Page 28 of Daddy's Little Spy

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Benito’s words should have been enough to douse the fire of her temper, but instead she found her anger burning even hotter. “How long have you known?”

“Ever since you approached Amara at the spa. She made you for a cop almost immediately.” Fury matching her own flared in his dark eyes as he approached the bed she was currently chained to. “Just as everyone at this party would have the second you opened your mouth. You could have gotten yourself killed coming here tonight.”

Was that why he’d been so rough with her earlier? No, that would mean he actually gave a damn about her, which was obviously the farthest thing from the truth if he’d been stringing her along all this time. “I was doing my job.”

“Your job?” Benito’s voice dropped to a low, almost seductive purr that sent a chill down her spine. “So this is an official investigation, then? Approved and funded by the BPD?”

“I don’t need approval from some asshole in a suit who hasn’t gotten out from behind his desk since before I was born. Especially when you probably have all of the brass in your pockets, anyway,” she added, the truth she’d been skirting around for months sitting bitterly on her tongue.

“Not all of them, but enough to cause problems for you if that was how we’d decided to play it.”

He was leading up to something, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what. Tilting her head to the side, she made sure her face was a blank mask, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing the riot of emotions raging inside of her. “How did you decide to play it, then?”

“You’re tied to my bed, with my cum dripping down your thighs. Do you really need to ask?”

It shocked her that she could still breath past the ache in her chest. And she silently cursed herself for believing for even one single second that what they’d had was real. All the more so because, for her, it had been real. “All of this was just to — what? To butter me up so I’d drop my investigation? You really thought some mediocre sex would be enough to make me abandon my morals?”

“Mediocre?” A ghost of a smile passed over his lips. “We’ll see about that. After the wedding.”

Nothing — absolutely nothing — would have shocked her more than that sentence. “Wedding? Whose wedding?”

“Ours,” he said simply, as though he hadn’t just torn her life to shreds with one simple declaration.

“I am not marrying you. You’re a fucking monster.”

“Maybe.” He lifted a shoulder, shrugging off her accusation. “But I’m your monster. ‘Til death do we part, bambolina. Father Russo will be here in the morning to perform the ceremony.”

“I am not marrying you,” she repeated, eternally grateful her voice sounded far stronger and surer than she felt. “You’ll have to kill me if you want me to stay quiet.”

With a sigh that seemed more for show than actual aggravation, he crossed the room and picked a tablet up from the dresser. After a few taps on the screen, he held it up so she could see as he slowly swiped through the photos. “I’m not worried about you tattling on us, Detective Clarke. Is marrying me really worse than being a cop in prison?”

Cold settled deep in her bones. Photo after photo of her with him, with Amara, appeared on the tablet in front of her. Some doctored to look more damning than they were, but she knew they didn’t need the altered ones. Just her association with known criminals was enough to end her career.

The screenshot of a bank account with her name on it housing half a million dollars was another nail in the coffin. Pictures of carefully stashed weapons and drugs in her house sealed her fate. Dread curdled her stomach. All of the evidence she’d been trying to gather on Franks, to bring him down, they’d managed to slap together in a matter of days. Only now, she was the dirty cop and no matter what she did, or how much evidence she had, it wouldn’t matter. Nobody would believe her.

“You set me up,” she whispered, forcing herself to look back up at him. At his cold, blank eyes.

“We did. Consider it… collateral. In case wooing you didn’t work.”

“Wooing me? Are you fucking kidding me?” If she hadn’t been tied to his bed, listening to his calm, collected explanation of how he planned to blackmail her into marriage, she might have been amused by the old-fashioned phrase. Charmed, even.

As it was, the edges of her vision went red with the rise of fury at his underhanded plan.

Setting the tablet aside, he cupped her face, and despite everything, her core trembled at the touch. “Tell me you felt nothing for me these past few days. That it was all for show and none of it was real.”

“It wasn’t real.” Couldn’t have been. Because then she wasn’t just a woman who’d gotten caught up in some weird sexual fantasy. She was a goddamn fool. “I needed an in with your cousin, and you were an even easier mark than Amara.”

“Oh, bambolina.” Tightening his hold on her face, he leaned down to brush his lips over hers. “What did I tell you about lying to me? Get some rest. Tomorrow, you and I will be having a very, very long discussion about honesty.”

“I will never marry you.”

“You’d rather go to prison, then?”

“I’d rather die with dignity than turn my back on everything I believe in.”

“It won’t come to that.” His expression hardened, heat turning the dark brown of his eyes to molten chocolate. “Because you will marry me, Diana. In the morning, we will say our vows, and you will be mine.”

“You can’t make me.” But she suddenly wasn’t so sure. Prison was bad enough. But she wouldn’t survive a week. Despite what she’d just said, she wasn’t ready to die.

“Sleep on it, little one. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

With another soft brush of his lips against her forehead, he left her there, chained to his headboard like the prisoner she was. Although she knew in her bones there was no way out, she wrestled with her bonds until she collapsed against the bed. Too tired to continue fighting, but not yet exhausted enough for sleep, she shifted down the bed until she was flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. And did what any good cop would do in her situation.

She made a plan.

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