Deviant Prince [Romano Brotherhood, #2]

8 | Vivienne

If there's one way to have your night completely ruined in the span of two seconds, it's to discover a bloody foot in the bed you were so looking forward to dropping your exhausted body into after a night out.

To be honest, it's been a long few days. One second, Massimo is at my front door with a dildo. The next, he has a gun. 

I mean, really. My biggest problem should be making my cat happy and finding at least one member of the male species who doesn't make me want to fall asleep during sex. Not this.

After I picked the lock on my cuffs, I sat down and had a real hard think about what the fuck I'm supposed to do. After coming up empty, I dragged some friends out to the club and got drunk enough to forget my problems. 

Sometimes, real life is too difficult to face. When that happens, I give myself a day to run from it. One day, a night out, just several hours of letting go. I came home fully intending to face my problems head on... after a nice night's sleep. 

And at first glance, I thought I must be hallucinating. I hadn't even had time to move from my spot when my front door was jerked open and my neighbor's dark silhouette filled the doorway.

Massimo carefully puts the sheets containing the human body part onto the floor, making sure nothing spills out. He's managed to strip my bed and tie all the bedding into a neat ball. Barring the blood splotches left over on my mattress, you'd never know something so gruesome was just there.

I mean, what the fuck is this? 'The Godfather'?

"Massimo. Answers. Now."

Based on the way he's swooped in and cleaned this mess, I can safely assume he didn't make it. He's not gloating or smug. He actually seems somewhat unsettled, if my read of his emotionally constipated demeanor can be considered at all accurate.

But practically everything else is one big, fat question mark. Starting with why the hell he's even here, when hours ago he wanted to kill me. I barely resist grabbing onto those broad shoulders and shaking—to rattle that empty expression off his face and help the words flow. As it is, he steps back before my finger can jab into his chest again, creating space between us.

Still, he says nothing. Gaze dropping down to his hands, with his body going subtly rigid. It must be thirty seconds that he's perfectly still, not even seeming to breathe, and something tells me to keep my mouth shut. Dress pants and a dark button-up adorn his body, sleeves rolled up and drawing attention to strong, thick forearms.

There's a smear of blood on the side of his palm.

He rotates his hand, large and foreboding in the feeble light cast by my lamp, and I notice a gold signet ring on his pinky with some kind of crest. Then a tremor overtakes him, and he disappears into my bathroom before I can blink.

When I follow him in, he's bent over my sink scrubbing at his hands.

"Hey."

He keeps scrubbing.

"Hello?"

He adds more soap. The blood is long gone.

Out of reflex, I place a hand on his elbow. He jerks to stand so fast that I nearly stumble backwards into my shower curtain. His eyes blaze, a vein pulses in his forehead, and he looks ready to either put as much distance between us as possible, or gun me down where I stand.

Note to self: Massimo hates touch.

"The blood is gone," I tell him, but he doesn't look away or lose any of his frightening intensity. If anything, he seems to become stiffer, muscles coiled and taught. The bathroom suddenly feels much too small, and I can see the toned smoothness of his chest rising and falling. Pronounced. Controlled. "Massimo, it's gone."