Page 1 of Taunt Me (Dark Odyssey 2)

Chapter One

Charlotte

10 years ago…

Yesterday was my birthday…

I turned eighteen and I lost my virginity to Gabriel Giordano, the man I love.

I gave myself to him.

I wake slowly…languidly, remembering the night before.

I’m tangled in his sheets, my body feels deliciously sore and an equally delicious shudder shoots through me at the thought of him.

Pleasure pulses through my veins at the memory of how he made me his woman.

The magnificent view through the floor to ceiling glass windows boasting the Chicago skyline, and the bright sunlight spilling into the penthouse suite fits the vibrancy of my mood.

I shuffle against the cool, blue satin sheets that caress my skin and it reminds me of his touch. I turn unto my back, gaze up at the high ceiling and get lost in the decorative swirling in the plaster.

I feel different.

I feel like a woman, and I want to take the little time I have to relish and remember last night. For all the shit my family have been through over the last few months I’m going to allow myself the time to savor something good.

When I hear him moving around in the kitchen I sit up and my long brown hair curls about my shoulders.

Resting back against the stack of pillows, I pull the sheets closer to cover myself and frown when I see the time. The clock on the wall says it’s way past time for me to have gotten my ass up and found my way home. It’s ten and my parents are definitely going to be wondering where the hell I am.

They’d both have a heart attack if they knew I spent the night with Gabe at The Dark Odyssey,his sex club.

How does one break such news to your overprotective parents, or any kind of parent?

It was wild though and so unlike me. It’s all so unlike me. The shy school girl who always has her nose buried in a poetry book.

Me Charlotte Revello, dating a mobster. One of the super-hot Giordano brothers.

Gabriel Giordano, the hottest of them all at twenty eight years old. Yesterday was his birthday too. He’s ten years older than me and the sexiest man I’ve ever met in my life. He has women falling at his feet and could have any woman he wants, but he’s with me.

My grandmother, my Abuelita, made me a little box of wisdom two years ago for my sixteenth birthday. She believes the ages sixteen to thirty six are the most important in a woman’s life to set you on the right path so she made the box for me.

It contains twenty little envelopes that hold her messages of wisdom. One for each birthday for the next twenty years. Words of wisdom is what they are supposed to be but people always classed Abuelita as some kind of psychic. Or if you’re in Sovana, the Tuscan village we’re from in Italy, the word more fitting for her islaammaliatrice–witch.

I don’t disbelieve it because Abuelita is never wrong. Her first message told me I’d meet the man of my dreams and I did.

I met Gabriel a week later. I met him and everything changed. I took one look and knew he was it for me. Pa hired him for a job and Gabriel came to the house to meet him. That was how we met and that was the day I decided he’d be mine.

My birthday message yesterday was this:

You will be with the man of your dreams, but be careful— darkness is just around the corner.

I was so thrilled to read the first part of the message that I pushed aside the latter, thinking it had to mean the dark storm life had sent my way recently.

Pa’s investment company went bust and it means we could lose everything.

Everything gone just like that. Pa lost millions. I don’t know the full details but it’s not good. It was on the news two nights ago. For something to make the Chicago main news it’s big. Deep shit.

Like most Italian families our business is family run. My father and my two older brothers, Freddo and Tony, all work together.

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