiredly.

When he walks off to the bathroom, my feet start to feel cold, so I get out of bed and tiptoe to his drawer to steal some socks. When I pull open the first drawer, the sight of shopping bags tucked into it makes me freeze.

I search through them, my eyebrows climbing higher and higher in surprise.

I eventually find the socks, pull them on, and get back into bed.

All the while, there’s a besotted smile playing on my lips. Gio had retrieved all the clothes I chose, including the last dress I tried on, but in the color blue, just as I wanted.

I fall asleep moments later with a smile on my face.