And I watched in a sort of detached half-awareness as my attacker’s body jolted hard several times before he started falling.
And then I was falling too.
It wasn’t until I felt the impact of slamming to the ground that my body seemed to remember to breathe.
When I did, I gasped.
Loud and frantic.
Over and over.
Gulping air like a fish stuck on the beach.
“Okay. It’s okay,” a voice said, dropping down at my side, hands reaching for me. “You’re okay. Try to breathe normal, baby,” the voice said, and I was vaguely aware of recognizing the voice, but I was too trapped in a full-on panic attack to really register who it belonged to. “Hey, you’re okay,” the voice said, reaching for me, pulling me close to their body.
It was then that I recognized the smell, the feel of that chest, the way the arms tightened around me.
“Matteo.” The name gasped out of me as I tried to take slow, deep breaths instead of fast, shallow ones.
“Yeah, baby. It’s okay. You’re alright. I’m so fucking sorry,” he added, pressing frantic kisses to my temple, my forehead, the top of my hair.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is. It is my fault. It’s my job to protect you.”
“Job?” I asked, feeling a crushing sensation in my chest at the idea of him seeing me as a job. Hell, it might have hurt worse than the strangulation did.
“Not like that,” he assured me, pulling me tighter. “But you’re mine. I have to protect what’s mine.”
“I’m yours?” I clarified, knowing it was pretty pathetic of me, but needing to hear it again.
“Yes. Mine. For as long as you’ll have me.”
“So maybe forever?” I asked.
“Forever sounds good,” he said, giving me a squeeze.
“Then let’s go home and start forever,” I suggested.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Matteo
Luca must have recognized the fact that I was going to go into the house guns blazing with or without backup to get Josie back, because his car was right on my bumper the whole way over to southeast Pennsylvania, keeping pace even though I knew he had firm ideas about obeying traffic laws when you were in the middle of breaking other ones.
Directly behind him was Lucky and Milo.
And not far behind that were several of our other men who’d gotten the word and were all-too-happy to take out any organization that threatened the safety of ours as well as our loved ones.
I barely even remembered to throw the car into park before I was flying out of it, aiming and shooting at the guard stationed outside.
Double-tap to the head. He didn’t even have a chance to see it coming, let alone warn anyone else about what was going down.
I was vaguely aware of the footsteps of my Family rushing up behind me as I charged up the stairs, slamming my foot into the door.
It was a blur then, taking out the two men stationed in the front of the house as my gaze searched frantically for any sign of Josie.
She had to be there.
A trunk was popped in the driveway, which had to be where they had her when they took her from my house.
But you typically didn’t keep prisoners on the main level of the house.
I needed to take out every one of these motherfuckers, and then go search for her, save her, bring her back, and reassure her that I would never let anything happen to her again.
If she would even have me after all she’d been through.
The pain of her possible rejection was a stabbing sensation in the chest and gut at the same time, piercing enough to steal my breath as men started to rush forward into the foyer from the back of the house.
Before I could even squeeze off a shot, Lucky and Milo were aiming and shooting, clearing a path for me to continue forward.
“Where is she?” I demanded as Luigi himself moved in front of me, gun drawn.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he asked, smirking, thinking he had me there.
“I would. But I don’t need you for it,” I told him, watching the realization dawn on him just before my bullet sailed straight through his forehead even as Luca shot him twice in the chest.
“Back door is open,” Luca said, snapping me out of my panic at seeing cut zip ties on the floor.
“Right,” I said, charging out through the door, willing my eyes to adjust to the dark, to let me see if someone had pulled her outside during the chaos, had decided to take her to use as a shield to save themselves.
I rushed off the deck, eyes searching the sprawling grounds.
I was almost ready to give up when a movement caught my gaze.
Not Josie.
Not right away, anyway.
But a lumbering, stocky man who appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
It took a second too long to see why.
Josie.
He wrenched her arm back from behind, forcing her to whip around. Which was when the motherfucker closed his hand around her throat, and lifted her off her feet by it, strangling her by the second.