Page 60 of Possessive Vows
“I was wondering when you were going to wake up,” Tommaso says, drawing my attention back to him. “You’ve been passed out for a while now.”
I surge forward in my seat only to be stopped by the rope around my wrists and ankles. “You bastard. Where is she?” My voice is distorted. My nose is broken. “Did you kill her, just like you killed her mother?”
Tommaso sits back on his heels. “She’s alive. For now. I put her back where she belongs.”
Her tower. Pia is back there. Fuck.
“Let her go and kill me,” I bargain. “You don’t need her. I’m the one who took her away in the first place. It’s me you want to hurt. Not her.”
“It’s sweet how much you care about my daughter, Dario, but I don’t feel the same for her. I have no love for her. She represents everything I hate. She reminds me of her mother, that whore.” He spits onto the ground. “So I’m going to kill her, but first, I want to kill you so you can’t get in the way. I wanted you awake to know it was me before I sent you to fucking hell.”
“You’re going to kill an unarmed, tied-up man?”
Tommaso’s lips twitch. “Nice try. You’re not getting out of that rope. I’m going to kill you just like this, and you’ll die alone, knowing you lost to me. That I won in the end.” He pulls a gun from his jacket pocket and lifts it, pointing it at my head.
So this is the moment I die. Unable to save Pia.
But I promised her that I’d protect her, and I’m not giving up on my promise now.
Before Tommaso can pull the trigger, I use as much of the strength I have left to barrel my body forward, chair and all, into Tommaso’s stomach. He grunts as we fall to the floor. He fires his gun, but it goes into the air.
While on top of him, I bend down and bite his ear, tearing at it until a piece of it rips off. Tommaso screams. Pathetic. I spit out the piece of his ear.
Before I can get another bite in, I’m hauled back up by Tommaso’s men. They plop the chair back down, me still in it. I can’t untie the rope in the position I’m in. I’m well and truly stuck.
At least I made Tommaso cry before I died. That’s a consolation to consider.
Tommaso rubs at his ear, his hand coming away bloody, as he pushes himself up. “You bit my ear off, you fucking animal!” He swings his fist forward and punches me. All I can do is laugh. Laugh through the pain. Laugh at Tommaso’s misery.
“That’s it. You’re so fucking dead.” He lifts his gun back up. “Any last words?”
“You don’t deserve to even touch the ground Pia walks on,” I snarl. “She’s a million times the better person than you are. Remember that.”
He smirks. “Sure. I’ll think about it after you two are dead.”
I keep my eyes steady on Tommaso. I’m not looking away like a coward.
A huge boom comes from somewhere in the house.
Tommaso jerks and turns around. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” one of his men mumbles.
“Well, go check it out.” Tommaso’s face gets redder the angrier he becomes.
Before his men can even take one step, the ballroom doors burst open, and a group of men spills into the room. Matteo stands at the front, and I recognize a mixture of my men and his. Matteo rushes up to Tommaso and punches him so hard in the face that Tommaso slumps to the ground.
The three men that work for Tommaso don’t stand a chance between Matteo’s and my men. They quickly surrender, raising their hands high in supplication.
Matteo’s undoing my ties when he asks, “What should we do them?”
“Kill them,” I say. “But not Tommaso. Leave him to me.”
Tommaso’s men are killed instantly.
I stand up once Matteo finishes releasing me and pat him on the back. “Thanks for coming through. How did you find us?”
“Your sisters called me. They told me you and Pia were kidnapped by her father. This was the first place I checked, and it was a good thing, too. You almost died there.”