That’s the name of the man I put my faith in. I don’t even know his first name. But I risked my only hope of escape on him. I thought he would go to the police. Call my brothers. Figure out who I am and realize the reward my brothers would give him would be more than generous. Instead, I’m pinned in the back of the SUV with Dante and his men.
I thought I saw kindness in Mr. Conti’s eyes when I stepped out of the SUV. I knew I couldn’t outrun the idiot
s who drove me. My guards may not have much of a brain between their ears, but they are built. All muscle. I couldn’t outrun them with my hands tied behind my back and my high heeled shoes, so I chose a man; a man with tired, gray eyes and what I thought might be warmth hiding behind those eyes.
I was wrong.
Whatever I saw, it wasn’t kindness. Mr. Conti is friends with the devil.
I made the worst mistake I could. I trusted a stranger because I thought I could sense something more than cold indifference oozing off of him.
Mr. Conti turned me over to Dante without a second thought. I am nothing to him. Not even a woman, just another way for Mr. Conti to show his loyalties to Dante.
I swallow down my regret, trying not to think too hard about the gorgeous man sitting back at the quaint coffee shop I’ve been to hundreds of times before. Amante. I love the place. I never realized monsters hung out there.
Beautiful, handsome, dark beasts. Mr. Conti may be evil, but if I were free, he would have been precisely the type of man I went after. Tall, muscular, wealthy, and hiding a dark past beneath his grimace. When his eyes soaked into me, full of want and desire, I saw the hunger in his eyes. I even let myself feel it for one second. One full second, and then I stopped myself.
It might have been the last time a man looked at me with a hint of lust where I had a choice in what happened afterward. From now on, if any man looks at me that way, I won’t have a choice to say no. They will take whatever they want from me.
Mr. Conti was supposed to be my savior. But he won’t help me.
My brothers don’t have a clue I’m missing. And by the time they figure out I’m gone, it will be too late.
I have to save myself.
Dante grabs my chin and forces me to look at him again.
“Such a beauty.”
I growl and jerk my head out of his grasp.
He grabs my chin and pulls me so close to his face I can smell his breath; a disgusting mix of coffee, cigarettes, and rotting flesh.
I glare at him as I lean away from him.
“I will enjoy breaking you, whore.”
“My name is Gia,” I say, although I don’t know if he used my name if I would feel any better. Gia feels more personal. But it’s better than ‘whore.’
Dante cocks his head to the side and glances up at the man in the passenger seat, perplexed, as if to say, “Can you believe this?”
“I’ve never had a woman quite like you. Usually, the women I take are in too much shock to say anything, especially nothing that snarky.”
“That wasn’t snarky. You haven’t seen me be snarky yet.”
“I don’t doubt that. I will enjoy slowly snuffing the fire out of you as the days pass. Usually, I need a new woman within a week. None of my previous conquests have lasted long, and I’m not into necrophilia. I once had a woman last a month. She had a man she was living for, fighting for. You don’t have a man you are fighting to get back to, do you, whore?”
I don’t react when he calls me a whore. It’s just a word. I need to prepare myself for much worse.
“No, I don’t need a man. When I escape, I will be returning with an army to kill every single one of you. But don’t worry, I’ll kill you last, slowly, for payback for everything you do to me.”
His eyes blaze, and his nostrils steam. I’ve just turned him on.
Shit.
“So you have relented I will have my way with you then, whore?”
“No.”