Paparazzi pushed their way in and were asking everyone questions. Emilio came up behind her. “Stay right here. I’m going to help Enzo throw their asses out. Don’t you move.”

“I won’t.” She had no intention of being that stupid. She’d dealt with all this before and it had been one of the worst times of her life.

Her phone vibrated and she pulled it out, still staring at the screen. Emilio had waded into the crowd, trying to keep the customers defending Pietro and her from getting into fistfights with the photographers desperate to get photographs that would make them money.

“Bambina.” Stefano’s voice was a lifeline. “Emilio said you’re under siege.” So calm. His voice strong. A low, sexy tone that soothed even as it took charge.

“You could say that. I don’t think Pietro will want me working here anymore. What a mess.”

“It isn’t that he won’t want you there, Francesca—it’s a matter of your safety. He’s already grown fond of you and he doesn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I hope I’m not hearing smug satisfaction in your voice. I happen to know you don’t want me working. You didn’t somehow manage to engineer the raid on the store, did you?” She tried to make a joke of it when she really wanted to cry.

“Dolce cuore, I would never send a hoard of paparazzi after you even to get my way, and I’m pretty ruthless.” His voice turned grim. “However, I will find out who did. And did you use the word smug? I can’t imagine anyone ever thinking I’m smug.”

She laughed softly and winced a little when Emilio, Enzo and Tito from the pizzeria forcibly ejected a burly man. As he staggered backward on the sidewalk, Agnese Moretti knocked him in the head and about the shoulders with her purse. She appeared to be giving him a lecture as she attacked him.

A hand fell on her shoulder hard, fingers digging deep and she was yanked backward, right out of the employee break room. She emitted a startled, frightened yelp before the hand went from her shoulder to clamp hard over her mouth.

“Shut the fuck up, you bitch. You’re coming with me.” A knife cut into her skin just below her throat, right over the spot where the necklace Stefano had given her had nearly faded away.

She had no choice but to move backward, off balance as the intruder dragged her down the short hallway to the back exit. She kept her phone clutched in her hand, hoping Stefano could hear every word.

“Who are you? What do you want?” She asked him the questions more for Stefano’s sake than her own. She didn’t care who he was or what he wanted. The knife blade cut into her again, a second shallow laceration. She felt blood trickle down her skin to the curve of her breasts.

“I’m the man clever enough to get you right out from under the noses of the fucking Ferraros. A few paparazzi figure out where you are and your idiot bodyguards rush to get them out of the store and leave you unprotected.”

“Tell me what you want.” He’d dragged her out into the alley now. Francesca shivered and then let out a little scream when he sliced into her skin again. “Stop cutting me with the knife. Tell me what you want.”

“I want to know where my friends are—that’s what I want, you bitch. You go running to your boyfriend, whining about a little scratch they put on your neck, and they disappear. Where the fuck are they?”

He shook her, and this time the cut was deeper and a little lower, right on the upper curve of her left breast. She could tell it was shallow and probably an accident but it burned like hell.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” But she had a sinking feeling she did.

“They mugged you, and Emilio and Enzo took them away. No one’s seen them since and the Ferraros are looking for me.” He slid open the door to an old van and tried to shove her inside. In order to push her, he had to remove the knife.

Francesca was not getting into the van. She was certain he’d kill her just to make a point to Stefano. She turned on him, swinging her fist. He grunted, took two steps back and kicked her in the stomach. Francesca folded in half and found herself sitting on the ground. She tried to roll over, to get to her feet before he could come at her again, but he was enraged and he reached down to grab her hair in his fist.

“I’ll fucking cut your throat,” he snarled, and the knife came right at her exposed throat as he jerked her head backward.

Stefano loomed up behind him, a dark, shadowy figure she almost couldn’t make out. He seemed to emerge from thin air, from the darkest of the shadows, coming up right behind her assailant and catching his head in the vee of his arm, one hand to the back of the skull, forcing the head forward.