Chapter 3 - THE DARKNESS BENEATH THE PINES
The snow had drifted three feet deep against the wrought-iron gates at the end of the long driveway.
My fingers were no longer cold.
That was the dangerous part, I knew.
When the stinging frost faded into a heavy, woolly numbness, it meant the blood had stopped fighting.
My back rested against the rough bark of an oak tree.
The wind screamed through the upper branches like a train roaring over a trestle.
I tried to lift my left hand.
It wouldn't move.
A pair of twin beams sliced through the blinding white wall of the blizzard.
Headlights.
A low, deep-throated V8 engine idled somewhere close, rumbling through the frozen ground.
A car door slammed.
Boots crunched heavily on packed snow, coming fast—heavy, decisive steps that didn't hesitate.
"Emily!"
A voice cutting through the wind.
Not Richard’s thin, pinched whine.
Deeper. Rougher. A voice that commanded men twice my size to kneel in warehouses.
Warm weight settled over my shoulders.
Heavy wool and cedarwood.
Nicholas Grimaldi dropped to his knees in the snow beside me, his bare hands—warm, large, calloused—cupping my frozen face.
"Look at me," he commanded.
I blinked.
His dark eyes were inches from mine, blazing with a fury so intense it melted the frost on my eyelashes.
"Nicholas..." I whispered, my lips barely moving.
"I have you," he said.
He didn't call for Luca. He didn't waste a second.
May you like
He gathered me up into his arms as though I weighed nothing at all, lifting me out of the snowbank and carrying me through the storm toward the idling black sedan.
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