A/N: Happy 100 reviews, everybody! Thanks to all who have reviewed so far and enjoy this chapter! I made it longer than the other ones to commemorate a milestone... well, a sort of milestone. n.n; And I'm even updating a day early! W00t!

Sakura didn't know when she'd fallen asleep. She hadn't even known she'd drifted off until the sound of the door closing woke her from her fitful sleep. Looking around, she could see nothing in the darkness, but when her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she was able to make out Itachi's form, leaning limply against the suite's door.

She was up in an instant. She rushed over to him and lifted his head so that she could look at his face. His eyes, without their usual contact lenses, were black as midnight and half-lidded as he looked blankly into her face. "I-I... Itachi?" she stammered in a whisper, "Are you... okay?"

His eyes finally made up their mind and closed as his shoulders heaved in a silent, weary sigh and a small smile tugged at his lips. "The real question, Sakura, is if you're okay. Kisame took you down pretty hard, did he hurt you badly?"

She shook her head, and then mentally smacked herself when she remembered that his eyes were closed and he couldn't see her. "I'm fine."

He nodded with another sigh, this one satisfied, and he reached up to caress her cheek, his eyes remaining closed. "Good."

She found herself leaning her head into the caress, but then caught herself and moved away from the touch that sent her heart into a rapid beating and caused tears to well in her eyes. When he reached out to take her into his hold again, she took the opportunity and wrapped the arm around her shoulders, her own arm around his waist so that she could help him to bed. "God, you're heavy," she growled as she half-carried him down the hall.

"And it's all muscle, sweetheart," he chuckled.

She kicked open the bedroom door and half-dragged the semi-conscious man toward the bed, setting him down as gently as she could manage. Then, she stooped down to untie and pull off his shoes. Once she was finished, he dragged himself all the way onto the bed and rested his head against a pillow. "You should sleep," he said before yawning, "You've had a long night."

"I've had a long night?" she asked skeptically, "I wasn't the one that crashed a wedding, wooed an innocent girl, foiled a murder attempt and had said innocent girl carted away like a kid being kidnapped."

Itachi merely chuckled and said, "Just go to sleep."

"I've slept already."

"Well then, sleep some more." She sighed and turned toward the door, going to head back to the couch when she heard him say, "Nuh-uh, you're staying in here. If anything, I should be the one to sleep in the living room so that I can keep you safe."

"Then why don't you?"

He cracked one eye open and asked jokingly, "Is that any way to talk to the man that saved your life tonight? Now get in this bed before I make you."

She feigned an annoyed sigh, even though the idea of sleeping in the same room (let alone the same bed) with Itachi made her ecstatic, and she lay down beside him. She tried to stay at the farthest edge of her side of the bed, but Itachi would have none of that. He grabbed her around her waist, tugged her closer to him, gave her an affectionate pat on the head to piss her off and then went back to pretending to sleep.

"You know, I can sleep by myself," she murmured, feeling her eyelids grow heavy, but she fought her sudden weariness.

"I know."

"I mean, I'm a very independent person."

"I know."

"I've been independent for a long time now."

"I know."

"You... know?" she asked in confusion, "How do you know that exactly?"

"Good guess. The same way I'm guessing that your favourite color is red, you hate anchovies on your pizza, you like dogs, but not when they bark at you, and you're a cat-person at heart, but it's a tragic love because you're allergic."

Sakura remained silent, checking all of these things off on her mental tally of useless information on herself and felt irritation well up inside her when all of the things he'd "guessed" were correct. "You're teasing me."

"And you've been spending too much time with Naruto; his powers of observation have rubbed off on you."

"Will you just tell me..."

"Sh," he hushed softly, placing a hand over her mouth to silence her, "Tomorrow. I will answer any and all of your questions tomorrow, but, for now, just sleep. I'm sure you're probably finding it hard to believe that Naruto and Kakashi have done this to you."

As a matter of fact, she was. Narrowing her eyes through the darkness, she asked, "Can you read minds?"

He chuckled and answered, "No."

"Clairvoyant?"

"Nope."

"My love interest sent from the future to protect me?"

There was silence until he answered in a mischievous tone, "Maybe."

Groaning in frustration, she finally closed her eyes and allowed herself to fall asleep.

XOXO

While Sakura awoke early in the morning, expecting to see Itachi up and ready to answer her questions, he remained asleep half the day. This coupled with the fact that Kisame still refused to answer any questions at all, greatly irritated her.

Then, around eleven-thirty in the morning, Itachi appeared wearing the clothes he'd been wearing the night before: a pair of dress pants and a white button-down shirt left open to reveal his beautifully-toned chest. Needless to say, the sight of the naked skin set before her sent all of her irritation running to the hills, screaming.

"Morning, 'Tach," Kisame greeted casually, lazing on the couch, watching Saturday morning cartoons and laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of them all.

Itachi grunted a reply then turned to her with a smirk on his face, "Too bad Naruto's not around, I could use one of his breakfasts."

