Page 7 of Her Brutal First Love

And that was why Sarica had passed them on to the Prince of Killers, and they, too, went missing the way Giancarlo did.

The vehicle hit a bump, her body swaying as her unseen driver made a turn, and with it, her thoughts swerved similarly. Viktor Biancardi's face flashed in her mind, and her fingers curled into fists behind her back.

Please, God.

Please.

Please keep me from killing him.

Tears burned her eyes as she thought of Viktor still walking around a free man whileherGiancarlo, oh God...

She squeezed her eyes shut, and that was when she heard it.

This is not the way, dolcezza.

Giancarlo's beloved voice.

You cannot kill him.

Must not.

Because I cannot keep my promise to you if you're behind bars.

GIANCARLO STOOD ATthe floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, the city of Kivr's capital spread before him, and beyond it, the vast desert. His reflection stared back at him: still in tactical gear, mask discarded on his desk, the silver streak in his hair gleaming under the moonlight.

For sixteen months, he had walked the razor's edge between life and death. Had done things that would haunt him until his last breath. But nothing—not the fall, not the months of rehabilitation, not even the choices that had led him here—nothing had prepared him for tonight.

Seijcut.

The name had been all everyone in the underworld could talk about for the past three months. A mysterious entity offering obscene amounts of money for information about him—-dead or alive. Two hundred million dollars total, sourced from his own inheritance to her.

He had spent weeks analyzing Seijcut's every move, every decision. The careful wording of the bounty. The way targets were chosen. How those who claimed to have killed him mysteriously disappeared, while those who offered genuine information about his survival were left unharmed.

No wonder the moves had felt familiar.

No wonder each strike had carried echoes of his own training.

Because it was her.

Sarica.

A part of him still had a hard time believing that after sixteen months of thinking they would never cross paths again—-

She was now within reach.

Locked in a room that only he could open.

And his to do however she wished.

In the sixteen months he had been away, his contact at the FBI had regularly sent reports to him about Sarica and hisfamiglia.It was the only thing that kept him sane. To know that they were safe. But while he was able to read the reports on his kin, everything about Sarica went straight to the file cabinet...until now.

Per che, dolcezza?

Why?

How?

The newspaper clippings scattered across his desk taunted him with glimpses of her life in the past months.

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