Tower of Temptations – Seven Ways To Sin Read Online Nicole Casey

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Mafia Tags Authors: Nicole Casey Advertisement

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I stared at my bloodied hands, her last message burning in my mind. All my promises to keep her safe, all those quiet moments when she'd finally started to believe in us... in me. Worthless now.

Sunlight crept across my desk like spilled blood. Soon Vittorio would have her transferred. Soon she'd face whatever "treatments" Alessandro had planned, with no gentle touch to remind her she was loved. No safe arms to run to.

I closed my eyes, remembering how she'd fit so perfectly against us, how her nightmares had slowly faded when we held her. Now she'd face new ones alone, thinking the men who'd sworn to defend her—to love her—had given up.

Maybe we had.

The silence stretched, heavy with the weight of everything we'd lost. No one spoke. No one needed to. We'd failed the one person who'd believed in us, and there was nothing left to say.

30

NAN

Ihad spent three decades keeping secrets in this tower.

Each one etched into my bones like the ache that never quite left my knees these days. But none weighed heavier than the last words Marco Divino ever spoke to me.

"Keep her safe."

The memory hit me the way it always did as I changed Pearl's sheets, my hands smoothing cotton while my mind drifted to that final night in Marco's office. He had looked exhausted, nothing like the giant of a man who used to swing little Pearl around while I dusted his shelves. The cancer treatments had weakened him, but his eyes burned with desperate intensity as he handed me a small key and gripped my hand with surprising strength. He had known something was coming.

"You're the only one who sees everything, Nancy," he had whispered. "The only one who knows what really happens in these towers. Promise me you'll watch over her."

I had promised. God help me, I had promised.

And then I had spent eleven years watching Vittorio destroy everything Marco built. Watching him sink his hooks into Sofia, seeing that vibrant woman fade into a ghost who jumped at shadows. Seeing Pearl's light dim year by year under his darkness.

My fingers found the familiar ridge of scar tissue on my palm—a reminder of another promise, this one marked in blood. The day after Marco's "accident," Vittorio had called all the household staff into his study. He had smiled that snake's smile while explaining his new rules. Then he showed us pictures of our families.

My Thomas had been eight then, playing soccer in our backyard. The photo showed him mid-laugh, unaware of the camera. Or the threat.

"Loyalty will be rewarded," Vittorio had said softly. "The alternative... well."

So, I had kept my head down. Cleaned my assigned floors. Pretended not to see the bruises on Sofia's wrists or hear Pearl's muffled sobs. Told myself I was keeping my promise to Marco by staying close, by being one pair of friendly eyes in her gilded cage.

But now...

My hands shook as I smoothed the duvet, remembering Pearl's face these past days. The way she had pressed her hand to her stomach when she thought no one was looking. The shadows in her eyes growing with each passing hour.

Alessandro's clinic. The words made bile rise in my throat. I had heard the whispers from other housekeepers, seen the hollow-eyed women who came back from "treatment." Some didn't come back at all.

The click of Italian leather in the hallway made me freeze. Vittorio's voice drifted through the walls, discussing security arrangements with someone. Again I saw Thomas in that photo, so young and vulnerable. He was twenty-three now, starting medical school. Still vulnerable in different ways.

But Pearl... sweet Jesus, Pearl was pregnant.

The truth of it hit me fresh, making my knees weak. A baby. Marco's grandchild, growing under her heart while Vittorio planned to break her completely.

I sank onto the bed, my cleaning forgotten as memories flooded back. Pearl at five, falling asleep in Marco's office while he worked late. At twelve, always saving her dessert for me because she knew my sweet tooth. At sixteen, crying in my arms the day after her mother died, whispering, "I'm all alone now."

She wasn't alone. She'd always had me. And, yet, I had failed her, let fear keep me silent while Vittorio's web grew tighter.

The sound of a door slamming somewhere below made me jump. Time was running out. Tonight, they would move her to the clinic. Those men who had tried to save her—those fierce, dangerous men—were out of options. Their failed rescue attempt had only tightened the noose around her neck.

But I wasn't out of options.

My hands steadied as I pulled the ancient keyring from my pocket. Three decades of service meant knowing every hidden door, every forgotten passage from when this tower was built. Vittorio's modern security system covered the obvious routes, but the servant corridors... those narrow spaces between walls where maids once slipped unseen...

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