Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 115400 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115400 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
My hands fall to his chest, feeling the heavy beat of his heart beneath his skin. “You want me to be your wife?” I murmur, my voice dropping so low I can barely hear it.
“Yes, my sweet angel, I want you to be my wife. I knew it the moment I saw you helpless in that cage, I just didn’t understand what it was,” he tells me, bringing his hand up and swiping his thumb across my cheek.
I blow my cheeks out and hold his heavy stare. “I mean, couldn’t we start by putting some of my clothes in one of your drawers like normal people?”
“Or we could move you permanently into my bedroom. I wish to have you in my bed every night.”
I nod. “I can manage that.”
“Good, now as for the things in my office—”
“I told you, I don’t think I need to know.”
“It’s important to me that you do,” he tells me. “As I told you, it’s important that you learn to fear me. You need to truly understand who I am and what I am capable of. You need to learn where my boundaries are. What I will tolerate and what I will not. But despite that, I also need you to love me, and in order to do that, you must see past all of my flaws. It’s a balancing act, Chiara.”
Leaning into him, I drop my forehead against his, feeling the electricity burning between us, and as he lifts his hands around my back and pulls me closer to his chest, my world explodes with the sweetest satisfaction. “I want to love you so bad it hurts,” I whisper. “A part of me thinks I might already be there, but the other part . . . I don’t know if it’s possible to love someone you fear. But that’s just it, Killian, no matter how much you push me away or how many horror stories you tell me, I don’t know if I’m capable of fearing you . . . not anymore.”
He nods and is silent for a short moment before finally going on. “The police report you found on the desk,” he starts, this time not allowing me a chance to cut him off. “You were right, I was responsible for that massacre. Your second night here when you joined me in my bedroom, I had just returned and there was still blood on my clothes.”
“Why did you do it?”
“The Donatelli family was responsible for a raid at one of my warehouses. Their men brutally murdered twenty-three of my workers for the sake of getting their hands on Ecstasy and guns. These were innocent men and women who were only trying to make a few dollars for the families and children they left behind.”
I suck in a gasp as my mind begins to process, but before I have a chance to say anything. He goes on. “The surveillance screens. Tell me what you need clarified.”
“Umm . . . There was a man hanging from chains.”
Killian nods. “He raped and murdered my cousin’s daughter six months ago. She was barely eighteen and only starting her life.”
I swallow hard over the lump forming in my throat as tears begin to fill my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, feeling the weight of my cruelty slam down over my shoulders. I berated him for the things I saw in that office. I told him I could never love a man like that, but I was so wrong. I judged him too fast.
“I don’t need your sympathies, Angel,” he says, wiping the tears off my face. “It has been handled, and I don’t wish to linger on the hurtful events that are now in the past. Now, what else do you need clarification on?”
“The woman,” I say, sensing his need to move on. “She was strapped to a chair and had her nails pulled.”
“Elaina Brinetti,” Killian says. “The estranged daughter of Georgio Brinetti, a known enemy of the DeLorenzo family. She took it upon herself to seduce my uncle in order to learn my whereabouts. She then used that information to orchestrate an attack in order to return to her father’s good graces. However, her attempts were fruitless considering her current predicament.”
My lips twist. “She sounds like a bitch.”
“Indeed she is,” he agrees.
“I know there were other screens, but apart from the frail old man, I didn’t look at the rest.”
Killian nods, and something darkens in his deep stare. “That man is solely responsible for the unprovoked murder of both of my parents. I was only a child visiting my grandfather the night they were slaughtered. Losing them broke me, and in return, I vowed to break him. He has remained in that cell for over thirty years, receiving just enough food and water to ensure he lives in misery.”