Page 125 of Shattered Hearts

The floodlights destroy the shadows preventing me from seeing Enzo’s features clearly, and for the first time all night, I behold my tormentor’s face.

And I immediately understand why he hides it from his victims. Even scuffed with scars and worn with age, his boyish, babyish face is almost feminine. Big round eyes and a pouting mouth.

His voice and his height are the only intimidating things about him…ifhe has his victim strapped down to a chair, unable to see his face.

Hiring assassins to tail my friends, using the Red Hill boys to come after me, even breaking my bones in the dark…

“I can see you’re overcompensating.”

His glossy black eyes bulge with fury. He whips the dead-blow hammer at my upper arm with all his strength. The buffer of my muscle isn’t nearly enough.

The hammer comes down full force, crushing bone, muscle, and tissue. Excruciating, compounding pain radiates through my mangled arm.

White-hot agony wrenches a strangled roar from my throat that’s swallowed up by the ear-splitting siren-whine all around us. Enzo drops the hammer with aclangon the cement floor and stalks toward a wall, where the entrance to a hidden pathway reveals itself. He disappears through it, leaving me alone with two De Luca enforcers for guards.

Four floodlights illuminate this grungy torture cell. High cement walls, a long table in the back covered with Enzo’s favorite toys…all lit by a blacklight. Two doors, one ahead of me, one behind, and one additional door, if I count the hidden passage. Blood and other unidentified substances stain the concrete floor. Enzo’s abundant, oppressive scent smothers the dank, damp air.

What a depressing place to die. Not that I plan on it.

The pain in my arm comes in never-ebbing waves, like being stabbed by a thousand blades over and over. If not for the adrenaline prying my eyes open and forcibly keeping my mind in focus, the hurt would knock me out.

Then again, maybe the adrenaline is wearing off.

Wow, I’m in so much pain, I’m hallucinating.

In my warped mind, the door ahead of me bursts open, springing the enforcers in the room to life. In marches a gorgeous woman, arm extended, a gun in her grip. She reminds me of Riley. My heart drops into my gut.

Holy shit.

ItisRiley.

Behind her, Darren, Cian, and Rory emerge.

Why is she here?

For half a second, rage filters through my pain-induced stupor. What the hell were the guys thinking bringing her here?

Riley glances at the enforcer to my left, whose now charging toward her. My heart lurches. If I weren’t strapped down, I would fling myself in front of her?—

She fires her weapon. The bullet discharges quick as lightning, sluicing through the enforcer’s eyeball and straight out the back of his skull. His limbs spasm as he collapses. Dead.

Every voice inside me demanding to know why she was allowed to come here shuts the hell up so I can admire her.

Shit. If Riley’s that lethal with just a glance, what’s she like when she’s focused?

Darren dispatches the guy to my right, while Cian and Rory watch the door. While my senses are submerged in a murky haze thanks to a mix of adrenaline, morphine, and the terrible pain stressing my body, I can’t take my eyes off Riley. She runs to me, eyes bright with worry.

As soon as she’s close enough, I shove a rough, relieved kiss on her perfect mouth. Through the drugs and the unspeakable agony, Riley’s kiss sobers me. Reminds me.I’m alive.And there’slifeon the other side of all the death and destruction that consumes my world. She’s the dawn beyond my endless night.

Her eager mouth forces mine open. Something wild, angry, and urgent on her lips speaks that same language as my dick.

“You are so sexy,” I growl against her tongue.

Darren works the restraints around my ankles, freeing the feet I can’t even feel anymore. “Too bad you look like something that crawled out of a grave.” He gives a theatrical sniff. “You kind of smell like that too.”

Riley draws back from me, breathing hard, and opens her fist. “Take these.”

Three white tablets sit in her palm. She slips them into my mouth, and I swallow without no question. I’d eat poison if she fed it to me. Knowing my friends, the pills are probably Excaliburs, the fastest-acting pain inhibitor on the black market. They knew I’d be in major pain when they got here, maybe even close to death. Of course they’d bring reinforcements.

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