Traded to My Bratva Brother (Forbidden Mile High #2)

Prologue

Sophia

I loved him.

I’d always thought I had, but I knew that what I was feeling now was real love. Before I cared for him as a brother, and then later, I had crushed harder on him than any other teenage girl in history. But now…now I knew I loved him with every atom of my being.

“Are you sure you are all right?”

I lifted my eyes to his beautiful brown ones and smiled the kind of smile that I had only ever imagined in the trashy romance books I had to hide from my parents.

“I’m perfect.”

Without thinking, I reached down and trailed the tips of my fingers across the muscles of his shoulders and down his back. Tracing the light that fell from the window onto his skin.

The room was dark, but the city was always so full of light and life, and some of that light fell across the tanned, naked skin of his back and made it look like he was lying within a halo.

Which was kind of apt, because Matteo was an angel. My angel.

He was the man I loved and the man who would save me.

“Yes, you are.” As he was rolling to face me, my hand slipped, and he caught it easily. Bringing my fingers to his lips, he kissed each one in turn.

“You are so unbelievably perfect.” Finally finished with kissing my fingers, he pressed his lips to my palm. A wave of pleasure swept through me, pushing away the aching sting between my legs.

What did a little pain matter when I wanted him this much?

“And you are mine.” Deep whisky-coloured eyes lifted to mine. “You are mine, aren’t you, Sophia?”

I couldn’t help it, I smiled. Heaving myself up on one elbow, I leaned over him. My long, dark hair was like a curtain to hide us from the world. I pressed my lips to his full ones.

For several minutes, we just lay like that, sipping at each other's lips. Tasting and savoring each other.

Matteo didn’t pull me down. His hands were gently on the small of my back, and his lips were soft.

“Say you’re mine, Sophia,” he mumbled against my mouth, and my lips curved up in a smile.

“I’m yours.”

His smile grew to match mine. His eyes blinked open, and this close I could see the gold and amber flecks in their depths.

“Promise?”

“Promise.” I nodded my head. “Cross my heart and hope to—“

He silenced me with a kiss. “Don’t finish that. I don’t even want to joke about you dying.”

He said it so seriously that I blinked in shock.

“I’m going to keep you forever.” He pushed my long dark hair back from my face and his eyes swept across it. “You know that, right?”

“Forever.” I nodded because forever sounded just great to me. I wanted to be with him forever so we could spend every night like tonight, tangled up in each other's arms, lost in each other.

“I’m going to get a ring—“

My smile slipped. “I don’t need a ring, Matteo. I know you love me. I don’t need a flashy diamond to remember that. I just need you.”

He surged upward, and the silk sheets fell to his waist, giving me the perfect view of his chiselled chest. Lifting a hand, he tugged at his hair, making the silky black strands stand up on end.

“Why don’t you want the world to know you’re mine, Sophia?”

“It’s not that I don’t want the world to know,” I mumbled, tearing my eyes away. This was rapidly turning into a serious conversation, and I hated that.

It spoiled the mellow haze of love that I had been wrapped up in.

“Then what is it?”

“You know my parents want me to be married to someone else,” I muttered.

All the remnants of happiness slipped from his face. “Oh, I am aware, and I told you I would take care of that. You agreed to be mine, Sophia.”

“I am yours,” I said quickly.

“Then forget all about the wedding your parents have arranged. It won’t be happening.”

Without warning, he laughed. Catching me around the waist, he tossed me back onto the bed. Catching my wrists in his hands, he pinned them on either side of my head and straddled me.

He was not crushing me, but keeping me locked into place.

I lifted my eyes to his with a smile.

I liked this side of Matteo. The playful side.

“The only person you will be lying under is me, Sophia. You don’t want a ring, then fine. No ring.” His lips brushed mine. Harder now, more insistent. “At least not yet, but you will be my wife, Sophia. Make no mistake about that.”

I wanted to believe him, no, I did believe him.

“I know.” I sighed, looping my arms around his neck. “I’m just not sure how we are going to break it to my parents…to our parents.”

His eyes sparkled. “My parents love you. They won’t mind. And don’t worry about yours. I’ll take care of it. I promise, Sophia.”

I believed him. He looked too serious not to. “And Gio?”

My brother’s name hung between us. Not because my brother hated Matteo, but because he didn’t. They had been best friends since kindergarten. They were closer than brothers.

In a way, that made my relationship with Matteo even more forbidden. Matteo was breaking some kind of bro code that I didn’t understand.

My parents might come around to us being together, but my brother? I wasn't so sure.

There was a jealous streak in my brother, and he had never had many friends. He would think I was taking Matteo away from him. Which of course I wasn’t, but I knew that’s how he would feel.

“Look at me, Sophia.”

I turned my eyes back to his.

