Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 109674 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109674 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
“Every day,” I rasped, tears springing into my eyes.
“Every day,” he echoed in a low, dark voice. His gaze traced my face, every line, as if he were trying to memorize it. “I didn’t have a single photo of you. The only thing left of you was my memories. You have become so much more beautiful than what I remember.”
“Did you think of me?” My voice shook with hope. What was I doing?
He grabbed my hands and pressed them against his temples, his gaze almost feverish with emotion. “Every fucking second of my existence. You are in here so deeply that even a drill couldn’t get you out. Fuck, I’ve thought about drilling a hole into my head just to bleed out my obsession with you!”
He touched my palms to his chest over his heart. It pounded against my hand. “And you’re in there, and the only reason it’s still beating. You are a part of me, and I’ve come to realize that cutting you out of me would mean cutting out my heart and brain. You are and will always be my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. You are the reason for everything, and because you are like a part of myself, you are and will always be mine.”
Words crowded my throat. I didn’t know what to say. He cradled my palms in his bigger hands and leaned down until we were at eye level, and the amber specks in his dark green irises became impossible to miss.
“Have you been with anyone else?”
I shook my head. “No, never.” Even though I’d run from him, I hadn’t really shaken off his shadow. Nestore had been with me all along. I had always hoped to return to him one day, even as my hope had diminished little by little over time, especially after the glimpse of his cage fight. When a man tried to flirt with me, Nestore’s face had always popped to the forefront of my mind, a warning and a reminder of a promise I never wanted to break.
He bent low. “So your every first will be mine.”
I swallowed at the raw possession in his voice. In the past, when we’d talked about sharing all of our firsts, he’d said it reverently, sweetly even, not like I was a prize to claim. “What about you?” I asked, my heart in my throat.
It was stupid of me to even ask. Nestore was a man of power. An angry and vengeful man with power.
Nestore’s lips pulled into a cruel smile. “I fucked as many women as I could, fucked them in every way I could think of, always hoping that one of them would make me forget the sweetness of your kiss, Amelia. They couldn’t, and here I stand, still the slave of one Lamorgese.”
I shook my head slowly, my heart shattering. “We promised to have all of our firsts together,” I whispered.
“And you promised to stay.” Something shifted in his face, the dark bursting forth. “You ran,” he rasped, then snarled. “You ran.”
For a moment, he looked at me like he’d always looked at my father, with hatred and fear.
I understood the former, but not the latter. “Nestore,” I began, but he grabbed my throat. Not tight enough to cut off my air yet, but I got the warning.
I’d betrayed him. Betrayed the promise I’d given him. But that promise had been given to a boy whom Nestore had killed by torturing my father and slaughtering his other tormentors.
“I couldn’t stay,” I whispered. Nestore’s fingers tightened, his eyes darkening in a raging flood of anger.
“Now you will. I won’t let you run again, Amelia. Never again.”
I searched his eyes, searched for a hint of the boy I’d once loved, but he was gone.
Nestore sat in the back seat with me while his men took up the front. His gaze was stern and foreboding as he peered out of the window at the dark street beyond. We’d left Minneapolis behind an hour ago. I wasn’t sure whether we’d drive the entire way to LA or take a plane at some point. Nestore hadn’t spoken a single word to me since he’d dragged me out of the flower shop and forced me into the black BMW limousine.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find you if you hid in Outfit territory?”
I jumped, turning to him. He leaned back, his head propped up against the window, eyes half lidded as if he had been sleeping, but the look in his eyes was too keen for that.
“I always thought I would return to you one day.”
“When, Amelia?”
I licked my lips. “When you were back to being Nestore from the past. When you were done seeking revenge, living for it.”
His upper lip curled in disgust. “I am who I need to be. I am the evolution of the weak boy I used to be.”