Chapter 3
VALENTINE’S DAY – EARLIER THAT DAY
A violent crash exploded through the early morning air, and Amorette woke with a startled yelp.
“What the fu—” her boyfriend Doug leaped from the bed, but the door flew open, cutting off his outburst. The wood splintered as four armed men invaded the bedroom, and before Amorette could register what was happening, two intruders forced Doug to his knees while the other two charged for her.
White-hot panic raced through her chest, and on agile legs, she lunged for the on-suite bathroom. The sheets tangled around her ankles, and she cursed as she stumbled, but she didn’t stop moving. She didn’t know what she would do in the bathroom. Only that her survival instincts begged her to move. But just as her fingers gripped the doorknob, the men seized her, pulling her back from safety.
Amorette screamed as she fought with all her strength, but her captors overpowered her and unceremoniously forced her to her knees beside Doug. One of them punched her in the mouth, splitting her lip, and an ugly terror slid against her bones, freezing her from the inside out. She had spent the night at her boyfriend’s, crashing after an uneventful and slightly uncomfortable date, and now she was kneeling in only a tee shirt before four armed men. Tears involuntarily slipped from her eyes as she stared down the barrel of a gun. She didn’t understand what was happening, but the gravity of their situation hit her like that punch when a fifth man entered the room.
“Good morning, Doug,” he said as he settled before them. Unlike his companions, the newcomer wore an expensive suit, the immaculate tailoring mocking her oversized and worn tee shirt hanging loosely over her braless chest. He carried no weapon, but there was no mistaking the power shift the moment he entered the bedroom. This unarmed man was the one to fear, and the fact that they weren’t wearing masks wasn’t lost on her. Amorette started to hyperventilate despite her desperate attempts to remain calm. These men had allowed her to see their faces. She wasn’t getting out of this room alive.
“Where’s my money, Doug?” the man in the suit asked calmly, and Amorette's gaze flickered wildly between him and her boyfriend. Money? What Money?
“I…” Doug sputtered. “I don’t have it.”
The suit nodded, and his armed companion punched Doug in the mouth without warning. Amorette screamed as he spat crimson onto the carpet, and the guard restraining her yanked her by the hair with an excruciating tug.
“Where is my fucking money, Doug?” the suit repeated.
“I don’t know, I don’t have it,” Doug said as blood dripped from his mouth.
“And why is that?”
“Please, Mr. Cattivo,” Doug plead, ignoring the armed men aiming their weapons at him and his girlfriend.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” Cattivo asked, leaning forward with disgust as he surveyed Doug’s boxer-clad body. “Did you really think you could steal from me and not get caught?”
“I… I.” Amorette watched her boyfriend blubber as a resounding alarm blared in her brain. She felt manic, out of control with terror. No one broke into someone’s house and held them at gunpoint for some missing cash. No, she was on her knees in her underwear because Doug had stolen a sizable sum from a man who was comfortable aiming a gun at an innocent woman’s face. Bile burned her throat, but she fought it down, desperate not to vomit as tears poured from her eyes.
“I. I. I,” Cavitto mocked before nodding his head. The guard punched Doug again, and the savage blow knocked him to the carpet. “Where is my fucking money?”
“I don’t have it.” Doug started crying. “Please, I don’t.”
“That’s a shame.” Cavitto extended his hand to the man holding Amorette and took the gun from him. With a twist of his wrist, Cavitto aimed it between her eyes, and she pitched back with a yelp. Paralyzing fear flooded her bloodstream, but the unyielding hands pinned her in place.
“It would be an even greater shame if I were to shoot your girlfriend, Doug.” Cavitto continued as the guards gripped her biceps with bruising force, shoving her closer to the weapon. Amorette’s chest heaved wildly as her heart thundered. This was how she would die. On her boyfriend’s dirty carpet in her underwear. She didn’t want to sob like a child. She wanted to be brave, but the swirling panic was a storm determined to shatter her into tiny shards.
“I’m going to ask you again,” Cavitto continued, shoving the gun closer to her forehead, and Amorette gagged on the fear clogging her throat. “Tell me where my money is, or I paint this room with your pretty girl’s brains.”
She threw Doug a desperate look. They were having problems. Fighting had become an almost daily occurrence, but he wouldn’t let this monster murder her. He had to care enough to save her life.
