Page 73 of Brutal Legacy

“Please… just let me go,” I cried, devolving into full-blown tears at this point. I stopped walking and tried to sit on the grass.

He hoisted me up into his arms and continued, without missing a step.

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he told me mercilessly.

“And I guess you don’t want to?” I didn’t know why I said it. There was no point. No point at all. I guess I was just addicted to pain and disappointment by now.

He carried me silently through the house and up the stairs.

Instead of the room I’d been in before, he took me into the room next to it and set me down, shutting and locking the door behind him, then leaning against it.

“No,” he said.

I forgot what question he was answering, so long had passed.

“No, you couldn’t let me go?”

He pushed off the door toward me. “No. I don’t want to.”

I glared at him. “Why?”

He just shrugged, his impassive face giving nothing away.

“You’re sick, you know that? You and Renato, and all the men you live with here, playing life and death with innocent people?—”

I trailed off when his hand moved, faster than I could duck away from it. His fingers pressed against my lips.

“Don’t pretend you’re an innocent person. You will tempt me to prove you wrong,” he said, sounding grave.

I blinked at him.What the hell?

“No more talking for tonight. You’ve proven yourself unworthy of being trusted to sleep alone, so now… you sleep with me.”

My eyes widened in alarm. He backed up a step and lowered his hands to the hem of his T-shirt. The next thing I knew, he’d pulled it up and over his head, tossing it precisely onto a chair in the corner.

“Sleep with you.” I looked around the room. “This is your room, right? You put me in the room next to yours.”

“I suspected you were a flight risk. I was correct.” His lips tipped up in an unexpected smirk.

I was right, he’d been drinking.

“Tell me a woman who wouldn’t try and run away when faced with Jimmy De Luca for a fiancé,” I protested hotly.

The slightest ghost of a smile seemed to pass over my mercenary’s face, then it disappeared so suddenly, I figured I’d imagined it.

“Well, now that you’ve represented the females of the world, it’s time to sleep. There is no escape from tomorrow, Georgia. Not for any of us.”

I frowned at him, watching him step back and move around his room. He was fishing in a drawer for something.

He turned around and revealed what looked to be scraps of material and a rope.

“Those better not be for me,” I warned, panic jumping up my throat.

I backed away, and he followed.

“I can’t have you trying to kill me in the night.”

“I won’t try. I pinkie promise.”I’ll succeed,I vowed.

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