Page 8 of Twisted Vows

“Mio Dio, you sound so good when you’re desperate. Beg me again,mia caramellina.”

Heat blooms low in my abdomen as he flexes his fingers around my throat. I silently curse my wayward body and swallow the fury churning in my soul.

Seven years ago, I begged a man to let me go. To stop hurting me. To leave my sister alone.

He didn’t. I saved myself and my sister, and ever since then, I promised myself I’d never beg or ask a man for anything again.

But I’m no longer a pawn in someone else’s games. If he lets me go, I can go back to living a life of freedom. Even though I know my chances of surviving are slim, I grit my teeth and give him what he wants.

“Please.”

It sounds more like a snarl than pleading, but he gentles his grip on my throat and licks the shell of my ear with a gruff, “Good girl.”

My insides melt.

I hate it. Self-disgust roars through me.

“If you don’t like the nicknamemia caramellina, then what should I call you?Principessa?”

Ice spears down my spine as horrible memories threaten to resurface.

Only one man has ever called meprincipessabefore; the man I begged to stop but who beat me black and blue and whipped me until I bled in front of a room full of evil men instead.

Seppi Capito. The vilest creature on the face of the planet and San Francisco’s leading mafia don.

The man my father wanted me to marry.

A car streaks past the mouth of the alley, yanking me back into the present.

“Nothing. Don’t call me at all. Let me go.”

“You know I can’t do that,bellezza.”

“But you can. Please, just—”

Shouting echoes from the adjacent alley. My captor curses and nips my ear before digging his fingertips into my jugular, restricting the blood flow to my brain without cutting off my breathing.

“I’m sorry,mia caramellina,” he whispers.

Even as I fight, the medical practitioner side of me admires his control. It’s much easier to kill someone than it is to knock them out by squeezing their throat, but he applies just enough pressure to steal my senses.

As my body falls slack and blackness encompasses my mind, my heart reaches out for my sister. I pray she doesn’t look for me. She can’t put herself in danger. If she thinks my disappearance is suspicious, she needs to pack up and disappear, just like we planned.

I wake in a rush of pain. Cotton fills my mouth. I can’t spit it out. My knees and elbows sting, my head throbs, and something hard digs into my stomach and makes it difficult to breathe.

Panic rushes through me when I can’t open my eyes, but the pressure of tied fabric around my head, while stifling, assures me I haven’t gone blind. His scent wafts from the material, the smell strong enough to make me wonder if he sacrificed the shirt off his back to muffle my senses.

I shriek into my gag as he shrugs me off his shoulder. My stomach lurches as I fall. I land on a soft surface and flail as I bounce, but cuffs encircle my wrists and ropes bind my ankles. Powerful hands close over my forearms and pull me over the mattress.

With movements faster than I can track, he unlatches one cuff, threads it through the headboard, and closes it around my wrist again. My anger morphs fear into fury, and I lash out without thinking, bringing my knees to my chest and kicking with both feet as the gag muffles my cursing.

The soles of my shoes hit his chest, but despite me throwing my entire body into the movement, he doesn’t budge. He wraps thick fingers around my ankles, pushes my knees to my chest, and climbs onto the bed. I panic as the mattress shifts under his weight, but he holds me balled up in the fetal position with ease, kneeling with his thighs pressed against my butt and both of my ankles in one hand.

My desperate fight only leaves me squirming in his grasp, but I can’t stop, not even when he yanks my shoes off my feet, disappears from the bed, and pulls my ankles toward the footboard, sliding me across the mattress until I lie stretched out and flat on my back with my arms over my head and my legs pulled so tight I can’t bend my knees. With a few quick movements, he connects my ankle bindings to the footboard and disappears.

I force myself to calm down before I have an aneurysm. With the fabric tied tightly around my head stripping me of my vision and muffling my hearing, the gag stealing my speech, and my bindings preventing me from moving, I lie stiff and trembling, telling myself it’s because I’m furious and not terrified out of my mind. I strain my ears for sounds of him.

A shower starts up. There are no closed doors between us. No barriers between my ears and the shower other than the material wrapped around my head.

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