Chapter 1
Nora
Pain tore at my scalp, yanking me back to consciousness. A scream ripped from my throat as the Russian dragged me to my feet by my hair.
“Don’t touch her!” Dante’s furious bellow shuddered through me, but his deep voice didn’t echo off the warehouse walls.
My captor pawed at my chest, and revulsion twisted my stomach. I blinked hard, willing myself back to awareness.
“I’ll touch your wife as much as I want.” My attacker’s laugh oozed over my skin, his breath hot on my neck.
He pinned me against his front, one brawny arm an iron band around my waist. I twisted in his grip, struggling to get to Dante, the terrifying monster who would do anything to save me. He’d taken a bullet for me. He would tear through the Russians to get to me.
“Dante!” I cried out for him, desperate.
But even as I screamed his name, reality coalesced around me. A leering, hulking man held a phone directed at my face.
Dante’s voice emanated from the speaker, little more than a savage growl. “Tell me where you are.”
“You want her back?” my captor taunted. His meaty hand fisted my blouse, tearing at the delicate material. The buttons popped against the cement floor like gunshots, rending the air from my lungs. “Come and get her.”
I screamed for Dante again, but he didn’t respond. The leering Russian pocketed the phone, cutting off the connection to my monstrous husband: my dark savior.
A sob wracked my chest as all my oldest, deepest fears solidified around me. The Russians had me. Just like they’d captured my mother. They’d tortured her before they killed her. All to send a message to my father.
My father, who’d sold me to the Bratva. I was bait, a trap for Dante so that the Russians would do Giuseppe’s dirty work and eliminate my sadistic husband for him.
And they would make sure I suffered for their amusement until he came for me. Until they lured him into this warehouse and murdered him. They wouldn’t have set this up if they didn’t have the numbers to ensure his death.
Would he come for me at all?
My blood ran cold.
No, he wouldn’t come. Dante was the Devil, not my savior. He wouldn’t risk his life for me if he didn’t have the upper hand. He was too calculating to walk into a trap.
And my real husband, the man I loved, was locked in a cage, unable to get to me. Did Luca even know that I’d been taken?
Regret honed my fear until it was sharp enough to cut, shredding my insides. I’d never confessed my feelings for him. I’d abandoned him in that hell, and all I’d gained was my own torment, a fate far worse than being the object of Dante’s dark obsession.
The tip of the Russian’s knife scraped my collarbone, and I choked on a scream.
It didn’t truly hurt. Not yet.
But terror clogged my throat, fear suffusing my mind like a suffocating fog.
The cold steel slipped beneath the heart shaped padlock that secured the matching rose gold chain around my throat.
The glint in my tormentor’s black eyes told me that he recognized the trinket for what it was: a symbol that I belonged to Dante. His initial was engraved into the gold, marking me as his possession.
“This is mine,” the leering man told his friends, hooking the blade beneath the padlock and yanking hard.
I shrieked as the chain bit into my skin, but it was too thick to snap.
The man stepped away, his sick smile never slipping. I didn’t have time to draw in a heaving breath before he returned, pressing into my personal space as though my autonomy meant nothing to him. I wasn’t a person at all; I was a pawn, a thing to be used and then discarded.
“Please…” I managed to choke out as he hefted the bolt cutters. They were grimy with dried blood: a well-used torture implement.
The sharp tips grazed my throat, but he didn’t cut deep when he clipped the padlock so that it fell into his waiting hand. The chain slid from my neck, the gold glistening with my blood as it snaked around his thick fingers.
Masculine heat crushed me as they closed in, making me feverish and dizzy. I didn’t know how many of them threatened me; I couldn’t claw my way through the terror that blanketed my mind to count the hands that touched me.
Dante’s name reverberated through the warehouse, the sound of my blind panic mingling with cruel laughter.
Pain overwhelmed me, crushing the last flicker of my hope for rescue.
The Devil wasn’t coming for me. Luca wasn’t coming for me.
I would suffer and die here, alone and abused.
I sank into agony, falling out of time and losing track of my surroundings. For a few minutes, merciful darkness closed over me, but fresh pain continually yanked me back to consciousness. The torment went on and on, until my screams died and the fire of my defiant will was extinguished.
A feral roar thundered through the sick laughter that surrounded me, and the suffocating weight of the Russians was suddenly lifted away. I gasped for air, and oxygen flooded my lungs. The sudden shock of awareness was cruelly sharp, magnifying the pain that’d become dulled by disassociation.
I lifted my face from the pool of warm blood beneath my cheek, the world reeling at the smallest movement of my abused body.
Gunshots rang out in a deafening barrage. My tormentors fell around me, some screaming, others deadly silent. Guttural groans were cut off with savage swipes of wickedly sharp blades.
Shockingly green eyes filled my world, and Dante rasped my name as he reached for me.
The firefight continued to rage around us, but the ringing in my ears muffled the deafening booms that echoed through the warehouse.
Dante’s calloused fingertips caressed my bloody cheek—the barest brush of his hand—before he was ripped away from me.
I cried out at the loss, terror flooding my dulled senses.
The Russians would kill him. My savior would die, and then I would be murdered too.
The world wavered at the edges as I took in the horrific scene, unable to look away from the carnage.
But it wasn’t the Russians who had Dante in their murderous grip; Luca grappled with him, a silvery blade flashing between them.
Dante twisted to the side, releasing a roar of rage and pain when the knife sank into his shoulder.
He shoved Luca off him, and the hilt slipped from my husband’s hand, the blade lodged deep in Dante’s flesh.
Dante’s lips stretched in an animal snarl, and he wrenched the knife free and tackled Luca. His blood glistened on the steel as it arced toward the man I loved.
“No!” I screamed, horror crashing through my haze of agony. “Dante, don’t!”
The blade halted at Luca’s throat, a crimson line beading beneath the sharp edge. My husband went utterly still, and Dante growled in his rage-reddened face.
“Stop!” I cried, struggling to my knees.
Dante’s keen eyes cut to me, piercing my chest. The possessive fury that burned in their depths knocked the air from my lungs, but I managed to plead with him.
“If you care about me at all, don’t hurt him,” I begged.
He lifted the blade, raising it for a killing blow.
My heart hammered against my ribcage with bruising force. I struggled to my feet, desperate to put my body between the Devil and my vulnerable husband.
“I love him!” I shouted.
Dante roared, and the knife slashed toward Luca.
I slipped in the pool of my own blood, and the world spun. Darkness crashed over me.