“You rode in Brick. You’re involved. I’m the Head of the House and I’m ordering you to hold him down so I can stuff this pepper up his nose.”
Alessandro moved into my path, put his hands around my waist, and picked me up. Everything stopped. He was holding me effortlessly five inches above the floor. He was touching me.
Leon made a break for the doorway.
“Put me down,” I growled.
“No, you’ve gone mad with power.”
“Alessandro!”
“It’s eight fifteen,” he said. “We have bigger fish to fry. Call Linus. Or I can keep holding you just like this. I don’t mind.”
Runa put her hands to her mouth, making a funnel with her fingers, and dramatically whispered. “Door number two.”
The fight went out of me. “I’ll make the call.”
Alessandro lowered me back to the floor. He held on to me for another long breath and slowly let go. I marched to the cutting board, dumped the chopped habaneros into the bowl, and pulled my gloves off. “Arabella, please put this into the food processor, pulse on high for three minutes, pour it in a pan, and simmer it for ten. Don’t let it burn. Also, I’m taking your Mercedes for this trip.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
I made a face at her and reached for the phone.
The moment we got into the car, Alessandro morphed back into a killer. The slick veneer of polish he projected in the kitchen dissolved into calm alertness. He wasn’t on edge, but he was ready, his magic coiled and simmering just under the surface. Right now, he was lying back in the passenger seat, his eyes closed. We were making our way west, to Cat Spring, a tiny town about an hour out of Houston.
Alessandro could look like multiple people. There was Instagram Alessandro, meeting my family, charming and harmless. There was sexy Alessandro, flirting and too hot for real life, posing on my bed and petting my dog. There was Alessandro the Count, in an expensive tailored suit, and Alessandro the Prime, frighteningly competent, his power an impenetrable wall wrapping around him at the trials. None of them was a lie. He put them on like clothes to match the occasion.
But his default was this, a relaxed but ready killer. Assassin in repose. That’s what he was when he didn’t have to be anything else. I wondered if anyone besides me ever saw him like this.
They probably did. Just before he killed them.
“How many people have you killed?”
He glanced at me. “Why is that important?”
“I just want to know.”
“There is no upside to this conversation. How do you quantify it? What’s the right number? More than ten? More than twenty? When do I become a monster, banished from family meals?”
What brought that on? “Do you even know how many people you’ve killed?”
“Do you?”
“Three with my sword in Keystone. Three more upstairs on my orders, so I didn’t do it myself, but I was there. Another two at the escalator. And Lawrence. So, nine.”
“Impressive. If you keep going like this, in a couple of years you might catch up to me.”
“Is that based on the average number of people killed per week?”
He looked at me.
“I’m just asking because an average year has roughly fifty-two weeks, two years would have a hundred and four and at a rate of nine murders a week, it would amount to nine hundred and thirty-six . . .”
“Does your brain ever take a break?” he asked.
It did every time he said my name, or he touched me. Or propositioned me in my bedroom while I was wearing a towel, but he didn’t need to know that. “Do you ever answer a direct question?”
“Yes.”
Touché.
A ranch-to-market road wound its way through copses of oaks. We took a smooth turn and the trees on the left parted to reveal a picturesque lake, perfectly smooth like the surface of a mirror.
My phone chimed a triumphant little note. I knew that sound. That was Alessandro’s Instagram alert chime. I reached for the phone, but he grabbed it first. He really was ridiculously fast.
“Give me back my phone.”
“I thought so. You have an alert that tells you when I post.” He looked unbearably smug, like a cat who had just licked the steak left to rest on the counter and gotten away with it.
“I have many accounts on alert.”
“You follow your sisters, your cousins, your grandmother, and me.”
I really hated technology. “How did you even find my profile?” I’d made sure to not post pictures of myself