The Cursed Mafia King's Obsession

from catching us when his

er the shot cracked through the rain. I remember thinking, with a clarity that frightened me more than the sound itself, that I was about to watch a man die in front of me for the second time in my life, the way I'd never gotten to watch it happen to Elena. I hadn't imagined it, either time. I'd fel

n't seem to. Guns went off around me in a rhythm that felt less like panic and more like something rehearsed, and the man beside me...the one whose hand had been locked around my wrist since the alley....moved through it like he'd been doing this his entir

ving the rest of them on the ground behind us. I didn't let myself look too closely. I caught glimpses anyway, in the flashes of muzzle fire and the thin wash of light from the plane ahead of us...shapes on the ground that didn't move, shapes that stopped mattering the mom

be I'd already spent every ounce of fear I had back in that first alley, or maybe some part of me had simply decided that whatever this man was, whatever he'd just done i

hrough the door

off him like he was burning up from the inside. Not fever-warm. Something closer like standing too near an open flame, sudden and wrong, and the two men nearest us exchanged a look I didn't have time to inte

ld me, he didn't sound kind, b

narrow hallway and pushed the door open anyway, because whatever was happening on the other side of it i

ing on the edge of a narrow bed with his elbows braced against his knees, his shirt soaked through with rain and something darker underneath it that I did

m do, of a body that ran fever-hot and healed from bullets like it had barely felt them at all - and instead I found myself crossin

es wer

color that caught the overhead light and threw it back wrong, like something behind his gaze had shifted into a shape

re I could decide what

certainty that I found myself stumbling the last step toward him without meaning to. Up close, the color in his eyes looked even less like something a

hing rougher than I'd heard from him yet, strained, like every word

unsteady, thin. "I don't unders

and he wasn't entirely sure how to ask for it without frightening me more than he already had. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle working beneath his skin, and beneath that unnatural r

he same part that had let him kiss me in the rain, the same part that had promised him anything before I even understood what anything might mean...kept me rooted exactly where I was,

hing like the calm, controlled voice that had told a room full of armed men

I watched, the shape of his pupils no longer quite matching anything I understood as human...and understood, with a fear

help you? I'm not a magician or a