Page 27 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” Cristian sneered at Marco. “I thought someone had fucking broken in.”

Marco stood up straight. “Roxie fell.”

Cristian looked at me and tilted his head, as if to say, Oh, really? Then, he pressed his lips together. “Out,” Cristian said to Marco with his jaw clenched tight.

I wrapped my hand around Marco’s tense bicep. “He’s staying.”

Cristian stared at me with intense brown eyes and clenched his jaw. “Out,” he said, voice hard and tight with cruel rage, the same voice he had used on me countless times before tonight.

And without saying two words, Marco escaped through the front door and shut it behind him.

Heart pounding inside my chest, I nervously gulped and felt the blood drain from my face. Something about being alone with Cristian irked me. Maybe it was the way I felt about him or that stupid, sinister smirk plastered across his devilish face.

“Do you like making a fool of yourself?” Cristian asked me, stepping closer.

The alcohol had quickly worn off the damn second he stepped foot into the apartment and given me those cold, dark eyes.

“Do you like drinking until you can’t walk and are stumbling out of my club like an idiot?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, hopped up, and poked him in the chest. “Don’t talk down to me. I just watched my fiancé die, witnessed a man get tortured, and lost my job because of you. If I want to get hammered just one night, then I will. You don’t fucking own me.”

Cristian chuckled menacingly and took another step toward me, looming over me. “Principessa, do you need a reminder? I thought you would’ve already gotten it through that pretty little head of yours that I own everything around here. The apartment, your bodyguard, everyone at my club.” He brushed a finger against my cheek and tucked some hair behind my ear, leaning close. “Yet my most valuable possession is you.”

Overcome with anger, I thrust my hands against his chest to push him away. He caught them and held them against his taut chest, stepping between my legs and grinding his hard cock against me. “Ask me why you’re my most valuable. I dare you.”

My heart raced in my chest, and I gulped nervously. “Why, Cristian?”

“Because I’m going to make you the Ricci family’s cruelest, most heartless killer, Manhattan’s most wanted mob member, and”—he captured my earlobe between his teeth and tugged on it gently—“my wife one day.”

19

roxie

“Your wife?” I whispered, tasting the title on my tongue.

Cristian wasn’t suggesting, wasn’t asking, and wasn’t even demanding. He was telling me that, one day, I would be his wife, whether I wanted to be or not. I would be married to the Manhattan devil, would learn to kill innocent people, and would relish in the punishment that Cristian served.

Heat crawled up my neck, wrapped around my throat, and suffocated me.

If I’d thought I would ever be able to get out of this situation, I was wrong. The moment that Ben had stolen money from the Mafia boss, my fate had been sealed. I had been his for longer than I’d ever thought I was.

“Why?” I asked, my voice trembling.

Fear ran through every one of my veins, down my spine, into my bones, paralyzing me. I couldn’t understand why he wanted me. He could have anyone in the entire world, but … me?

“Why me? Why are you doing this to me?”

Just a couple days ago, I had been engaged to Ben. We were supposed to be married. We were supposed to spend the rest of our lives together. Yet, within such a short time, everything had turned on its head.

“You haven’t figured it out yet, principessa?” Cristian asked, brow furrowed in an angry stare. He drew his tongue across his bottom lip, looked down at me with such pain, and stepped away. “Of course you haven’t.”

My eyes widened slightly at his sudden bitterness. With tense shoulders, he turned away and headed to one of the many drawers in the kitchen. God, this man was literally the definition of bipolar. One minute, he wanted me to marry him, and then the next, he was storming away from me and pulling out a gu—

“Why is there a fucking gun in the kitchen?!” I asked. I backed up slowly, my heart pounding hard inside my chest. The backs of my legs hit the edge of the couch. “And why did you take it out?”

Cristian shut the counter drawer and ran his finger along the barrel of the gun. “This is one of my sister’s guns. I stole it from her for you to have.” He walked over to me and held out the gun for me to take. “It will do for now until I can get one made for you.”

I glared down at the piece of metal that had been built for the sole purpose of killing.

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