Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52105 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52105 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
She hangs up the phone.
I hear the click and the sound feels as if it just shredded my heart. I’ve never asked my mother for help. I’ve never flat-out said the words to her. Maybe because I always knew that I couldn’t rely on her. Maybe I always knew that this would be the exact outcome. Maybe because I never truly had a mother to begin with. I was born an orphan. Abandoned from the start.
Alone. I’m all alone.
I hang up the phone, trying to shake off the pain, and look around my room. Warm colors, plush pillows, antique furniture, stone walls, and an Italian charm embraces me with comfort, but I wonder if I’ll ever be able to do what Sasha asked.
Be happy.
I don’t know what being happy truly looks like. I want to. God, I want to. But right now, the only emotion I have is fear… and exhaustion.
And regret.
Maybe I should have never left Bishop’s Landing.
Maybe I’m just like my mother, always running away, trying to chase a way out of the dark hole we’ll forever be in.
Walking over to the bed, I realize I’ve never been as tired as I am right now. Self-reflection is going to have to wait for another day.
Thoughts of Nick will have to wait…
Darkness.
Chapter Three
Nick
I watch Lyriope and how she glances around awkwardly as if nervous she’s doing something wrong. She’s in a beautiful country, sitting on a veranda of a stunning villa, and she can barely sit still. She’s not comfortable in this world. She doesn’t know how to play the game of pretend and act like the wealthy and respected Sasha Morelli. She’s a fucking imposter and she knows it. She’s panicked that others will also know. I can smell her fear from here.
One, two, three… ready or not, here I come. You want to play hide-and-seek?
Well, I just found you.
And it wouldn’t be hard to find me in return. An Aston Martin stands out like a sore thumb in the Tuscan countryside. At least it’s black and not the cherry red the rental office at the airport tried to pass off on me. All it would take is for anyone in the Morelli villa to look out the window to notice someone foreign is on the property. I tried to park off to the side, hidden by a large bougainvillea shrub, but I’m not exactly incognito.
But it’s not like I give a fuck if they do see me. I don’t plan on staying hidden for long. Once I get a feeling of the surroundings, and I study Lyriope, I’ll be yanking her out of the villa before she can even blink. She’ll be back in my possession wishing she never escaped me.
When I got on my jet the minute I heard of Lyriope’s location, I didn’t have time to formulate all the steps in my plan. There was only so much I could do while traveling across the world to catch my runaway captive. But as I sit in the car watching her from afar, I’m doing my best making calls and using every favor card I’ve collected to arrange for what happens next.
“Please tell me that your ass is not in Italy right now,” I hear Harrison’s voice say to me through the phone.
I remain silent as I stare straight ahead. As I watch her. As I try not to storm into the house and rage against her for leaving me. I don’t want to approach her until I’ve regained my cool. Irrational Nick Hudson would act stupid and careless. I need to be level-headed, calculated, cunning, and… I can’t reveal to her the emotions she causes inside me.
“Nick! Seriously? You leave for another country before I can even get back from Sasha Morelli’s?”
“You didn’t expect me to just sit in Bishop’s Landing knowing where Lyriope is,” I finally say, grinding my teeth.
I’m fucking furious, and yet, as I wait in my car, watching Lyriope walk out on her veranda and breathing in the fresh air, another part of me—the hungry animal inside that’s been on a hunt—wants to take her in my arms, throw her to the ground on all fours, and fuck the shit out of her so she’ll never dare leave my presence again. I want to pull her hair, nip her neck, and mark her body. I need to take, claim, possess what is mine. My cock needs to be buried so deep inside of her that we may never be able to break free. Our sexes will be knotted together in an unbreakable tie.
I want to hear her screams as punishment for what she’s done. I want her howls to morph to the mating call that bonds her to the primal beast that I am.
And she’ll have no one else to blame but herself for this.