Chapter 1
Angel
Sydney, Australia
Ieyed the chocolate martini that a big-chested blonde held against her boobs as she fake-giggled at something the balding man at her side said.
I loved chocolate, but instead, I held in my own hand a Negroni Sbagliato topped with a bit of Prosecco.
It was a pretty reddish color, and bubbles danced within the clear glass, spreading around the orange peel that had been expertly added as a garnish.
Why was I drinking this and not the chocolate martini?
Easy, because I saw some stupid video on the internet and it made it sound so cool and mature.
That was the air I was going for, too. Cool and mature.
Nothing like the fresh twenty-one-year-old I actually was.
My ID said I was twenty-five. Not that I really needed it here.
In the last few years, I’d learned that practically every other country on Earth could give a shit less about the drinking age so long as you weren’t completely smashed and causing a scene.
Still, it felt like I’d really come full circle now, three years after my wedding, sitting in some random fancy bar with my first ‘legal’ drink.
Sure, it’d been legal in all the other countries, but sometimes, I still liked to pretend I was back in America.
It was home, after all, and even if it wasn’t my father’s homeland—it was my mother’s.
Australia didn’t have the same drinking laws as the United States, but still—at least to me—today was supposed to be special.
My stomach rumbled with hunger, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to eat today.
Not when I was very much expecting to get drunk off my ass and wobble my way back to the apartment I had rented in the heart of Sydney, so close to Barangaroo that I woke up with a view of the bay every morning.
It was an impossibly expensive apartment, but I had to keep up appearances.
My clients wouldn’t trust someone who lived in the gutter.
I was supposed to make them disappear, after all, in style.
Criminals—even criminals on the run—could rarely ever let go of the millions they’d gained. Not that all of my clients were criminals, but many of them were. Some, however, were just unfortunate enough to need my help.
A sigh escaped me as I noticed a trio of young women, one with a sash across her chest downing shots in the corner near the band playing the cover of some famous Australian singer that I’d heard on the radio here.
Though the sash read Bride-To-Be, the glimmer of glitter and jewels that decorated it made me think of other things—specifically what I was supposed to be celebrating.
My fingers grazed my neck where the choker Gaven had given me—or rather his collar of ownership—had once rested. I felt strangely naked there now.
It had been the first thing to go when I’d run away.
Not necessarily because I’d hated it, but because selling off the diamonds inside had been a necessity.
It had funded my new start and given me an actual chance.
I’d known I had to be smarter the second time I’d escaped.
Gaven had proven himself to be resourceful and domineering.
My nail scraped the skin of my throat. Still … it hadn’t been easy to let go of.
As I stared at the bride and her posse celebrating her bachelorette party—or hen party as they called it here in Australia—I felt a twinge of remorse and envy. I withdrew my hand from my neck and sipped my drink while watching their little group.
I’d always imagined commemorating my twenty-first birthday would happen with girlfriends.
All of us dressed in much the same way I am now—slutty cocktail attire—as we laughed and giggled our way from club to club, drowning ourselves in the bliss of youth and shots of vodka or tequila.
In some scenarios of what I imagined today would be, I would’ve been home, sitting in my father's study as we shared my very first legal drink together.
Grimacing at that last image in my head, I tipped the glass back and sucked down a mouthful of alcohol. It was sweeter than I anticipated, a little tart and sharp, but not bad at all. All around me in the darkened, shadowy lounge bar, conversations poured into my ears.
Three incredibly long years, I’d been away from home, and this was as close as I’d dared to get. A fifteen-hour flight to the nearest mainland of the United States. My computer skills had certainly come in handy that fateful night—my fucking wedding night.
My fingers gripped the glass in my hand tighter as I recalled the betrayal of my sister and my current predicament.
She was the reason I wasn’t able to enjoy being home or even attend college.
Even if I could have tried to do something online once I was away from her and the Price Empire, it wasn’t like I could keep up with a curriculum when I was too damn busy running from her and building a business to keep myself safe.
It had nothing to do with my forced marriage but everything to do with her jealous, vile act of cruelty.
Without a second thought, I put the glass back to my lips and downed the rest of the liquid in one gulp.
Just like that, too, the sweet-ish taste turned bitter and the alcohol burned a path into my stomach.
I had been a mess the night I’d run away, but I’d done better the second time than the first. I’d learned a valuable lesson.
Sometimes, you had to accept the reality and lean into what you were capable of or risk everything.
I was an ex-Mafia Princess and now a criminal.
I no longer had the choice of normalcy. If I wanted to survive my sister’s wrath, then I’d had to accept that part of myself.
In the last three years, I’d donned several masks—different identities—and even taken on this new business of mine.
The kind of business that allowed others to disappear somewhere else in the world, starting new lives as their old ones were irrevocably ended.
Carefully, I set the empty glass down on the bar top and sighed as I turned towards the rest of the lounge area.
I’d learned, too, how to read people. Who would be dangerous to involve myself with, and who would be beneficial.
If I hadn’t learned and learned fast, then I’d be as good as dead.
