Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Burner and the Blood

Chapter 5

[Elara]

I didn't drive the bulletproof Mercedes like a getaway driver. I drove it like a ghost.

Tires screeching and engines roaring only attract attention. I kept the headlights off until we were two miles away from the Rossi estate, weaving through the labyrinth of backroads that bordered the city.

Beside me in the passenger seat, Cassian was entirely too quiet.

I cast a sideways glance at the Don. His head was resting against the cool glass of the window. The charcoal suit jacket was ruined, saturated with a terrifying amount of dark, wet crimson. The buckshot had caught him in the upper left shoulder a glancing hit, but it had torn through muscle and vein.

"Keep your eyes open, Rossi," I ordered, my voice sharp. "Shock makes you sleepy. If you pass out, you might not wake up."

"I'm awake, Viper," he rasped. His eyes were half-closed, but they were tracking my every movement. "Take the next left. Head toward the docks. Pier 49."

"The docks?" I frowned, downshifting smoothly. "That's public territory. It's too exposed."

"I have a warehouse there," he breathed out, wincing as the car hit a pothole. "Bought it through a dummy corporation three years ago. Nobody knows about it. Not my father, not my Capos. And definitely not my uncle."

I nodded, gripping the steering wheel. My dislocated right thumb was throbbing in time with my heartbeat, wrapped tight in a piece of fabric I’d torn from my shirt.

Ten minutes later, we pulled into a rusty, abandoned-looking shipping warehouse overlooking the black waters of the harbor. The heavy metal door rolled up electronically as Cassian pressed a bloody finger to a hidden scanner pad on the exterior wall.

Inside, it wasn't a dusty warehouse. It was a state-of-the-art safehouse. Weapons lockers, a bank of encrypted servers, and a sterile medical bay in the corner.

Cassian stumbled as he got out of the car.

Before he could hit the concrete floor, I was there. I ducked under his good arm, wrapping my own around his solid waist to bear his weight. He was incredibly heavy, a wall of pure, dense muscle.

He groaned softly, leaning into me. His face was buried in my hair, his hot breath brushing my neck.

"For a ruthless Don, you're severely lacking in balance," I muttered, hauling him toward the metal examination table under the harsh fluorescent lights of the medical bay.

"And for a heartless assassin, you're surprisingly helpful," he shot back, his voice strained.

I hauled him onto the table. "Jacket. Off. Now."

He didn't argue. With agonizing slowness, he shrugged off the ruined jacket and the shoulder holster. I didn't wait for him to unbutton his shirt. I grabbed a pair of trauma shears from the medical tray and cut the expensive white silk down the middle, peeling it away from his chest.

I paused.

I had seen a lot of bodies in my line of work. But Cassian Rossi’s chest was a map of violence and power. His skin was golden and scarred, rippling with sharp, defined muscle. A sprawling, dark ink tattoo of a crown intertwined with thorns covered his left pectoral, sitting right above his heart.

And just above that, his shoulder was a mangled, bleeding mess.

"Sit still," I commanded, grabbing a bottle of medical-grade alcohol, a pair of forceps, and a needle and thread.

"No anesthetic?" he asked, a faint, dark smirk playing on his pale lips.

"You didn't give me any when you reset my thumb," I reminded him coldly. "Bite down on something."

I didn't give him a countdown. I poured the raw alcohol directly over the open wound.

Cassian’s entire body went rigid. The veins in his neck bulged, his jaw locking so tight I heard his teeth grind together, but he didn't make a single sound. He just gripped the edge of the metal table until his knuckles turned white.

"You took a bullet for me," I said quietly, using the forceps to carefully extract three jagged pieces of lead buckshot from his torn muscle.

"Don't flatter yourself, Elara. You were my only way out of that basement."

"Bullshit." I tossed the bloody lead onto the metal tray with a sharp clink. "You dove in front of me. That's a protective instinct. It’s also incredibly stupid. If you die, the syndicate falls to your uncle."

I threaded the curved needle and began stitching the jagged edges of his skin together. I was close to him standing right between his spread knees. Every time I pulled the thread tight, my knuckles brushed against the hot, bare skin of his chest.

Cassian’s obsidian eyes dropped from the ceiling down to my face.

"I don't trust anyone in my family anymore," he said, his voice dropping to a low, intimate rumble that vibrated through the quiet room. "My father is dead. My uncle pulled the trigger. My guards were bought off."

He reached up with his good right hand. I expected him to push me away. Instead, his long fingers wrapped gently around my left wrist.

He halted my stitching.

"You're the only person I know who isn't lying to me right now," Cassian whispered, his thumb brushing over my racing pulse point. "You want to keep your sister breathing. I want to kill the man who murdered my father. Our goals are perfectly aligned."

I stared into his dark, bottomless eyes. The air in the room suddenly felt entirely too thin.

"An alliance, Rossi?" I asked softly. "Between the Don and the Viper?"

"An alliance," he agreed, his thumb stroking my skin one last time before his hand fell away, his energy spent. "Now finish stitching me up before I bleed out on your shoes."

I finished the sutures in silence. By the time I taped the white gauze over his shoulder, Cassian’s eyes had drifted shut. The blood loss had finally claimed his consciousness.

I stood in the quiet warehouse, looking down at the man who had kidnapped me six hours ago.

I could kill him right now.

Instead, I pulled a heavy wool blanket from a nearby cot and draped it over his broad shoulders.

Just until my sister is safe, I told myself. Then, I walk away.

I didn't know it yet, but walking away from Cassian Rossi was already impossible.