Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 45371 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 227(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45371 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 227(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You could do anything, be anybody. You could take the money from the betting businesses and choose any career you want. Or travel the world. Find a woman, settle down. Don’t make me hurt you.”
Enzo’s cheeks turn pale. He tries to laugh it off, but it comes out sounding weak.
“You think I’m scared of you?”
“Yes, I do. No more attacks and you owe us seventeen thousand for the damages.”
Enzo doesn’t reply for a long time, looking up and down as though somebody’s going to decide this for him. Finally, he says quietly, “I loved him so much. My father. He was the best man I knew. Why did you have to take him from me… for one mistake? We all make mistakes.”
I think of Isla, of how she looked when Cameron and I found her. The horror she endured at the hands of Enzo’s evil father, but like many sons, he has a blind spot.
I wonder about my future children with Bonnie. Will they have a blind spot with me? Would I want them to? Or would I want to be a man they could be proud of?
“Do we have a deal or not?” I say. “You know I’m right. We’d crush your little group of renegades if it came to it. Your boss, Massimo, might even help us.”
Enzo sighs. “Yeah, Scotsman, we’ve got a deal. I’ll send the cash to your bar downtown.”
I stand, offering my hand. “This is the smart move.”
He stands and shakes my hand reluctantly.
“A handshake means something in this life,” I tell him as we shake. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“No more attacks,” he snaps, snatching his hand away. “You don’t have to rub it in.”
He turns and strides from the table.
Once he and his men are gone, I tell Malcolm, “Beef up defenses on all our properties, just in case. Use the business fund to pay the men overtime. I don’t trust him.”
“Will do, boss,” Malcolm says.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bonnie
I thought he would lock my door after the phone incident, but I’m free to wander around the house. When I return to the second kitchen, I realize why. The landline phone has no reception, meaning there’s no way to contact the outside world.
I end up in the garden with the small, happy, black dog. As I stroke him, I read the name on his collar.
“What am I going to do, Archie?” I whisper, trailing my fingers through his fur. “Dad doesn’t even know what’s happening.”
“I told him you were my live-in maid.”
I turn at the sound of Blake’s voice. He stands next to a giant stone flower pot, wearing a dark red shirt with the top buttons undone, showing me a glimpse of his broad chest.
“And he bought that?”
“He wants you to send him a text confirming it. I invited him for dinner one day, but that can’t happen until you agree to our story.”
“Until I agree to let you kidnap me, you mean,” I hiss.
Blake walks over slowly, his hands in his pockets. The late-day sunlight catches the experience in his hair, the glinting silver. Each second is a battle, a war in my body not to feel anything for this man.
“All his financial problems will be fixed,” he says.
“That’s good,” I reply sarcastically. “At least I’m not cheap.”
Archie leaves me and pads over to Blake. When Blake kneels down and tenderly strokes the dog, something tugs at my soul, heart, and vision for the future as I imagine Blake showing similar affection to our children with the same half-smile.
“I missed you, boy.”
“And there I was thinking you weren’t human at all.”
Blake looks at me as he continues stroking his dog. “Are you hungry?”
“Are you changing the subject?”
When he smirks, I remind myself I’m not his prized pet. I don’t feel a warped sense of victory every time I win a smirk from him. I don’t want to cheer and sing whenever he aims those captivated eyes at me.
“You have to maintain a body like that.”
I’m sitting on the stone step with him standing above and across from me. The second he says this, I leap to my feet, marching right up to him, not thinking about what I’m doing until I’m standing beneath him.
“And what’s that supposed to mean? A body like that?”
He steps forward and catches my hand as I slice it through the air. “It means you’re curvy in the best sense. It means I’d hate to see you waste away and lose your voluptuous body. It means I’m rock hard every time I look at you, and I almost explode when I think about how full and ripe your ass looked earlier.”
He kisses me again. I push my hands against his chest, meaning to shove him away, but then I feel his rippling muscles. Something triggers in me, and I sink into the kiss, magnetized and unable to fight it. He grabs hold of my hips. Surely, this can’t be a trick. He can’t fake that snarling passion, the eagerness in his hands.