A Don And His Donna

Bonjour

I don’t move at first. Not because I’m scared—fear already burned itself out somewhere between the grenade blast and the cracked rib grinding every time I breathe—but because my brain is trying to register the fact that the man who just walked through that gate is the same man who should be dead in next few hours, the same man whose people have been chasing me for half an hour straight, the same man whose name alone freezes entire districts.

Marco f*****g De Luca.

Men moved in around me almost instantly, forming a rough perimeter, guns leveled, bodies coiled and ready.

Bonjour, motherfuckers.

He walks toward me with a steady, intentional pace that makes it impossible to tell whether he’s being patient—or letting me realize how cornered I am.

My pulse spikes, but my body stays locked, knees bent, weight forward, palms sweating around my gun. If he comes closer, I’ll swing, I’ll stab, I’ll go for his eyes—I’ll do something stupid before I do nothing.

The bikes wait behind him like a dare. My ribs throb with each inhale. I’ve already lost enough blood for one night, reminder that running now will hurt like hell..

Marco stops a few feet away, dust settling around his boots, and I refuse to take a step back. I’m not giving him that. Not after everything his men did. Not after the chase, the bullets, the fire, the bodies. Not after the way he looks at me now— like he’s measuring how much fight I’ve got left.

His ruggedly handsome face pulls into a smirk that makes my fingers itch to smack it. Infuriatingly enough, the bastard wears that look well—like the devil.

He lifts one brow. “Should I assume the grenade was your hello?”

“Creative, isn’t it?” I chirp, c*****g my head to the side, the gun still raised between us. But the psycho doesn’t look even mildly concerned that a bleeding assassin who just blew up half his compound is aiming a gun at his chest. I don’t know if I should be offended or… something worse.

His dark eyes flicker—molten honey dragged through shadow—holding dark depravity depravity and a blazing storm.

“Then shouldn’t I return the greeting?” he asks. His voice is low, smooth, irritatingly addictive, slipping through the haze rattling around my skull.

I lift the gun a little higher, the motion sending sharp waves of pain ripping through my side. “The devil is being polite now?”

“The devil is and always will be a gentleman",” he quotes Shakespeare in the middle of a f*****g m******e.

He takes a step forward.

I snap the gun up even further, wordlessly telling him to stay exactly where the hell he is.

He stops. Barely.

“Could’ve fooled me,” I mutter.

“Careful. Pulling that trigger will hurt you more than it hurts me,” he says.

I scoff. “That supposed to be intimidation? Because it sounds like you’re trying to flirt.”

“Can’t it be both?” His smile is maddeningly slow, like he’s savoring the moment.

“Sorry to disappoint,” I mutter, “but I don’t flirt with men I’m planning to kill.”

“That’s a shame.” He lifts his chin. “I only flirt with people who try to kill me.”

I blink. “That’s… a concerning hobby.”

“It keeps life interesting.”

He takes another step. I tighten my grip so hard my knuckles crack. “Move again,” I warn, “and I’ll shoot.”

“Mm,” he hums, unconcerned, “you speak like you’ve never missed a shot in your life.”

“I don’t.”

“Then why,” he asks, eyes flicking to my shaking arm, “is the gun trembling?”

My jaw clenches. “Because you’re annoying.”

“And because you’re injured,” he adds annoyingly, "You’re bleeding far too much to keep playing this game.”

“It’s not a game.”

“For me it is.” He smiles like the devil's advocate.

“And you walked in without reading the rules.”

I glare at him. Am I really bantering with a mob boss while my vision is tunneling into a nice little death-shaped circle?

Yes.

Absofuckinglutely yes.

My grip tightens on the gun. My hand is slick. Not sweat—blood. Mine.

The edges of the room pulse in and out, darkening with each heartbeat. God, I’m losing this war. My body knows it even if my pride refuses to.

“Cute,” I manage, breathing shallow. “But you don’t get to decide s**t about me.”

“A shame,” he says softly, eyes flicking over my shaking arm, “because you’re about ten seconds from passing out.”

“Try me.”

“That’s the problem,” he says, stepping a fraction closer, “I don’t think you can stay upright long enough.”

“Bold of you to assume I need to be upright to kill you.”

His mouth twitches like it takes effort not to smile. “Bold of you to think you still can.”

My knees threaten to buckle, and I force them to lock, to stand, to just hold. I’m not giving him the satisfaction.

“Take one more step,” I warn, “and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” he drawls. “Fall on me?”

The audacity.

I tighten my grip and c**k the gun, aiming for his chest—at least, I think it’s his chest. My vision wavers, the world tilting like someone nudged the floor off its hinges. A hot pulse tears through my ribs, sharp enough to blur the edges of everything. The bikes, the men, even him—all starting to smear into one dizzying mess.

Then I pull the trigger.

The recoil slams up my arm and knocks me back a full step, pain ripping through my side like someone took a blade to my ribs. The shot cracks through the air—loud, sharp, final—and for one wild, breathless second I hope it hit him. I hope it burned, bruised, tore, anything.

Because I’m already falling.

My knees buckle, the ground tipping away from me, and all I can think—through the ringing in my ears, through the blur swallowing my vision—is that maybe, just maybe, I managed to hurt him before the darkness catches me.