“What is this?”

“Your landlord is a fucking sex offender. He has cameras in the apartments and he spies on women undressing, showering and sleeping.”

Francesca felt the blood drain from her face. She knew she’d had a completely visceral reaction to Bart Tidwell from the moment she’d met him. He made her feel sick, but he owned the building and she needed a roof over her head. “Are you sure?” Her voice was a thread of sound, a whisper.

“Would you like to see the file we have on him?” Stefano poured himself another drink, downed it and turned back to face her. His features were a mask of sheer anger. “He also creeps into apartments and rapes the women and then blackmails them. He’s connected to a very powerful crime family, the Saldis, and they protect that piece of slime so witnesses never testify. He was marking you for his next target. I’m fairly certain he planned on visiting you tonight. There was tape over the lock on your door.”

She shook her head, her heart stuttering hard in her chest. Her mouth went dry. “That’s not possible.” But it was, of course. She could tell just by his anger that it was true. He was furious.

“I didn’t look at the recordings, but I suspect those are of you showering and stripping to get ready for bed.”

She couldn’t prevent the wince at the word “stripping” or the color creeping into her face all over again. “Oh. My. God.” She forgot all about holding up the sleeping bag and covered her open mouth with her palm. Her hand shook.

She didn’t have anywhere else to go. Worse, her only clothes were in that apartment and she wasn’t certain she could ever bear walking in there again. “Are you sure?” She knew the answer, but she still had to ask.

His eyes locked with hers. There was compassion there. Too much. She preferred his anger. Her stomach rolled and she felt the burn of tears behind her eyes. Blinking rapidly to hold them at bay, she took a deep breath to try to calm her churning stomach.

“Do you want to see what’s on those DVDs? The last one, the one that is labeled Vicki Wants It, I’m certain is a recording of your landlord raping that girl. There were more of these recordings than I cared to count in that piece of shit’s bedroom.”

She stared at him in horror, wishing she didn’t believe him, but there was no doubt in her mind that he was telling her the truth. He’d saved her. This beautiful man, far too wealthy and arrogant for his own good, the one she’d been afraid was involved in organized crime, had saved her. She just persisted in thinking the absolute worst of him.

Francesca looked down at the floor. The shiny, beautiful marble floor. “Thank you, Stefano. I don’t understand how this man could have gotten away with putting cameras in apartments, but I appreciate you making certain the recordings don’t end up on the Internet.” She couldn’t think about the possibility that Tidwell might have crept into her apartment and raped her. “How did you find out about this?”

“My cousin,” Stefano told her, studying her face. She looked so fragile, as if any minute she might burst into tears or just faint. He didn’t know whether to hold her in his arms and comfort her or shake her until her teeth rattled.

“Emilio. He took you home, did a walk-through of your apartment and didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t safe. He came to me, and I decided to talk to the owner about making certain his tenants were safe. My cousins, Renato and Romano as well as Zia Rachele and Zio Alfeo immediately began gathering information on him. They’re investigators. That’s what they do and they don’t make mistakes. When I went to Tidwell’s apartment, we discovered the screens up. You were on one of them, sleeping. It was easy enough to see he was recording you while you slept. From the labels on the rest of the DVDs, it wasn’t that difficult to guess what was on the other recordings he had of you.”

Her long, feathery lashes fluttered again and she shook her head. She’d gone from blushing to pale in the space of a few moments. Every protective cell in his body responded to her. She suddenly looked terribly young and vulnerable to him.

His body reacted, something that never happened to him. He was all about control and any kind of sexual response to a woman was allowed only when he was in a bedroom, certainly not when he was discussing a sexual predator with a potential victim. Totally inappropriate, but nevertheless, all he could think about was kissing her.

“I’ll have to thank Emilio.” She spoke in a small voice, barely a whisper.

“Do you want a drink?”

She pushed back the heavy fall of hair. Under the lights, the thick mass gleamed like silk, and he wanted to bury his fingers in that richness. Her lashes lifted and she met his eyes. The impact hit him low, like a wicked punch, a shot to his groin that heated his blood and made him feel primitive and a little bit savage. He was Sicilian, hot-blooded, and for the first time in his life, he knew what that meant—and it had nothing to do with his rather foul temper.