Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 108044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Read Online Books/Novels: | Wicked as Seduction - Trees & Laila Part 1 (Wicked & Devoted #5) |
|---|---|
Author/Writer of Book/Novel: | Shayla Black |
| Language: | English |
| ISBN/ ASIN: | 9781936596829 |
| Book Information: | |
He’ll protect her…even if he has to take her captive to save her. Tech wiz and former elite soldier Forest “Trees” Scott had one mission: Rescue the woman being hunted by a vicious cartel and get her to safety. It should have been simple…but the minute he sees the wary beauty with haunted eyes, his desire for her complicates everything. So does her stubborn refusal to trust him. When Trees is forced to abduct her, she vows to hate him—even as he finds himself falling in love… For six years, Laila Torres has known nothing but brutality at the hands of men, so when the massive stranger with the forbidding mien kidnaps her, she’s frightened—and furious. But the giant’s protective care shocks her. With every word, he proves steadfast. With every forbidden touch, he awakens the woman in her. Soon, she’s facing the terrifying realization that he’s also dangerously close to capturing her heart. But their ruthless enemies are closing in, threatening everything Laila holds dear. When she’s forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice, will she trust Trees and their love to save her? | |
| Books in Series: | Wicked & Devoted Series by Shayla Black |
| Books by Author: | Shayla Black |
January 25, 11 p.m.
Orlando
“Stop worrying and enjoy yourself. Everything here is fine,” Laila Torres said over the phone to her sister as she leaned over her sleeping nephew’s crib to pat his rising-and-falling back. “Jorge fussed when I first set him down, but after a quick bedtime story and a kiss from his tía, he drifted off. How is the concert?”
“It is good. The next band will start in a few minutes, but maybe I should come home now?”
“No, you should not.”
“Are you sure? I feel guilty, leaving you to babysit…”
“Why? I love to. Jorge is a joy. And mamás deserve a little time away for fun.” Valeria had been single parenting since the boy’s birth, and they had relocated to Florida three months ago with no sign of their dangerous past catching up to them. Surely, it was time to live. “Do not worry about me. Now that he is asleep, I will find something on TV and relax.”
Valeria sighed. “Is the house locked? Every door? Every window? Is the alarm set?”
Laila shared her sister’s anxiety. Despite the fact Valeria no longer had to worry about her late husband, Emilo, finding their location and trying to kill her for the sin of leaving him, the brutal thugs who had helped him run the vicious Tierra Caliente cartel were very much alive—and willing to carry out their boss’s final wish. They were hardly the only concern. Rumor was that, following Emilo’s surgical slaughter two weeks ago, his father, Geraldo, had decided Jorge must be brought back and raised to inherit the family narcotics empire.
If that was true and Geraldo succeeded, her beloved nephew would be taught to be all the things they’d run from—a drug lord. A killer. A rapist. She and Valeria would be unable to stop them from warping the little boy because they would be dead.
Laila preferred that fate for herself over the six dark years she’d spent in Emilo’s lavish prison, but Jorge deserved a future that wasn’t steeped in brutality and crime. “I have checked everything twice. All is well.”
A squeak from the other side of the house rent the quiet. Laila froze. Since she, her sister, and Jorge had been forced to relocate here, she had catalogued every creak and groan the house made.
She had never heard this sound before.
The scrape of something—metal on glass?—followed.
Her heart banged with trepidation.
“Thank you,” Valeria said. “You know I worry—”
“Shh. I hear something,” she whispered. “I will call you back.”
Laila didn’t wait for her sister’s reply before severing their connection and yanking the nightlight from the wall in Jorge’s room, just in case. Darkness encroached, the monster she’d been living with for years. It ratcheted up her fear, clawing at her throat. Her heart thudded. Her palms turned sweaty. But for her nephew—for survival—she forced herself to tiptoe through the shadows and poke her head into the hallway.
When she listened again for the sound, she heard something far worse.
“You are certain they’re here?” whispered one man from the living room, his accent like someone from her homeland.
They had been discovered again?
Laila sucked in a gasp. Fear seared her veins. Why was this happening? How had they found her family again? She had to get her nephew out of here.
“Of course they are,” snapped a second man.
Victor Ramos. She would know his cruel voice anywhere. She’d heard it each of the countless times he’d growled taunts in her ear while pinning her under him and violating her.
Laila’s fear turned to terror.
Why wouldn’t Victor let her go?
Later. First, she had to get Jorge to safety. She wished she had kept the gun she wasn’t supposed to have closer, rather than in her bedroom on the far side of the house, away from her curious, very mobile nephew. She would have to do without it and devise a plan in seconds or—
She couldn’t think about the “or.”
“What if the boy cries?” the first man asked.
“Shut him up until you secure him in the van. But do not harm him.”
“And the women?”
“Expendable,” Victor said. “Though I would like a last moment or two with Laila.”
“You want to fuck her again,” the first man said with a chuckle.
“Can you blame me? Her pussy is as sweet now as it was at fourteen.”
Rage and shame burned, boiling into a familiar hate. Somehow, someway, Laila would make that man pay for everything he’d done.
She would forever be indebted to EM Security’s sniper, Pierce Walker, for ending Emilo. In fact, she was grateful the team had rescued her from her brother-in-law’s compound in Mexico last September. She’d hoped that was the beginning of a new life, especially after she had cooperated with the feds. Since then, the US government had seemingly done nothing to stop her late brother-in-law’s narcotics operation. If they had, Victor Ramos wouldn’t be creeping through her house now.