She wasn’t giving up that future. It was so beautiful it damned near hurt her soul, and she wanted it. She refused to give it up.
And fuck it all, but she wasn’t going to risk not finding out what il mio cuore meant.
Slow the hell down, she cautioned herself. Your mate is a shifter. He can handle himself. Find out what’s going on before you act rashly.
Inhaling shakily, she nodded to herself as she finished putting her shoes on. Fear slithered through her veins, but she forced her hands to stop shaking as she pulled her gun out of her bag.
Leaving the safety on, she tiptoed to the door and pressed her ear against it, but she couldn’t hear anything. Steeling herself and pushing her panic down, she silently twisted the doorknob and eased it open, fear slamming into her when she saw the hulking figure outside.
The huge man—not Shawn, thank God—turned to her with a scowl, silently motioning for her to shut the door and stay there. She tried to find her courage, giving her best demanding stare to the prospect outside her door, but he refused to budge.
Giving into his silent demand when she still didn’t hear anything, she shut the door. She hadn’t been intending to run out of it and straight toward danger anyway, so doing as he wanted wasn’t a big deal. She’d just wanted to see if she could hear better with it open.
Deciding she needed to trust Bolt to handle things, she paced back and forth through the room, but only made it ten panicked passes before the panic overwhelmed her again. Fuck! She was terrified of so much in that moment—of Shawn, because she knew he’d kill her if he saw her. Of him somehow managing to kill Bolt and getting to her anyway.
Of him killing Bolt even if someone else killed him and he didn’t get to her. A life without the man she loved was no fucking life at all. She’d never recover from that. The length of time she’d known him didn’t matter at all. She knew wouldn’t be able to come back from that.
Especially knowing he would have died because of her. Because she’d brought danger to him, because he was out there fighting her battles. Because she was too scared of a bully to fight back.
That was all Shawn was. An abusive bully who had a gun.
But guess what? She had a gun, too.
There were a lot of things she had to feel ashamed about. Bolt was helping her, healing her already, helping her to see herself in a new light. But there was a lot he couldn’t heal—only she could do that.
And she did that by not acting like the weak, terrified shell of a woman she’d been before.
By finally standing up for herself and fighting back.
It was something she should have done a hell of a long time ago, and even if Bolt wasn’t out there fighting for her, even if she wasn’t terrified of him dying for her, it was something she should be doing now.
There were demons nipping at her heels—mostly Shawn, her shame for her past, and all the shit weighing her down because of him—and she was the only one who could defeat them.
Of course, the cowardly part of her said that if Bolt happened to take her ex out without her ever having to set eyes on him, she wouldn’t be upset at all. She could deal with her demons some other way.
But the teeny tiny brave part inside her said she should do it now, with the man who caused the demons to begin with.
Straightening her spine, she looked around the room, wondering how she could do that. She wasn’t getting out of this room to help by conventional means. The big lug at the door would see to that. But she could find another way.
She nearly smacked herself when she saw the wide window over the bed. Wondering how she hadn’t thought of it before, she set the gun on the ledge and climbed onto the bed. Holding her breath and praying it opened silently, she eased it open as slowly and gently as she could.
Breathing a sigh of relief when Prospect Pup—yeah, she was going to amuse herself by calling him a dog since it reminded her of that beautiful moment of laughter with her mate—didn’t immediately run in and force it closed, she smiled shakily.
Thank God, it didn’t have a screen on it either.
There was nothing but silence for a long moment, and she frowned, her anxiety and unease ramping up. What the hell was going on? No noise out front. No noise outside. And Bolt hadn’t come back yet, so she knew it wasn’t over.
And then her blood ran ice cold with terror when she heard it.
“Oh, Stasia. I know you’re here somewhere. Come out now before I have to kill your new friend and all his buddies. It won’t be pretty if you don’t come out.”
He’d clearly lost his fucking mind.
His words were soft spoken, like he was trying not to alert anyone who wasn’t awake yet. But what made him think she was even awake, let alone that she’d just walk outside and let him take her?
Besides that, he was speaking so low that there was no way she would have heard him if she hadn’t had the window open already.
“If you try to run, I’ll kill everyone here anyway, and then I’ll just find you again. I always do. You should have covered your tracks better when you purchased your shit. Easy enough to get a phone number when I neeeeeeed it. Ohhhhh, Stasia…”
She glanced over in horror at where her cell phone was charging. Was that how he’d been finding her? Her supposedly untraceable burner phone wasn’t so untraceable after all.
“Oops, I think I just let you in on a secret,” he said, his voice fading, like he’d turned and was walking away
