Page 50 of Blood Vows

“Is the red ledger there?” Dante asked.

“If Elena stored it under her own name, yes.”

She turned back to him. “How did you find it?”

“Your father paid the first five years in advance on the storage unit,” Marco said. Her chest tightened. Of course he did.

Dante asked the question that mattered. “Is the unit still secure?”

Elena’s stomach sank when Marco didn’t answer. “Marco?”

“No,” Marco breathed.

Dante went cold. “What happened?”

“The facility manager says someone accessed Elena’s unit yesterday,” Marco said.

Her blood turned to ice. “Who?”

“That’s the problem,” Marco said.

Dante’s eyes locked onto hers. “Tell me everything.”

Marco exhaled. “They used Elena’s access code.”

Elena shook her head. “No one has that.”

“Someone obviously does,” Dante said as he grabbed his gun from the counter. “Send me the address,” he ordered and ended the call.

“You’re going to the storage unit?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Elena stepped forward. “Then, so am I.”

“No,” he said. She stared at him. “We are not doing this again, Elena.”

“My father left that ledger. Hale warned me about it. Someone used my code to get inside that unit, so I’m going,” she insisted.

Dante looked ready to argue, and his gaze dropped to her mouth—just for a second, and something changed. “Fine.”

She blinked up at him. “Fine?”

“You stay beside me,” he ordered.

“I thought I was supposed to stay behind you,” she reminded.

“Changed my mind,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

His gaze hardened. “Because I'm done letting you out of my reach.” Elena’s pulse skipped. The kiss might have been a mistake, but the way Dante was looking at her wasn't with regret, and Elena had the terrifying feeling that whatever line they had just crossed—neither of them was going back.

Dante

Dante had made mistakes before—plenty of them. Some had cost him money, some had cost blood, and a few had cost lives. Kissing Elena Romano might end up costing him all three, because now he knew what she tasted like, and that was a fucking problem.

He stood in the kitchen watching her disappear upstairs to change, his hands braced against the island while he tried to remember every reason touching her again was a bad idea. She was under his protection. She was tied to an investigation that threatened the Camorra family. Someone was trying to kill her. They had a storage unit to get to before whoever had broken into it came back. And Luca had specifically warned him about getting attached. They were all excellent reasons, but none of them stopped him from wanting to follow her upstairs.