Sakura did her best to smile at the joke, but it didn't feel right. She wasn't really in the joking mood after the night she'd had.

"Well, I suppose you have a bunch of questions lined up for me," he said, turning to head for a chair where he could sit. That's when she noticed the gun tucked between his belt and his pants.

"That's a gun!" she exclaimed in alarm.

"And I stand by my response that you need to stay away from Naruto when you're so impressionable." With that said he took the gun and set it on the table before sitting down.

"I-Is it loaded?"

"Of course, what good is a gun that isn't loaded?"

She remained silent.

"I only use it when necessary... like last night."

She nodded and ripped her eyes away from the metal weapon that could easily take her life in a second and looked to Itachi. "I do have questions."

He nodded. "What are they?"

"First, what happened last night?"

"Naruto and Kakashi betrayed you."

"Not Sasuke?"

"Not Sasuke."

"So, that means that he's on our side then?"

"Nope."

"So... he's sort of neutral?"

"Well," Kisame drawled, taking a brown paper bag from under the table, "It's a bit more than that. The little turd was left out of everything because of his familial relationship with Itachi and his friendship and loyalty to the band. We left him out because we couldn't honestly expect him to choose a side between us and keep that position later on in the game when somebody got hurt."

"So, what's this all about then?" she queried, "Why did Naruto and Kakashi want me dead anyway?"

"For one thing," Itachi said, "They don't want you dead, just in captivity. Second, in the long run, it's not even you that they want. You're really just a means to an end. The people that they really want are your parents."

"My parents?" she asked in confusion, "Why? That makes no sense, what would they want from my parents except for money?"

Itachi snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "Exactly. Because they have, not only their own business, but their own corporation and they have a lot of money." Then, he sighed and asked, "This is where it gets serious. They told me that they had kept you out of all of the secret stuff to keep you safe, so I'm going to have to explain all of this to you."

"Who?" she asked, "What? Who's been keeping what from me and why? How?"

He chuckled at her antics and questioned, "What exactly does your parents' company do?"

"Shipping."

He nodded and eyed her with interest, like a teacher interrogating the correct answer from a student. "And what do they ship? Do you know what they ship and where, why and how?"

She shrugged. "I never thought to ask and they never thought to tell me."

"Oh, they thought to tell you," he corrected, "But they thought better of it. You see, they work in the international arms industry. They enable third-world countries to continue their wars by supplying them with the materials they need at a cost they can just barely afford."

Sakura blinked, trying to understand this. Her parents... were acting as terrorists? They were war-enablers? They were giving people the means to kill other people and thus were causing deaths all over the world? The very people who had raised her into the polite young lady that she was today? "Holy shit," she murmured.

He nodded. "So, I guess you can see where you stand? You're wanted by the police."

"Then I should go straighten it out!" she decided, "Get everybody off my back and settle this the way it should be settled. Since I know that nobody wants to kill me and that all I have to do is..."

Itachi had stood and clasped a hand over her mouth, silencing her mid-sentence. Gravely, he said, "You will do no such thing. I was hired by your parents to keep you from doing that."

"So then... you're expecting me to sit back and let people be killed because of my family?"

"I'm expecting you to let me do my job in protecting both you and your parents," he told her.

"Your... job," she murmured. His job. Job... obligation... chore... burden... he wasn't doing this because of any feelings he might have had for her, he was doing this for money. They weren't friends at

all! She was officially friendless. "And that kiss last night?"

There was a slight twitch in the corner of one of his eyes, but other than that, his face was unchanging. "All part of the act."

"Act..."

He nodded. "That's right."

Sighing, she sat back and digested this tidbit of information. What surprised her most was the fact that this hurt her more than the idea of her parents being terrorists. Then, she stood and headed for the door, not bothering to hesitate when Itachi's steely voice sliced through the air, "Get back here!"

She didn't wait for an elevator, just headed straight for the stairs, knowing one of the two men were going to be chasing after her soon enough. Then, sure enough, she heard a door slam and she quickened her pace to a run as she raced down the stairs, hoping to make it out of the hotel before they caught her and then hopefully cause a scene and get away.

But it was not to be. When she left the stairwell, it was to find two men looming over her, one a red-head with green eyes and another with blond hair and a large bang over one eye, the other eye a beautiful blue. "Who...?"

"Sakura," the red-head said in a tone that held little inflection, "Itachi wants--"

"No!" she exclaimed, "What Itachi wants and what I want are two completely different things! I am not going to sit back and let terror--!"

A hand reached from behind and silenced the last of her words. "That's quite enough," Itachi whispered in her ear, "I'm not finished explaining everything to you, so why don't you accompany me back upstairs and we can order some room service and chat some more?"

Knowing that there was no way she was going to get around all of these men, she sighed in resignation and let Itachi lead her back up the stairs.

A/N: Hope you enjoyed, please review!