But Doug merely stared at her with fear in his eyes, and with a sinking in her gut, she realized it wasn’t a concern for her life. It was for his and only his.
“No?” Cavitto said in surprise. “Don’t care if I shoot her right between the eyes? You’re a sick fuck, you know that. Oh well, I gave you the chance to save her.” His finger shifted to the trigger, and Amorette screamed.
“Wait!”
Cavitto paused, staring down at her.
“Wait, please. I can get you the money.” She’d been saving to expand the café. It killed her to lose years of hard labor and sacrifice to save a man who clearly didn’t care whether she lived or died, but Amorette desperately wanted to keep her brains inside her skull. “How much does he owe? I’ll pay it.”
Cavitto grinned wickedly, and then with slow and deliberate words, told her the number. Amorette’s skin went icy as her jaw dropped. She didn’t have that kind of cash. No one she knew did, and she looked at Doug with disgust. Hatred coiled in her chest. Hatred of his selfishness and stupidity. Hatred of herself that she was dating him. How had she been so blind? Why had she stayed three weeks ago after that fight? She wasn’t desperate for love. She wasn’t a woman fooled by good looks. Doug dripped sex appeal, but that wasn’t why she hung on. Something inside her had shifted over the past few months, leaving her confused and unsure. Her emotions were clouded, and she couldn’t decipher her true feelings. When she was with him, she worried they were wrong for each other, but when they were apart, confusion tugged her back. Not even her dreams offered peace, for her nights were filled with a strange longing for a man with ice-blond hair and an otherworldly presence. The only times she’d felt normal were when he came into her café, but he had disappeared. Between her argument with Doug, and the blond’s sudden absence, her heart had morphed into a war zone, all shrapnel and explosions and chaos. She’d never experienced this kind of emotional turmoil, so she stayed with Doug. She stayed, and it had gotten her killed. She didn’t have enough money. She was never making it off this filthy carpet.
“Do you still wish to repay his debt?” Cavitto asked, shifting the gun to remind her of her execution.
“Yes,” she lied. “But the money isn’t here.”
“Not trying to run, are you, darling?”
“No.” She shivered as his foul voice slipped over her bare skin.
“That’s wise because if you were to run, I would find everyone you love, everyone you care about, and I would kill them one by one until you returned.”
“Please,” Amorette didn’t know what she was begging for, only that this fear would eat her alive.
“What’s your name?” She ignored his question. “I asked your name.”
“Amorette Ellis.”
Cavitto nodded, and one of his men left the room, phone in hand. “My colleague is looking you up as we speak. Within a few minutes, he’ll learn where your parents live. Who your coworkers and friends are. What salon styles your hair. Where you grocery shop. You get the drift. You have twenty-four hours, Miss Ellis. If you don’t return with the money, I start killing your family.”
“Please don’t hurt them.”
“I won’t if you get me my money.” He stared at her as if he knew she was lying, but she nodded, head aching from the fear and the blow to her face. “Derrick will go with you.” Cavitto gestured to the guard who had struck her. “Don’t want you calling the police or fleeing with the money. I’ll kill your family if you do either, but you can never predict how someone will behave under pressure.” He looked pointedly at Doug, and Amorette’s heart sank. She didn’t know where she would find that amount, and with a chaperone? All she had managed to do was extend her life by twenty-four hours.
“I won’t run,” she said as she stood, pulling her clothes from where they sat folded on the dresser.
“Excellent. See you soon, Miss Ellis.” Cavitto smiled, all teeth and no kindness.
Amorette gathered her belongings, but when she reached for her phone, Cavitto shook his head. All hope fled her body with that single gesture, and she looked down at Doug. She couldn’t bear the sight of him, knowing that he’d been willing to let this monster kill her for his transgressions.
“We’re through,” she whispered, her voice unstable with anxiety. “After this, I never want to see you again.”
Amorette’s hands shook the entire drive to her café. Her mind raced through every possibility, through every outcome, but each conclusion was the same. There was no reality where this ended with her alive. Her savings were a quarter of the money needed, and her family wasn’t wealthy. They couldn’t help her. No one could, and the sickening bile of dread coated her throat. She wanted to call her parents, to hear their voices one last time before she died, because she had told the truth. She wouldn’t run. Not when they would pay the price.