“You have nothing to worry about. I’ll talk to your parents and Gio. Or we can just elope. There’s nothing they can do if we are already married.”

I smiled. He had a point there. “That’s true. When—"

“Soon, I need to make some arrangements.” Something shifted in his eyes. They narrowed, and his hand slid down my side. “But it won’t be long, Sophia. I can’t wait too long before…” his lips found my jaw and peppered kisses down my throat.

My hands clawed at his shoulders, my back arched, giving him more skin to nuzzle into. Once again, need clenched my core. I clung to him tighter, pulling his hard body down against mine.

“You don’t need to wait. I am right here.”

I lifted my hips wantonly, wrapping one leg around his waist.

“You’re not sore?”

“No,” I lied.

Reaching between our bodies, he touched my tender flesh, and I winced.

“Liar. How much did I hurt you?” Not waiting for an answer, he flipped the silky blankets off me and lifted himself off enough to stare at my naked body.

“It hurt a little but—“

“I never want to hurt you. I should have been more careful.” Tender fingertips touched my thighs. “I made you bleed.”

“That’s normal, and we both know it. I’m fine, Matteo, honestly. You didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to. I’ve wanted you to be my first for so long. I don’t regret a single moment of it.”

“Your first and your last, Sophia.” There was a flash of white teeth in the half-light as he smiled. “Stay here.”

Completely naked, he stood up and stretched.

It gave me the perfect opportunity to look at him. At his wide shoulders and narrow waist. He even had one of those triangles of muscles that drove women wild.

“Where are you going?” I asked. I didn’t want him to go anywhere. What I wanted was for him to bring that sculpted body back into bed and crush me into the mattress with it.

“I’m going to get a wet washcloth and clean you up, Sophia. I should have done it before. I should have looked after you.”

I reached out a hand. His met mine in the air, and our fingers entwined.

“I can shower.”

“We can shower,” he countered with a grin. “But I’m going to look after you first. I’ll always look after you, you know that, right? Because I fucking love you, Sophia.”

I nodded.

He loved me.

“I love you, too.”

“Good, and soon we won’t have to sneak around anymore.”

From his hastily discarded clothes, his phone rang, and a line appeared between his dark eyebrows.

“I need to get that.”

Falling back onto the pillows, I sighed. “I know.”

“I’ll take it in the bathroom, but don’t move.” Leaning over me, he pressed his lips to mine for a second and then walked away.

The bathroom door shut quietly, and then the sound of the shower starting filled the room.

It was business then. He had the shower on so I wouldn’t accidentally overhear the conversation. It was always the same with my parents and brothers. I lived in their world and had to follow their rules, but that didn’t mean I was privy to everything.

I was so used to it that it didn’t really bother me at all. Matteo would one day be head of his family.

The don.

Just like my brother would be.

And I would be a wife. Matteo's wife.

Finding my purse, I pulled out my own phone and my heart skipped a beat.

There were so many missed calls and messages. Some from unknown numbers, most from my brother.

Did he know? We had been careful for months, and I had told my parents I was staying at a friend's house. They weren’t expecting me home until the morning.

Fingers trembling, I scrolled through the messages. Each one seemed more frantic than the previous one.

Sophia, where are you?

You’re not at Lizzie’s, I need to get you NOW!

Sophia, they are gone.

I paused at that one, and a weird icy calm swept over me. Who was gone?

I scrolled to the next one.

They killed them. Our parents are dead, Sophia. Matteo arranged it.

It was like the ground shifted under me, the world around me spun. Clutching my throat, I fought the urge to sob out loud.

Gio had to be wrong. My parents couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t be. The last conversation I had with them couldn’t be full of lies.

Matteo killed them.

I lifted tear-filled eyes to the closed bathroom door. No, I didn’t believe that either. Matteo loved me. He wanted to marry me.

He had said he would do anything to be with me. Did that mean murdering my family?

No, he would know that I would never forgive him for that.

Which meant—

I bit down on my fist to stop myself from screaming.

He had seduced me, filled my head with lies, and bedded me for some other cruel reason, and then he had killed my mom and dad.

He had betrayed my whole family.

Staring down at the blood on the tops of my inner thighs, I fought the urge to kill him myself. I wanted to storm into that bathroom and bash his head in with the showerhead, but I knew that was a pipe dream.

Dragging on my clothes, I grabbed my heels and my purse. I slipped from the room and ran down the hallway.

I’d have to get a cab. I couldn’t ask Gio to pick me up from a hotel. He would have too many questions that I didn’t want to answer.

He had said he loved me, and I had believed him. I’d let Matteo ruin me.

I had walked into this hotel, a woman in love, and now I was leaving it with so much hatred in my heart that I felt like a completely different person.

All because of one man.

Matteo Romano.

Love could turn into something bitter so quickly. Because I hated him now.