Pushing BackThe photograph lay on the marble console like a death sentence wrapped in glossy paper. Elena stared at the red laser dot centered over Claire’s heart, the handwritten note burning into her retinas. Forty-eight hours. Conti blood always collects. The tender afterglow from the bedroom evaporated instantly, replaced by a cold, churning dread that made her hands shake.Sandro’s face was a mask of controlled fury. He barked orders at the guards, trace the delivery, sweep the building again, triple security on Claire, then turned to her, pulling her into his arms with bruising intensity.“They won’t touch either of you,” he vowed against her hair. “I swear it.”Elena let him hold her, but something inside her had shifted. The vulnerability they had shared over his mother’s letters, the raw sex in the shower, the way he had opened the box for her, it all collided with this latest threat. For the first time, she felt the stirrings of real power. Not the kind he gave her in bed,
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