CHAPTER 2 #2
Angelo Ferraro stepped into the room. He didn't just walk in; he occupied the entire damn space.
His massive frame completely blocked the only exit.
He wore a fitted black tactical shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows to reveal thick forearms corded with heavy muscle and slashed with old, white scars.
His sheer physical presence was a suffocating weight that made the already thin air in the room feel nonexistent.
He paused in the doorway, his eyes doing a slow, hyper-clinical sweep of the concrete box before finally landing dead on me.
"You're awake," he stated. His voice was a low, dark rumble. "So, the princess finally found her feet."
The heavy thud of his tactical boots on the floor sounded like a death march.
Up close, he was terrifying. There was no mask.
That meant he either didn't plan on letting me go, or he genuinely didn't give a shit if I could identify him to the cops later.
His jaw was heavy and shadowed with dark stubble.
His nose had definitely been broken at least once, maybe twice, and his eyes were the color of cold oil slicks—dark, absorbing, and totally dead.
There was absolutely no mercy in his face, just a grim, patient determination that chilled my blood.
"Who are you?" I demanded. "You made a mistake taking me."
He didn't blink. I noticed a thin, jagged scar running from his temple straight up into his dark hairline, and I caught myself wondering what kind of brutal violence put it there.
The faint, rugged scent of loose tobacco and cold rain clung to his dark clothes, mixing with the sound of his steady, annoyingly even breathing.
He looked like a man who had already watched the world burn to ash and enjoyed the heat.
Without breaking eye contact, he moved with the fluid, silent grace of an apex predator.
He crouched down, placing a plastic water bottle and a simple wrapped roll on the floor.
He didn't offer them to me. He just left them there on the concrete, the absolute bare minimum gesture to keep his asset breathing.
He set the water bottle down so perfectly precise that it didn't even wobble.
"Eat," he said. "Drink. Or don't. It's your choice."
The sharp crinkle of the plastic wrap and the slight thud of the bottle on the stone set my teeth on edge. Was it drugged again? Was this my last meal? I found my voice, and though it cracked slightly on the first syllable, I forced it steady.
"How much? Five million? Ten?" I talked to him like he was some street vendor I was haggling with in the Palermo markets. "Name your price and let's end this farce."
I threw my hands up in a broad gesture, my heavy gold bracelets clinking together sharply. My voice echoed too loudly in the small space. He just tilted his head, listening to me like I was a noisy bird chirping away in a locked cage.
He rose to his full height. The movement was painfully slow and completely menacing.
He stepped closer to me, forcing me to physically tilt my head back just to maintain eye contact.
He didn't say a fucking word, just let the sheer, suffocating mass of his body and the dead coldness of his gaze answer my bullshit.
He looked down at me like I was an expired debt that had finally come due.
I had to take a half-step back as he invaded my personal space, my bare heels clicking against the rough floor.
"Money doesn't fix what's broken, Fiorella," he said, his tone flat. "You think this is about paper?"
The heat radiating off his body was intense, and his broad shadow completely swallowed my own. Pure, unadulterated anger flared straight through my terror. I pointed a trembling finger right at the center of his chest, my jagged, broken nail shaking.
"My brother will skin you alive." I spat Alessio's name like a toxic curse. "Alessio won't just kill you; he'll erase you."
The skin on my raw knuckles stung, but I didn't care.
I detailed the kind of torture my brother was famously known for, my voice rising higher and higher in a desperate attempt to make this massive wall of a man flinch.
He didn't. His expression didn't change a single fraction of an inch.
Why the fuck wasn't he afraid? Everyone on this island was terrified of Alessio.
He finally spoke, his voice grinding together like crushed gravel. "I want him to come for you, Fiorella." He leaned in slightly, dropping his voice to a low, lethal whisper that felt like a razor blade scraping against my throat. "You aren't a ransom. You're a blood payment."