Chapter 33
Elowen
“If you weren’t my enemy’s daughter.” He grips my chin with his gloved fingers, tilting my face up toward him.
I’m sitting in his bed, tangled in his dark sheets, and he’s standing before me.
“I would have tied you to me. I would have kept you locked in this mansion with me, where no one else could lay eyes on you. I would give you my scarred soul in exchange for your pristine one. You’re my morning, Princess, and when a man sees morning after decades of night, he traps that morning so he never has to see the dark again. ”
He leans down. My breath stops all at once, but I feel more alive than I have in what feels like forever. His lips hover just above mine, a whisper of distance between us. I feel the same ache of wanting to kiss him and the impossibility of it.
“I have nothing to give you. Whatever little I had, you already snatched without asking. Now it’s my turn.
I’ll take everything from you—your heart, your soul, your body.
I’ll embed myself so deep inside you, you will never be able to exorcise me.
I’ll never leave you, Princess. You’ll see me while awake, and you’ll see me in all your beautiful dreams and...
” He pulls back. Now his face has changed, it’s the exact same eyes, but everything else is different. Hunter. “...in all your nightmares.”
I open my eyes, looking around in panic. My heartbeat pounds in my ears; sweat slicks my entire back. I wipe the beads from my forehead.
“What happened, Princess?” Salvario asks, looking up from his laptop.
We’re flying to Naples in his private jet. He’s sitting across from me.
“Just a nightmare,” I murmur.
He rises, fills a cup with water, and comes to my side. Settling beside me, he hands me the glass. “Drink some water.”
I nod, taking the glass from his hand.
Bruno’s bark comes first, and then Bruno himself. I smile into the glass. How persistent this boy is about keeping Salvario away from me. It’s been two weeks, and he still won’t warm to him.
Salvario rises from the couch. A sudden thought flashes through my mind, if this were the old Salvario, he would have done everything in his power to make Bruno behave, including giving me panic attacks by nearly killing him.
I brush the thought aside. It’s unreasonable, backed by no evidence. We’ve never encountered such a situation before, and since Salvario loves Bruno, this is the logical response—to let Bruno maintain his little dictatorship.
He climbs onto the seat beside me. I wrap my arms around his neck, kissing his head.
Salvario settles into his seat. Rosie approaches him, tail wagging, but she doesn’t get too close. He extends his hand and pets her head, which Bruno does not appreciate. He barks so loudly his whole body vibrates with the force of it.
I laugh. “You must have done something truly terrible to him before sending him to me two years ago.”
He purses his lips. “As far as I remember, I did nothing to offend him this deeply.”
I shrug. “That’s also a problem, you don’t remember everything.” Especially the bad memories. He remembers all the good ones, like all the time we spent at Pa’s house. He doesn’t remember the memories where we cried.
Salvario’s phone rings. He takes the call while Rosie makes her way to me. She squeezes in on my other side. I recline my seat, lifting the leg rest until I’m nearly lying flat, snug with my babies.
Salvario’s sharp “How did this happen?” pulls my attention to him. He’s frowning hard, his expression dark with anger.
“Find him.”
He ends the call and meets my eyes.
“Hunter’s escaped from the hospital.”
“What? How?” I shoot upright.
He grits his teeth. “No one knows how.”
Have his injuries healed enough in just two weeks for him to escape? But then again, when I saw him a week ago, he looked fine. He must have healed further since then.
All the nightmares I’ve had this past week crash back at once.
After I saw him, the nightmares changed.
Before, he used to die in my arms. Now, he torments me in another way—telling me I can never escape him, touching me in ways I enjoy inside those horrible dreams, leaving me a wreck the moment my eyes open.
It takes me hours every morning to shake off the nightmares, to convince myself it’s just my brain misfiring. While we sleep, the frontal cortex shuts down, hence the dreams being unreasonable on so many levels.
But now that he’s escaped, there’s a chance those nightmares could become reality.
Shut up, Wen. Nothing like that is going to happen. He can’t get past the security you live behind.
My self-reassurance isn’t very convincing, but maybe if I repeat it enough, my mind will settle.
“Don’t worry, Princess. I’ll find him, and now that he’s no longer under your father’s protection, I’ll kill him.”
My heart stumbles over its rhythm, then slams back into motion. Hunter would have been safe in my father’s prison. Now he’s not. But should I worry about him? No, I shouldn’t. Still, the knot in my gut doesn’t loosen.
Hunter
“What’s the plan?” I ask Logan, setting down an M4 carbine and picking up a Glock 18.
“I only managed to gather twenty men willing to die for us, and they aren’t well trained. I’ve been drilling them for a week, but that’ll only keep them alive a few minutes longer. Against Chris, we’re an ant-sized force facing an elephant-sized army.”
“It’s enough.” I settle into a chair. Logan leans against the table across from me.
He shrugs. “For a suicide mission? Sure.”
“We’ll split them into two groups. One, with you, will grab him when his security is lightest. The other will help me burn his estate to the ground.”
Logan raises a brow. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you realize you’re talking about Chris Flisher’s estate? That’s like saying you’ll set fire to heaven. It has the best security in existence.”
“I happen to know the best ways to burn down places with the best security.”
He sighs. “Fine. If you’re this confident, go with it. If you end up getting yourself killed, I’ll tell your wife the good news—she’s free to remarry.”
He laughs. “Okay, fine, I won’t. Just don’t look at me like that. If I drop dead of a heart attack, you’ll have no one left on your team.”
Every breath is torture, knowing she’s with that motherfucker. Countless torments fill my head with images of what she must be doing with him, how she must be laughing at the things he says. I don’t believe that bastard has a sense of humor, but it takes almost nothing to make her laugh.
My thoughts descend toward the horror.
How she must be kissing him with her fingers buried in his hair, nails grazing his scalp, just the way she used to kiss me.
How his hands must be on her now, tracing the curve of her waist, her round breasts.
How she must be pressed against him, skin to skin, her warmth bleeding into his body instead of mine.
How the bastard must be inside her by now.
Fuck.
Don’t go there.
The monster inside me bares its teeth. The thought of him touching her makes it rabid.
It doesn’t matter what that bastard takes from her, he’s a dead man. And whatever she gives him, I’ll make her pay for it. I’ll make the name Salvario her worst nightmare. All she’ll remember of him is me fucking her on the pulp of his muscles, covered in his blood.
The only man her body will remember is me. The only hands that will ever touch her soft skin are mine. The only cock her pussy will ever get wet for is mine.
Once I deal with Chris, it’s that bastard Salvario De Falco’s turn.
I can’t move while Chris is alive. He’s a direct threat to her life, I don’t have enough men to keep her safe from him.
Chris has a way to access our internal data that her family doesn’t, which makes it easier for us to hide from them.
I’ve been trying to escape his clutches ever since I met Elowen.
Freeing myself will take more than a month, but killing him will take far less.
The risk of losing my life is greater, but that doesn’t concern me anymore.
Once the threat to her life is dealt with, I will take her again. All of this will take two weeks at minimum—an eternity of punishment, living through hell knowing she’s spending each second in someone else’s arms.
In those weeks, I’ll also find a place to keep her, somewhere I can chain her for the rest of her life.