Elijah rolled completely off of her, gliding smoothly to his feet, jerking his jeans up, the gun steady as a rock when he did it. She lay in shock, hardly comprehending what had happened until he moved. Stepping away from her, he kicked a gun away from the outstretched hand of a man in a dark coat. The intruder lay in a pool of blood, not five feet from her.

She gasped and scrambled backward on all fours. Elijah searched for a pulse. Evidently he found none because he turned toward her. The look on his face terrified her. He crossed to her in three long strides, reached down and yanked her up by her arm, fitting the muzzle of his gun to her temple.

“Give me a reason not to blow your fuckin’ head off. Setting me up. Fucking whore. Did you think I was so stupid I wouldn’t figure out what you were doing? Distracting me to let that bastard get to me?” He shoved her away from him and transferred his hold to her hair, his fist buried deep, all the while swearing in Spanish. Over and over. Harsh, dirty, ugly words.

“Elijah.” She whispered his name. A protest. She had no idea what he was talking about. Worse, her brain wouldn’t work. She was in shock. A dead man was only a couple of feet from her. She’d just had sex for the first time in her life—violent sex—mind-blowing sex, and now he was accusing her of aiding the intruder in some way.

“What?” he snarled, dragging her back through the foyer by her hair.

She cried out and tried to grab at his hand. His fist was buried deep, right next to her scalp, and the pain brought tears to her eyes. His grip was brutal and there was no escaping it as he dragged her by her hair to the front door.

“You thought your amateur performance was going to distract me while your fucking hit man killed me? Is that how you got those other poor bastards? You’re the worst cocksucker I’ve ever experienced, so they should have known better, but I guess being old men they didn’t care as long as they had a mouth around their dicks. Get the fuck out of my house before I change my mind and kill you.” He snagged her jeans as he pushed her past the dead man on the floor.

She knew she was in shock. His voice barely registered. She knew the things he said to her would be branded on her brain for all time, but right then, her horrified gaze was on the dead man—the dead man she knew—the dead man who worked for her grandfather.