Tattooed Saviour

His hand stays clamped around my wrist as he pulls me across the cemetery, past the smoking cars and the overturned flowers, to a black motorcycle parked crookedly against the wall.

I don't remember how we got there. I remember the cold air biting my bare feet and the way he moves through the chaos like it's a crowd of strangers on a sidewalk.

He grabs a helmet from the back of the seat and, before I can argue, settles it over my head. His fingers are quick and sure as they fasten the strap beneath my chin.

He tugs it once to check it's snug, then swings a leg over the bike and starts the engine. It growls to life beneath him.

"Get on."

I hesitate for a second. Then another shot cracks somewhere behind us, and I climb on.

"Hold on," he says over the roar.

"To what?"

"To me, princess."

The bike lurches forward, and my arms fly around his waist, locking tight. I press my helmet against the hard line of his back and squeeze my eyes shut as the wind tears past us.

His body is solid and warm beneath my hands, and the leather of his jacket smells like whiskey, spicy vanilla, and rain.

I hold on like my life depends on it because it does.

When I finally dare to open my eyes, the cemetery is gone. Gray streets blur by in streaks, and I can feel his heartbeat, slow and steady, beneath my palms. How can it be so steady?

The iron gates of the Dimitrou estate rise ahead. Guards on the wall lift their weapons, then lower them when they recognize me. The gates groan open, and we roar up the long gravel drive.

The bike has barely stopped when the front doors burst open.

I climb down on shaky legs, tugging the helmet off. My dark hair clings to my damp face.

"Brianna!"

Marco comes down the steps two at a time, his suit torn at the shoulder and a smear of dirt across his jaw. He reaches me and grips my arms, searching my face.

"Are you hurt? Are you okay?"

I swallow the lump in my throat, smooth the tremor out of my voice, and nod. "I'm fine."

It's a lie. But the lie is the only thing holding me upright, and Marco believes it. Relief floods his eyes.

Behind me, I hear the creak of leather and the soft scrape of boots on gravel.

My tattooed saviour swings off the bike and straightens, unhurried, as if he's arrived for dinner.

Marco's gaze snaps past me, and his whole expression changes.

"Take him."

Before I can turn, four men swarm around him. They slam him against the hood of one of the cars, and one of them presses the barrel of a gun to the back of his head. Two others seize his arms, wrenching his hands behind him.

"Wait," I say. "He..."

No one listens.

The guy doesn't resist. He just turns his head against the metal, and his autumn eyes find mine across the gravel.

And he smiles.

It's slow and crooked, completely unbothered by a gun at his skull. It's the most attractive thing I have ever seen, and the realization makes me furious with myself.

My stomach flips, and I hate it.

Steel clicks around his wrists as the cuffs lock into place.

"Easy, boys," he says lightly, his gaze never leaving me. "You'll bruise me."

"Careful," Marco warns the men, his voice low and hard. "He's armed, and he's quick."

A heavy weight settles over my shoulders. Marco has pulled off his jacket and draped it around me; it swallows me whole, warm and smelling of cigarettes and gun oil. I realize I'm trembling again.

"Who is he?" I ask.

"I don't know." Marco's jaw tightens. "He could be dangerous, Brianna. He could be working with the people who just tried to kill your father." He lowers his voice. "We'll find out. The men will interrogate him."

I look back at the guy.

He pushes off the hood on his own, straightening to his full height between the guards, the cuffs glinting at his back. He doesn't struggle. He doesn't ask where they're taking him.

He just follows them toward the house, silent and steady, keeping his eyes on me until the doors swallow him whole.

Marco doesn't ask if I want to watch; he simply leads me down the stairs and through the cellar corridor, past two guards who step aside without a word, and into a narrow dark room that smells of cold concrete and stale cigarettes.

A pane of glass occupies most of the far wall.

Beyond it, my tattooed savior sits in a steel chair bolted to the floor. His wrists are still cuffed behind him, and the black ink on his forearms reveals where his sleeves have been pushed up.

A single bulb swings overhead. One of my father's men stands behind him with a pistol pressed to the back of his skull.

He doesn't look afraid; he looks bored.

"He can't see us," Marco says quietly, folding his arms. "Stay close to me."

I nod, but I'm not really listening. I'm staring at him. At that crooked smirk still tugging at his lips like this is all some joke only he understands. My heart is still too fast, and I tell myself it's the aftermath. The adrenaline. The shock.

It doesn't explain why I can't look away.

Inside the room, a second man leans over the table, his palms flat on the steel. "What's your name, boy, and who sent you?"

He tilts his head. "Antonio Bernardi," he says calmly. "And nobody sent me."

"Antonio," I say almost to myself, testing the name on my tongue.

"Don't lie to me." The man slams his fist down, and the cuffs rattle. "Who sent you? Talk."

"I told you." Antonio's voice comes through the speaker, low and lazy. "I was just there."

"At a private funeral? Behind the cemetery wall?"

"I was riding past." He shrugs as much as the cuffs allow. "I saw people running and a girl about to get her head blown off. So I stopped." His smirk widens. "I'm a biker. That's all—an ordinary guy with a bike and bad timing."

"Ordinary." The man laughs without any humor. "You shot a man dead from forty feet without blinking."

"Lucky shot."

I almost laugh. It's a horrible sound—sharp and shaky—and I cover my mouth before it can escape.

Marco glances at me. I straighten, put the mask back on, cold and calm, and fix my eyes on the glass again.

"He's lying," Marco mutters.

"How do you know?"

"Because ordinary men don't aim like that." His eyes narrow on Antonio's profile. "And ordinary men don't smile with a gun at their heads."

On the other side of the glass, the interrogator pulls his fist back, but Marco taps the intercom button on the wall. "Enough."

The man freezes. Even Antonio's gaze flicks, slow and deliberate, toward the mirror, as if he's looking straight at me.

"We'll run a full background check on him," Marco says, still watching. "Name, bike, plates, phone—every record he's ever left behind. Anyone can say they're nobody. I want proof."

"And until then?"

"Until then, he stays right where he is."