Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
There are moments in life when you make a decision. Accept who you are. What you have become. This was one of those times…The fairytale I thought I’d found had become a nightmare so quickly after I said, “I do.” Which was the reason I ran when I had the chance. Not thinking about the consequences. Just knowing I had to get free before it was my life that was taken.
I never expected to end up finding a haven. A place where people were willing to help me hide. It was as if I had walked into my own perfect daydream.
King
“Don’t believe every pretty face you meet, sweets. You should know by now that’s a terrible f----g idea.”
She was my job. I was to make her feel safe and do whatever I had to in order to make sure she didn’t run. Underneath the abused and broken exterior, there was a fighter. It was in her eyes. I lived for the moments when she let me see that spark.
I had been headed straight to Hell years before I met Rumor, but letting her fall in love with me was going to reserve me a room in the darkest pit available. One day soon, she was going to find out I was the monster she was running from and the family she had come to trust was the mafia that had killed her husband.
*Please be advised that this is book one in a duet and is a standalone in the Georgia Smoke Series.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
• Prologue •
The silence. It wasn’t comforting. It didn’t bring me peace. When it came, I knew it was the calm before the storm. My entire body was drawn up tight, preparing for the next moment. The one when the rage would explode from him and I would be the recipient. But it hadn’t always been that way. If it had, I’d not be here today. The six-carat diamond ring that weighed down my left hand would never have been placed there.
How easy it had been for him to charm a girl like me. Looking back, I knew I’d been an easy mark. Not hard to impress, desperate for affection, to belong, to be wanted.
Now, as I stood in the three-million-dollar home in Buckhead, Georgia, all I wanted was to be alone. A small house in the country with no one. Perhaps a dog as my companion. He’d be golden and big. We would sit on the worn, faded sofa and watch television at night together. He would sleep at the foot of my bed. There would be no moments of fear. My constant state of anxiety would no longer control my every move. I wouldn’t have to please anyone. Except my dog. I’d call him Bear. Because he would be as fluffy as one.
“Where the fuck is my striped Brunello Cucinelli blazer!” Hill shouted from the staircase.
I tensed. I’d known from the look in his eyes this morning when I served him breakfast that this was coming. The unsettled, agitated glower had been simmering in his gaze. I’d made his favorite breakfast, asked about his day, done my best to pretend that I cared what he had to say. It was a chore that I’d perfected. Pretending this was perfect. Trying my best to give him his idea of how it should look, how I should be, what he wanted the world to believe we were.
“Hanging to the left of your shoes, two blazers over on the top row,” I replied, knowing exactly where I had put it once I picked it up from the cleaners yesterday.
He had an important meeting today with a company who wanted to buy one of the buildings from a company he represented.
His heavy footsteps as he stomped down the stairs sent a shudder through me. I fought the instinct to run. Scanning the living room, I tried to decide the best place to be when he approached. Somewhere that there were no sharp edges I could fall on, free of any objects that could be used to cause more damage than just his fists. As I hurried over to the far corner, my mind raced with things I could say to defuse him. I knew his blazer was there. He’d probably found it before asking me. He had been looking for an excuse. Any reason to hurt me.
The moment he entered the room—his blond hair styled perfectly; his lean, toned body dressed in the white linen pants I had also picked up from the cleaners yesterday and a light-blue shirt that was perfectly pressed—he swung his gaze to me. The rage boiling in those eyes I had once trusted knotted up my stomach. This was a very bad day. It was rare there was ever a good day anymore, but the bad days had different levels of extremity.
“Would you like me to go see where your blazer is? I must have put it in the wrong spot.” I hadn’t, but taking the blame sometimes saved me. I had learned the ways to please him. The more I did that, the less I paid for whatever it was he was convinced I had done.
His clean-shaven face was tan, and his teeth, which he had professionally whitened, were clenched as he stalked toward me. “Did I not tell you that today was important? You live here like a fucking lazy mooch who has ONE job, Carmella. Yet you are too ignorant to even do that right!” he roared before his hand cracked against the side of my face. “There are wealthy women from powerful families who would kill to be my wife. Women worthy to carry my name! Yet I chose you. A nobody from the swamps of Louisiana. You should be grateful that I gave you this life. FUCKING GRATEFUL!” He grabbed my arm and threw me onto the floor.
I said nothing. I knew if I did when he was like this, it only made it worse. Even begging for forgiveness seemed to make the monster inside him expand.
“I let your face and body seduce me, and I pay for it every goddamn day of my life!” He sneered the hateful words, then kicked me hard, taking my breath away.
The sharp pain that shot through me made it impossible to move. If I tried to even shift, the searing in my side would cause me to cry out, and he’d do it again.