“Why would I kill the messenger?”
“Because Sato doesn’t plan on offering you Yuki. He’s offering you Kuroi.”
My brother could not have missed how white I turned. My face tingled as I slowly left my body.
“Dante, did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“He’s trying to humiliate the family,” Lorenzo said pointing out the obvious.
It looks like Sato hadn’t gotten over me refusing his first marriage offer. This was how he was getting revenge. He wanted war for what Matteo had done to his man. And the only way out of it was for me to marry his son, the Black Widow.
“You’re not thinking about doing it, are you, Dante?”
I looked away as Pa’s words echoed in my head. He had been right about Sato. Fuck!
So, what did I do now? If I didn’t go through with it, my father would use it to undermine my still tenuous control over the business.
If I did marry Sato’s bastard off-spring, the chances of me ending up dead like all of his other lovers were damn near certain.
Maybe I was thinking about this wrong. Maybe all of the bat-shit crazy things I heard about Kuroi wasn’t true. Maybe everything going around about him was an exaggeration.
The street has been known to get things mixed up on occasion. What I heard about Kuroi could be one of those times. Because no one could be as out of their mind as he was supposed to be, could they?
Chapter 2
Kuroi
‘If I had a dollar for all of the balls stuffed in my mouth in an inopportune times…,’ I considered with a laugh. Although, the one currently prying my mouth open is my fault.
I had sworn off being hog-tied naked in the trunk of a car a long time ago. Birthday memories need to be kept special, after all. So, why was I now blindfolded, and ball gagged in what had to be a two-year-old E-class?
Who the fuck knows? Thirty minutes ago I was very happily attached to a Saint Andrew’s Cross. I mean, I’m all about pushing limits. But if tonight ends with my dead body being dumped in a ditch, I will be so pissed.
Once the brakes tighten on my chariot and we rolled to a stop, it was only a second before sunlight touched my naked flesh. I could feel two people looking down at me. They were wondering what to do.
Because they were quiet, I had to assume they were using gestures. Interesting! That meant that they weren’t planning on killing me and they hoped to survive our little encounter. How cute!
When one of them grabbed me by the legs and threw me over his shoulder, I knew exactly where I was going. The switch from sunlight to cool air confirmed it. If I hadn’t been blinded with hope that my lover had finally gotten creative, I would have noticed it before.
There was only one person whosetasteless colognestuck to anyone who was in the same room as them. And the wave of scent that tickled my nose as I was lowered onto a chair confirmed it.With my ball gag removed, I swallowed and wet my lips.
“Hello, father,” I said not needing to smell or hear him to know he was there.
“Why is he naked?” Father asked addressing his men.
“The question is, why aren’t you? This is a party, isn’t it? At least, that was where I was before your men decided it was a good day to die.”
“We found him that way, Boss,” one of them said with the appropriate amount of fear in his voice.
“I was in the middle of something,” I informed dear old dad.
“And why isn’t he dressed?”
“We thought it was better to keep him restrained to keep him from, you know…”
“Killing you? Oh, it’s too late for that,” I said with a smile.