Just like his sexy body and handsome face.
“What do you want? My parents don’t have money.”
“Not the people who raised you, but the father who sired you. Now, he has a kingdom and more money than you can imagine.”
“What the . . . sired? You make me feel like a racehorse. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The first man returns and hands him a phone. “Cloned, and it’s clean.”
Fuck. Just when I need technology the most, it’s been wiped clean so I can’t be located by GPS. Clearly, this isn’t their first kidnapping.
“What is it you’re after?” I hope to God this isn’t a sex trafficking ring. That would be . . . I don’t even want to think about it.
“We’re after your biological father. Did you never wonder why your complexion is different than your parents?”
Dante pulls out a family picture of us from a month ago and holds it at the top, dangling it in front of my eyes.
“How did you get that?”
“We’ll get into details later. So, you’re saying you were never told you were adopted?”
My eyebrows come to peaks. “What?”
“Adopted,” he smugly replies, putting the picture back in his breast pocket. He stands up abruptly, flicks the chair back to the desk, whips around to face me, and in three long strides, he’s within inches of my face.
Damn if he isn’t intimidating, yet I fight the urge to turn away.
He peers into my eyes, reading me, and apparently, he’s satisfied. Perhaps I’m imagining it, but I think his tone softens just the tiniest bit as he studies me and contemplates what I know and don’t know.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” I want to headbutt him because he’s that close to me, but I’m afraid I’d knock myself out if he’s as hard-headed as his attitude. “Now, can you cut me loose and let me go home?”
He nods to the first man, who comes out of the shadows behind me and snips the zip ties. “Nothing foolish or you’ll be back in them for days,” he warns.
The stranger unties my feet, and Dante helps me stand.
The saying is, be careful what you wish for. Sometimes I’ve wished I had a more eventful life, but I never imagined this in my wildest dreams.
9
Dante
Damn, she’s so beautiful, I almost feel guilty about the snatch. But all’s fair in love and war, and this is necessary to stop a war, in my opinion.
We took the blood sample while she slept off the sedative so we can test her DNA. Now, we’re waiting on official results before our call to Conti. But I don’t need to see the results to know she’s his. The fact the adoption was kept a secret and that she has no other siblings makes all the pieces fall into place.
I believe her and yet I wonder how her parents managed to hide her so well. What is their connection in all of this? Or is it just a random occurrence that a child with such dark ties grew up to be so well, good, decent . . . and sassy.
Did her adoptive parents know her heritage when they took her in? Did they know Conti? Or her mother? Or are they in the dark as well?
Juliet doesn’t seem to be anything like her biological father, who wouldn’t hesitate to stick a knife in your kidney if you so much as looked at him wrong.
When I help her stand, I feel another twinge of guilt, realizing how tired and weak she is from today’s ordeal. The plan is already taking a toll on her and this is only the beginning. Negotiations haven’t even started.
I’m a soldier and don’t have time to care about her feelings or physical state, as long as she’s alive and not bleeding out. But that doesn’t stop me from moving her up to my kitchen with Riccardo as her personal guard to make sure she doesn’t escape. My mansion is a compound, and no one, other than my guards, Riccardo, and my housekeeper have a reason to be here.
I will find a way to make this situation work. I always do. I’m the Don not just because I’m the eldest son in the family, but because I have the skill set and the fortitude to make the business my life. My brothers can get married and give Mama grandchildren and live a ‘normal’ life.