CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The security detail Mick ordered to blanket Bella Caine pulled up to the curb outside of her villa and opened the back passenger door for her. When she got out, one of the capos walked her to her front door.

"Good night, ma'am," the capo said as she unlocked her door.

"'Night, sweetie," Bella said with a smile and a sweep of her hand as she entered into her big, quiet home and closed and locked the door behind her. Her security guy walked down the steps back to the car grinning at her inebriated state, and the other capo waiting at the car laughed too. It was five-thirty in the morning, Paris time, and she had just left the club after partying all night long with celebrities and spoiled rich kids, giving her security fits trying to keep up with her as they wondered why the boss even cared. But he did, or they would not have been ordered to blanket her.

Inside her home, Bella couldn't get to her bed fast enough. She didn't view herself as drunk, but she knew she was getting there, because she knew she couldn't stand upright for much longer.

She stood at the bedroom door and smiled when she saw her big poster bed awaiting her. She pushed off from the doorjamb and began making her way to the bed.

But as soon as she did, in her dresser mirror she saw the face of a masked man as he was coming up behind her. She screamed and attempted to run away, but he grabbed her from behind and overpowered her and covered her mouth with duct tape. Then he turned her around and began to beat her brutally until she was bloodied.

As she screamed her muffled screams, and as she wiggled and beat on him trying to get away, another masked male came into her bedroom and helped the first assailant get her onto her bed. She was still fighting as one of them tried to hold her down and the other one, the bigger one, stripped her naked and did the very same thing Patrick had tried to do to Roz.

They took turns four times, a total of four brutal assaults. And when they had finished, the bigger one pulled out a knife and was about to slit Bella's face. But the smaller one stopped him. " Non. C'est un trop beau visage pour le detruire. On nous a ordonné de faire uniquement ce qu'on nous disait de faire." "(No. It's too beautiful a face to destroy. We were ordered to do only what we were told to do)."

The big man didn't like it, but he put his knife away. Then he angrily lifted Bella's small body and threw her against the wall as if she was discarded trash. Then he and the smaller one hurried through the back entrance they had entered into.

Bella was barely conscious as she used the wall to stand upright, trying with all she had to get herself some help. But before she could even push herself away from that wall, her legs buckled, and she lost all ability to do anything at all.

"Mick," she cried. " Mick ."

But she was still duct-taped. It was a silent scream.

And then she slid down that wall to the floor, with a heavy trail of blood sliding down that wall right along with her.