Free The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance by Sophia Hampton Page B

purse and grabbed her handgun because it was closer than mine. I walked to the window again and held the gun up, close to my face. My heart was pounding and anger coursed through me as I thought about whoever might be out there. I moved the curtain back with the barrel of the gun and saw a shadowy figure outside the window. I scrambled to open the window, and they saw me.
     
    They took off down the fire escape. I swung a leg outside the window and pointed the gun at them but didn’t shoot. That would have caused more of a disturbance than was needed right then. If the hotel staff heard gunshots and traced it back to us, then we wouldn’t be able to get out of here, which was exactly what we had to do. I shut and locked the window and started putting my clothes on. All the movement must have bothered Sophia. She stirred on the bed, but she didn’t wake up.
     
    I gently woke her, stroking her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open.
     
    “What is it?” she asked, “What time is it?”
     
    “There’s no time. Get dressed,” I told her. She sat up, her eyes wide with fear.
     
    “Marcelo, what’s going on?” she asked. Her voice was shaking. I didn’t want to scare her more, but I also didn’t want to lie to her.
     
    “We can’t stay here anymore, whoever is after you knows that we’re here.”
     
    “What happened when I was sleeping? Marcelo?” She had stood and wrapped the gown she had on earlier back around her. I couldn’t stand the look on her face. Her eyes were wide, and she had no color in her. I cupped her face and kissed her. I told myself it was for her, but I knew it was for me, too.
     
    “I’ll explain everything in the car. Get dressed, we have to leave.” She didn’t ask any more questions, and I was glad she didn’t. I was too angry to talk. I wanted to break something, punch someone . I wanted to punch whoever the punk was that was trying to get into our hotel room. What if I had been in the bathroom, or had left the room for whatever reason? What if Sophia had been alone? I could have become a widower tonight. She could have been murdered right under my nose. This wasn’t a game any longer. This was war.

Chapter Nine
    Sophia
     
    On a scale of one to ten, how fucked up was it that the time during which Marcelo and I had bonded the most was when we thought there was someone out there trying to make an attempt on my life?
     
    It was coming up on two weeks since we had been home, and I was torn. One part of me was sick of living in hotels, and the other loved the odd peace and bonding Marcelo and I had experienced since the whole fiasco at the restaurant a couple weeks ago. It was sort of weird that I wanted to be back home. That house had been my prison, where Marcelo kept me as he went about whatever he did all day. I couldn’t fucking wait to see the inside of that hell again.
     
    After leaving the first place in the dead of night, we had made our way somewhere else, staying there for a few nights, and then finally ending up where we were now. We had crossed the bridge and were in Brooklyn. At the front desk of this place, we had checked in as Mr. and Mrs. Valentino, which I didn’t even know was something that people did in real life.
     
    Marcelo had been extremely attentive. People should be trying to kill me all the time if this was what it did to him. He was on edge, jumping whenever there was a knock at the door and staying up way past the time that I fell asleep, continuously waking to check that the windows and door to the suite were locked.
     
    It was tiresome to watch, but he wouldn’t stop it at my request. I didn’t hate it . In fact, it was sort of nice. I didn’t want him worrying himself sick about me, but I wasn’t going to turn away the additional attention and care. We had been getting along famously, which was strange. You would think that we would be our best selves in the home we shared, but really, the home was a biased space.
     
    Technically, it was his