Chapter 1

Chapter One

T he entertainment stood on one red stiletto as it put on the other. When it crossed the threshold the living nightmare ended and I became human again. The door shut behind me, muting the voices of Don Pannareli’s highest ranking men.

After ten years of the same old shit, you’d think they’d lose their lust for breaking me down. On the contrary, they used the worst night of my life to celebrate their victories and forced me to participate.

Sure, I had ways to numb myself but the morning after left me stripped raw. Sunglasses kept me from having to make direct eye contact as my ex-boyfriend of five years escorted me from the compound.

Aureliu Grasso stood at just over six feet and weighed close to two hundred and thirty pounds. He joined to be the muscle. The green-eyed Sicilian Adonis flew the ranks until he became Don Pannareli’s first choice for any hard job. He didn’t get his hands as dirty as he used to. They were gorgeous tanned hands I used to love having on me. Now, his young wife enjoyed his hands and every inch of him.

It'd been two years since he dumped me after he found out what I really did during my mental health retreats. He saw live and in color… in participation. I remembered the following day all too well when he couldn’t look me in the eye and blocked me from reaching him. Aureliu didn’t participate again.

Aureliu dated Mansueto’s daughter. A girl I considered a little sister. She’d told me how cute she found him when Aureliu was on my arm. She just turned twenty-one, Cabbrieli’s age. She’d come to me to make sure things weren’t awkward. I lied and said they were great. Aureliu didn’t wait a week before taking her out; two days after I left my house and twenty missed calls. Don Pannareli made sure I attended the wedding.

His tattooed forearm corded as he opened the passenger door for me. I sat inside the blacked out Mercedes and realized he planned to drive me home.

I took my phone out of my purse and met my eyes in the side-view mirror. The morning after always carried mixed emotions. On one hand, it was the furthest away from a repeat. On the other, it took days to get the feel of them off my skin. Their smiles and laughter lingered like flies on a corpse.

“Laesa!” my brother answered. Loud voices and muffled music went on in the background. I doubt he’d gone to bed before going right back into partying. We all coped with our parents’ deaths differently. Cabbrieli chose to get blackout drunk and do God only knew what. “I expected an anxious call earlier.”

“I just woke up.” I squared myself to the lying face in the mirror. “Just checking in.”

“I figured you were in a chanting circle or something. I’ll text when I get settled.”

“I hope you didn’t do anything fucking stupid that’ll end with you in jail,” I warned. “I love you.”

“Yeah. You too.” The call ended.

I usually took a three day vacation when the date came around. I didn’t want too many questions and it was impossible for me to act normally when the memories were so fresh. Dating Vincenzo changed things. I couldn’t do a solo vacation without his feelings getting bruised. Telling him the truth when his firm handled the Pannareli family couldn’t happen. He’d do the same thing Aureliu did. Although, I hoped Vincenzo wouldn’t join them like Aureliu did. I lied and said I went to a mental health retreat because of the anniversaries of my parents’ death. He didn’t second guess it. What I was really doing was hiding from the world in my home.

I pushed those thoughts away and made my second call. “Sade?”

The phone must’ve fallen in her rush. “We’re all good here. Did Vincenzo reach you, yet? He stopped by yesterday.”

Even though I took off work and planned to hide indoors alone, I couldn’t ditch Vincenzo. He knew who my family was and why I lived the way that I did at such a young age without becoming a drug mule or selling myself to princes in foreign countries. For the murdering, racketeering, drug dealer my father was, he made sure Cabbrieli and I would want for nothing in his absence.

My phone beeped, and I glanced at the screen. “That’s him now. I’ll call you later.”

“Cabbrieli sent a text that you were moving around now. Everything going well?”

“I needed the extra rest.”

“This is me playing the concerned fiancée.”

“I’m sorry I worried you. I had my phone off all day. I’m getting ready now for morning chants.”

Lying came so easily.

“Check-in tonight. Yeah? I miss you.”

I doubted that. Vincenzo dated me because of my connections to Don Pannareli. He proposed to get his attention. He got it. Severino hired Vincenzo’s firm to take care of all his legal affairs. Severino initially tried to push Vincenzo in with Aureliu, but Aureliu despised my pretty boy lawyer fiancée. Vincenzo resented Aureliu for being an obstacle. In his mind, Severino would’ve welcomed him into the family if Aureliu liked him more.

“Miss you, too.” I ended the call and slid the phone back into my purse.

It took thirty minutes to get to my house in a gated community. I chose an obnoxiously large house so Cabbrieli would ask to live with me.

“This is the first time we’ve been alone since you ghosted me.”

His hands gripped the wheel, giving me an optimum view of his wedding ring.

“Not planning on kids, yet?”