As it stood, someone was getting far too close.
My husband.
“Nice night, isn’t it?” A smooth baritone sounded at my side, but I didn’t jump.
I’d noticed a man in a tight black suit, tall and broad, with a no-nonsense expression plastered on his face approaching a few minutes ago.
At first, he’d sidled up to the end of the bar, and then with each passing second, he’d edged closer and closer as he worked up the courage to talk to me.
Casting a look at the man, I took him in.
He was young—at least in his mid-twenties with thick dark hair gelled away from his face.
Perhaps it was the cut of his jawline or his height, but somehow, he made me think of Gaven.
Despite the sharp, handsome contrast of his skin tone, though, he looked nothing like the man I remembered in my bed, between my legs.
It had been three years since I’d seen Gaven, and three years since I’d even contemplated sex.
We hadn’t really known each other, he and I, but he’d left his mark on me, burned deep enough past my skin and into my soul that I couldn’t forget what he’d done to me.
The way he’d made me feel and the desire my body felt towards him.
In reality, the two of us had been thrown together to continue the lineage of the Price Empire.
It was a marriage in name only; it was about bearing an heir, not dedicating my life to him.
Not really. Somehow, though, I’d never, in the last few years, been able to erase the oath I’d taken when I’d said ‘I do.’
Now, it felt wrong to be staring at this man and contemplate … well, what exactly was I contemplating?
Not sex with him, that was for sure. If anything, the nearest thing to sex I was going to have tonight would be back in my apartment with the vibrator I’d bought online two weeks ago.
It was the sole source of comfort I’d had—toys that were sometimes too hard and had none of the heat and vile, wicked words that my husband had.
My insides squirmed with memories. Between my thighs, I felt a wetness beginning to build. I couldn’t deny that ever since Gaven had fucked me—ever since he’d introduced me into the world of sexual deviancy, it had somehow made me want more. More seemed impossible, though, without him.
It didn’t make any sense. We didn’t love each other. Still, I felt bound to him. As if he were this great and powerful being and the only thing that could bring me back to that otherworldly pleasure.
“—buy you a drink?”
I blinked my eyes open, realizing belatedly that I’d closed them as the thoughts and memories swarmed me. “What?” I looked back at the man.
“Would you let me buy you a drink?” he asked again.
I was already shaking my head before he finished. “Thank you,” I said, “but no.”
His face fell. “Oh, well, if not a drink, maybe I could—”
“I’m married,” I told him. “But thank you for the offer.”
Disappointment etched into his face. I didn’t normally pull the married card, but it wasn’t a lie and that was something I was used to doing now that I was a fugitive on the run.
Behind the puppy-dog-like man sitting next to me, I spotted a tall shadow moving along the back of the room. I sat up straighter.
No, I thought to myself. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be there. I’d been careful with this location. I’d wanted to stay for a while. But there was no denying the race of my heartbeat now galloping in my chest. I knew that shadow. I knew it well—all too well.
Whipping around, I slapped a fifty dollar bill—the shimmering Australian money’s color catching in the low lighting as I do—on the bar top and snatched up my purse.
“Wait!” the man cried out, but I ignored him as I made a beeline for the exit.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Though the man hadn’t been Gaven, he worked for him. I’d seen him far too many times in the last three years. Always too close. Just like now.
Outside, I hailed a cab. “Where to?” the cabbie asked as I snapped the backdoor closed behind me.
“Mascot,” I said. “Holiday Inn.” There were no more flights out today. It was far too late for that, but I couldn’t risk returning to my apartment.
The cab driver twisted back to his wheel and steered us into traffic, the car picking up speed as he cut through the lanes toward the highway.
Heart racing in my chest, I quickly glanced back to see if the man had followed me outside.
It was too dark, though, even with the city lights to see more than figures on the street.
I turned back around and forced myself to relax into the seat before closing my eyes and sending a prayer up to the sky.
I knew it was pointless. I wasn’t much of a believer in God.
Certainly not anymore. I knew, though, how other members of the mafia could be—how the great Prezzo Italian family that the Prices once were—had been.
With so much death around them, so much betrayal and loss.
It made sense that they would seek out a power higher than themselves.
For me, that power is none other than Gaven Belmonte.
My hunter. My husband.
Reaching up, I dragged my finger over the fogged-over windows inside the cab.
It would be dangerous to let him catch me, but still, a small part of me hoped he would.
A small part of me enjoyed this game of cat and mouse we were playing—even if it was a constant reminder that there was no returning to the past.
Once, I’d been an innocent girl, frightened of what he could do. Frightened of what the future held. Now, I knew the truth. The future didn’t wait for you to get comfortable. It came whether you wanted it to or not. Those who survived it were the ones who had to adapt.
And so … I’d adapted.
I’d run.
I’d survived.
I’d created something of myself.
Now, there was no stopping. So if Gaven wanted to find out the truth, he had a long wait ahead of him because there was no way I’d make capturing me easy.
Catch me, if you can. My deviant husband.