TOUCH HER AND DIE
897 Words
The warehouse smelled like metal and rain.
Sofia hated that she had insisted on coming.
“I’m not porcelain,” she had said in the car.
Alessio hadn’t argued.
He simply looked at her in that unreadable way that meant he was already calculating ten different ways to keep her alive.
Now she stood beside him as his men dragged in a bleeding man who had tried to breach the safehouse network.
The traitor fell to his knees.
“Please— I didn’t know she was there.”
Sofia’s spine stiffened.
She.
Alessio’s jaw ticked once.
“Who told you?” his voice was calm. Too calm.
The man hesitated.
Big mistake.
Alessio didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t shout.
He simply crouched.
Eye level.
Predator level.
“You attempted to track my wife.”
The word wife carried weight.
Not ownership.
Warning.
The man swallowed. “We were told she’s leverage.”
Silence.
Then the air changed.
Even the guards shifted.
Because that was the moment Alessio DeLuca stopped being controlled.
He stood slowly.
Leverage.
Sofia felt his anger like heat radiating off steel.
“Look at her,” he ordered the man.
The traitor obeyed.
Sofia held the gaze — steady, unflinching.
“I want you to understand something clearly,” Alessio said softly.
“If any of you so much as breathe in her direction again…”
He pulled his gun.
Not rushed.
Not dramatic.
Precise.
The cold barrel pressed against the man’s forehead.
“I will dismantle your entire bloodline.”
The man began to tremble.
Alessio’s eyes flicked to Sofia.
And for a split second—
They softened.
That terrified her more than the gun.
Because this wasn’t ego.
It wasn’t possessiveness.
It was something deeper.
Personal.
The man broke. “It was Romano’s people! They think she’s your weakness!”
Alessio tilted his head slightly.
“Weakness?”
Then he smiled.
Slow.
Deadly.
“She is the reason I have something to protect.”
The shot echoed through the warehouse.
Sofia didn’t flinch.
But her heart slammed violently against her ribs.
The body hit the floor.
Silence swallowed the space.
Alessio handed the gun back to his guard like he hadn’t just rewritten someone’s fate.
Then he turned to her.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
His tone wasn’t angry.
It was strained.
She stepped closer anyway.
“I needed to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“That I’m not leverage.”
His jaw tightened.
“You are not leverage.”
“Then what am I?”
He hesitated.
Alessio DeLuca.
Hesitated.
“You are… mine.”
Her pulse stumbled.
“Mine to protect,” he clarified quickly.
But the damage was done.
She stepped even closer.
Close enough that the scent of rain and gunpowder clung to him.
“You looked scared,” she whispered.
“I was not scared.”
“You were.”
“For you.”
That admission hit harder than the gunshot.
Sofia reached for him before she could overthink it.
Her fingers brushed the front of his shirt.
Not seductive.
Not dramatic.
Just grounding.
“You don’t get to scare me like that,” she murmured.
His hand covered hers instantly.
Large.
Warm.
Possessive.
“Then don’t stand in danger’s path.”
“You married danger.”
A breath of a laugh left him.
Dark.
“You have no idea.”
Their faces were too close now.
Too charged.
“Romano thinks I’m your weakness,” she said softly.
Alessio’s thumb brushed her wrist — absentminded, protective.
“They’re wrong.”
“Why?”
His voice dropped.
“Because you are the only thing that could make me ruthless without restraint.”
Her breath caught.
“That doesn’t sound better.”
“It isn’t.”
A pause.
The guards politely pretended not to see the tension unraveling between them.
Sofia swallowed.
“If they come for me again?”
Alessio’s expression turned lethal in an instant.
“They won’t.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He leaned down slightly.
Close to her ear.
“If they try,” he whispered, voice velvet and deadly, “they will pray I kill them quickly.”
Heat raced down her spine.
Not fear.
Something else.
Something dangerous.
He pulled back just enough to look at her fully.
“From now on, you don’t go anywhere without me.”
“That sounds like a command.”
“It is.”
She should argue.
She always argues.
But instead—
“Okay.”
That surprised him.
“You’re agreeing?”
“For now,” she said lightly. “Don’t get used to it.”
A shadow of a smile curved his mouth.
But then his phone buzzed.
He glanced at the screen.
And the softness vanished again.
“What?” Sofia asked.
He looked at her.
Not cold.
Not angry.
Worried.
“They didn’t just try to track you.”
Her stomach dropped.
“What do you mean?”
“They accessed your hospital records.”
Ice.
Pure ice.
“They’re looking for something.”
Sofia’s mind raced.
“What could possibly be in my medical file that matters to them?”
Alessio’s gaze darkened.
“I don’t know.”
But the way he said it meant one thing.
He was going to find out.
And whoever was digging into her life…
Was about to regret it.
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