The trip was too short. She had twenty-four hours, but it didn’t matter. The moment she opened her safe, Derrick would know she was lying. Amorette had never given her death much thought, but this wasn’t how she pictured leaving this world. She hadn’t experienced all of life’s offerings. She hadn’t traveled or fallen in love, and now she never would. Her eyes drifted to the empty carafes, and her memory conjured the tall blond ordering his black coffee. She didn’t know why she thought of him as she mourned never finding her soulmate. Maybe it was his tips that seemed too generous but were too little to help in the end. Or maybe it was because something about him stirred something deep inside her. Something dangerous she would never experience. For months, he’d come to her shop every week like clockwork, only to stop three weeks ago. She didn’t understand how she could miss someone so fiercely, despite not knowing his name, but her heart ached in his absence. She would never see him again, and that realization felt like an arrow to the chest.
“Hurry up,” Derrick ordered, and Amorette tore her eyes off the register. She moved to the safe, and with shaking fingers, she punched in the code. This was it. The end, and… Why was that carafe sitting there? She didn’t remember leaving it by the safe, but there it sat, heavy, metal, and within reach.
Amorette lunged forward, capturing it before Derrick realized she was moving. With one swift swing, she threw it at his face. The crunch of his bones failing against its metal echoed off the walls, and she raced past him as he grabbed his gushing nose.
“You fucking bitch,” he growled, scrambling after her. His fist captured her ankle, and she fell, her cheek slapping the wall. Pain radiated from the instant bruise, but it cut through the panic, giving her something to focus on. She had worked too hard for this café to die in it.
Amorette rolled to her feet with grace, grabbing a metal folding chair she had randomly propped against the wall. With all the strength left within her, she swung it at Derrick’s head. For a split second, their gazes met in shock, and then the chair collided with his temple. His head flew back at an awkward angle, and she watched with horror as he crashed to the floor, his skull smacking the sharp corner of the safe. The room fell silent save for her labored breaths, but she was afraid to move. Had she really just killed someone in her café?
Bile ran up her throat so fast she barely made it to the sink. She retched until her stomach hurt and her face throbbed, and when only dry heaves wracked her body, she cleaned out her mouth and leaned weakly against the wall. To her immense relief, she noticed Derrick’s chest move, and she burst into tears as she stumbled into the front of the shop. She hadn’t killed him. She wasn’t a murderer. Not yet at least, and if the police got here in time, she would stay that way.
Amorette made it halfway to the phone by the register when the café door flew open so violently, the glass cracked. She almost jumped out of her skin as the intruder strode toward her, and with vague recognition, her eyes scanned the ice-blond hair and massive form. The hulking man stormed for her, but fear overrode her rational thoughts as someone crashed through a door for the second time that morning. Amorette loosed a terrified grunt as she scrambled for the back room, but he was upon her in two long strides. He caught her elbow in a gentle but firm hold and whirled her around to face him.
Her big brown eyes stared up with fear, tears blurring the chocolate color that matched the sweets she sold, and while some of her nerves were aimed at him, the horror she let him read in her features was for Doug, Cavitto, and the guns pointed in her face. She wondered if her thoughts of this blond Adonis had summoned him to her rescue, or if he was just another monster come to plague her. She held his gaze, watching his fury multiply, but she didn’t pull away as she realized his wrath was for her and not with her. She lingered against his hold, unconsciously waiting for him to help, for him to prove he wasn’t like the men she was fleeing, and a sudden possessive softness wove through his rage, softening its jagged edges.
With reverent movements, he brushed his thumb softly over her bloodied bottom lip. Crimson stained his finger, and anger flashed through his eyes. Righteous anger for her, and the dam broke in her soul, unleashing the horror with her relief. He was the largest man she’d ever seen, yet protectiveness wafted off him in palpable waves. She felt safe in his grip, and realizing this was the first time they’d touched in eight months, she didn’t understand why he’d never let his skin touch hers before. There was power in his hold, a fierce emotion racing through their connection, and a sob escaped her lips. The blond cupped her face gently, careful to avoid her bruising, before lowering his forehead to hers. He had to stoop to reach, but the moment their skin pressed together, he spoke, low and clear and deadly.
“Who did this to you?”