I twisted the knife a little deeper. He could kill me. I doubted Severino would care. Technically, my brother and I were under his umbrella of protection. He’d adopted us after he had my parents and our entire staff slaughtered. After the events that followed, Severino was the only one who would visit my bedroom. That lasted until I turned eighteen and my trust opened up. He gave me a lovely quid pro quo; every year until they decided they were done.

Severino could be charming. He rarely threatened directly. He made sure I knew what would happen to Cabbrieli if I ever stepped out of line. He told me about our new annual tradition on my birthday.

“I don’t want to fight —”

He slowed as we reached my gate. I opened it from my phone and grabbed my things. “No. You just want to watch seven men fuck me while you’re too much of a bitch to do anything.”

His jaw clenched. I kicked the door open and stormed through the wide wrought-iron gates. The driveway stretched for a quarter mile before I reached the heavy wooden doors or my big white house.

My finger had just lifted from the key pad when someone jumped behind me and covered my mouth with their hand. I gave the maid the week off. Someone had to follow her in, or maybe someone had followed Aureliu to my house. I would make a terrible hostage.

“Don’t scream,” the deep voice growled in my ear. He shut the door and reached a tattooed, muscled arm exposed to his elbow by the rolled-up sleeve as he locked it. “I’m not going to hurt you in any way. Just do as you’re told.”

The first move in my survival repertoire always came up with a nihilistic, “ kill me”. Followed by a grim, “I don’t care” . The morning after my worst night of the year, I couldn’t muster up a third move. Check and mate — end it already.

He gagged me with a sex toy. He zip tied my hands in front of me and then did the same to my legs. I grunted as he suddenly swung me over his shoulder.

“I know you want a bath after that.”

Overpowering him wasn’t an option. The tall, powerful man with pale blue eyes set me in the jacuzzi. An anvil jaw was hidden by a short brown beard. Espresso locks fell from a low bun. He dressed like one of the caterers.

Oh, great. A psychopath had followed me home. And there I thought it would always be the Pannarelis or Mansueto who took me out.

“I have no plan to kill you,” he probably lied.

“If I take the gag off, do you promise not to scream?” he asked.

I nodded. Honestly, who cared anymore?

He leaned over and the leather stopped digging into the corners of my mouth.

“Tell me what you want,” I said evenly.

He twisted and plugged the tub. Water slowly filled it. He sighed as he unzipped my dress.

“Brogan ‘Bodach’ Cummiskey.”

That was a punchline.

“You’ve heard of me.” He wiggled my dress from under my butt and pulled it over my head. My dark curls fell to my elbows again.

Heard of him! There crouched the last surviving member of the Cummiskey Gang after Don Severino Pannareli slaughtered his entire family. They thought he was dead, too. Then last year, fifteen associates from the Pannareli family were mowed down in one weekend.

The descriptions were all the same. A brawling black Irish with tattoos covering everything but his face and sharp blue eyes. And Don Pannareli let him work in the kitchen.

I let out a long breath.

“That’s it?” he arched a brow.

“Just don’t let my brother find my body,” I whispered.

The Bodach sighed. “I need a safe house. It’s only for a few days. I know you don’t expect anyone and you’ve told them you’re on a retreat. You probably would’ve gone to get a massage or something. I’ll fill in so then you don’t feel like you’re lying. Plus, I can’t have you alerting the FBI parked down the road. You’ve got a lot of land to hide on.”

He looked down at me in my red underwear. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a multi-tool before snipping the zip tie around my ankles. I held my breath as he pulled my underwear down.

Brogan pushed his sleeves up further and carefully removed my necklace. He didn’t even steal a peek. There’d be no seducing my way out.

For a mass murderer, the bath he gave me was as gentle as one could make it given all the bruises and friction burns over my body. My throat was especially rough after Paolo “The Jackal” Vallone tried autoerotic asphyxiation with me. Mansueto stopped him from killing me while a few of the others laughed.

Brogan dried me off and clipped off my last zip tie to help me put a camisole on. I laid in bed with the phone on the nightstand while he cooked in the kitchen. My limbs weighed a thousand pounds and I couldn’t make myself call for help.

He made me sit up and eat a plate of cheesy eggs before I rinsed it down with water and laid back. He tied me to his wrist and laid back with me.

“I saw you watching,” I whispered.

“They had food catered while they took turns with you. They’re fucking disgusting,” he spat .

Heat tingled in my cheeks. “Did you drug me?” My lips were filled with lead.

“A sedative. I couldn’t make myself sleep while they had you. I’ve got to rest now. You should, too.”

He leaned over and swept my damp hair away.

“Lucky me.”

Brogan laid on his back with his eyes wide open. “Our luck is changing,” he roughly promised as I succumbed to sleep.