Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“In your seatbelt, baby,” he said, his voice like scratchy gravel, and he physically set me beside him and buckled my belt. Tessa buckled up, her eyes on her brother, and then they moved to me and I had the feeling we were having the exact same thought. Tommy had never looked this angry. Never.
“What about–” I started to ask about Dex, the other explosion, all of it, but Tommy’s hand hooked around my neck and he pulled me sideways and put his mouth to my temple hard and then let me go. I shut my mouth. It wasn’t the time for questions.
Tessa’s wide eyes moved to the window, and I saw a nervous swallow move down her throat. Her hands were trembling. I looked at Nino and his expression was pretty similar to Tommy’s. We drove for a while until stopping in a warehouse parking lot.
“Stay here a minute. I’ll send Will out for you,” Tommy said.
I was about to ask where we were and where he was going, and it took a second for me to remember who Will even was, but I could tell it wasn’t a good idea to utter a word.
He got out of the car and strode, with purpose, Nino beside him, to the door, which was opened by someone on the other side. They disappeared inside. My belly dipped with more fear.
Tessa and I stared at one another. I chewed on my bottom lip.
A moment later, Nino was back with Will, who I hadn’t seen at the event after we’d had our tour. He’d been behind us until we got into the bar.
He was walking with Nino toward the car and then the door was pulled open.
“Girls, follow me,” Nino said.
It felt straight out of a movie. We walked down a long, dingy gray hallway, through double doors, multiple clicking sets of dress shoes echoing. Then we walked through a door and were in a loading dock area. Leo Denarda was looking very black and blue, sitting taped to a chair. His face and tuxedo shirt were bloody.
Me and Tessa stopped inside the door. There were three big men in the room that I didn’t recognize.
Tommy was standing over Leo, looking fiercely angry, looking ten times angrier than even that morning when someone tried to shoot us while we were having sex a few days after he’d rescued me from Juan Carlos Castillo in Mexico. His tux jacket was still over my shoulders. Tommy stood there, his bow tie undone, his shirtsleeves up.
“Contessa,” Tommy said angrily. “Here.”
Tessa moved with confidence toward her brother. I was a little confused for a second and then it dawned. She was facing her rapist and she wanted to strut like he hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t beaten her down.
“What did he do to you?” Tommy folded his arms and looked at his sister.
She straightened her spine, standing beside Tommy, not three feet from Leo, and said, “He had me drugged and kidnapped, he mutilated my arm with an Xacto knife, he raped me, and then he sent me to an auction to be sold.”
“An eye for an eye sounds about right,” Tommy said. “You want to carve him?”
“No, but I’ll watch,” she said.
This was so calmly executed that I knew two things. One: he must have told her this would happen. He must have promised her that Leo Denarda would get what was coming to him. And two: she was definitely a Ferrano, made of the same tough stuff as her brothers. She was holding it together remarkably well.
Tommy, wearing a pair of black gloves, leaned over and used a knife to pierce Leo’s tuxedo jacket sleeve and then he ripped it away and took the knife and stabbed downwards. Leo screamed deep in his throat behind the tape over his mouth, his eyes wide, his face swollen and bloody.
Nino moved in and grabbed Leo’s wrist to steady it and Tommy curved the knife on his forearm. I felt bile rise in my throat. I heard another scream as Tommy kept carving. I couldn’t see anything but blood gushing but it seemed like he carved more than Tessa’s initials.
“How did he rape you?” Nino asked, lifting a long metal pipe up off the ground in his own gloved hands, and I heaved a little as puke rose in my throat. It was audible. I swallowed it back down and turned away and cradled myself.
“Will?” I heard Tommy’s voice, “Help my wife. Don’t let her fall.”
I felt an arm go around me. I looked at Will’s face. He looked a little green and unsteady, too. He was young, my age or so, and he was new to the team. What a way to get initiated.
“From behind,” Tessa said, and her voice cracked, “I was on a sofa on my stomach.”