Page 15 of Taken By the Dark Billionaires

“Yes. That’s such a relief, Tam. I’m so sorry I messed up. I—”

“You couldn’t know there was going to be an accident. It’s no one’s fault, and I just panicked because no one in their right frame of mind would want to get on their bad side. They could probably kill me with one little finger.”

“Why do you think they’re that dangerous?”

“Rumors, which I’m sure are not true."

“What kind of rumors?” Sutton swallowed down her new, unlocked fear.

“Well, some say they have ties to the mafia, which would make them very dangerous.”

Oh god.

No, she had to immediately erase everything from her mind. She was good at that. It had been a skill she needed to perfect while growing up with verbally and physically abusive parents. She could forget it all in favor of just thinking about how she was going to get out of it for good. And soon, she had buried those memories so far down that she couldn’t recall them anymore.

Then, her sister married a verbally and physically abusive man, and the cycle continued, but now there were kids involved, and Sutton couldn’t leave them. They were innocent, and she was their best chance to make sure their mother stayed healthy enough to live a full life with them.

It just meant she had to delete the entire day because she couldn’t afford to give up her job. She needed the money. Her family needed the money, and if she quit, that might draw some attention to her, which could backfire.

She could do this. Easily. She just wanted her life to go back to normal. In order to do that, she had to do everything that she did yesterday and the day before that.

Nothing could change.

They had no idea who she was. The chances of them coming across her at their offices were zero. She was so far at the bottom she was invisible. She just had three more months for her contract to end.

“We’re going out on Saturday night. On me, and I’m not taking no for an answer. Got that?” Tammy said, bringing her back to earth.

“Sure,” Sutton said, trying to pipe enthusiasm into her voice.

But more importantly, she could tell no one. Not a single person. Not Tammy. Not Laura. No one. This was going to die with her.

Chapter Seven

They had taken the wrong woman.

Jensen sat back in his chair as he tried to analyze the turn of events. He was always the more thoughtful one compared to Ezra and Maxim. He was a thinker, a little calmer compared to them. But no less dangerous. It went with the territory of being who they were.

Stoicism was their second nature, a cloak they wore so expressly close that no one knew what they were thinking or what their next move was going to be. But, fuck, Jensen thought, this had completely surprised them all immeasurably.

Jensen turned his gaze to his partners. Ezra sat between him and Maxim on a trio of chairs at the head of the long table in the dungeon under their house. They never had a reason to use the dungeon until now, when it was their Sesquicentenary, and suddenly, it became a hive of activity.

And now their virgin was missing.

While to everyone else, Ezra was the epitome of dominating stone coldness without a hint of compassion or warmth, Jensen could see what no one else could see. The man wanted to rip heads off with his bare hands. And he could do that as well. He had in the past. The display of blatant violence in his eyes was clear and loud, but only to Jensen and Maxim.

Maxim stoked his jaw, but for every stroke, he tried to conceal the dark twitch in his jaw. For all his playful, playboy antics—he could shoot a man right between his eyes with a smile on his face—underneath it all, his dominance matched both Jensen’s and Ezra’s.

The woman who had been strapped to a St. Andrews Cross, ready to sacrifice her virginity to them and then bear their son, was not The Perfect One because the person who should have been there was now sitting opposite them, next to her desperate, pleading father. They were late because their car broke down in the middle of the road. Now, there was a chance they had forfeited what to them was a colossal sum of money. Two million dollars, Jensen supposed, was a lot of money for most people.

They were all accompanied by the Empire’s secret council of ten men and two head monks, sitting around the table as well.

But how the fuck had that just happened?

How had their little flower slipped through their fingers so easily?

The councilmen and the monks’ argument had been simple. They hadn’t expected her to escape. Why would she? She had been presented with the greatest role of her life, the highest privilege ever, not to mention the extravagant sum of money she would make just for them to get her pregnant.

From the reports the councilmen had provided about their impostor, she apparently had gotten an acute case of cold feet when she realized she was going to be branded but came around eventually. It was a natural response, after all, they reasoned.

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