Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 132791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Enzo patched up my eye and cut the zip ties on my wrists from behind.
“Hey, nothing personal, right, Callaghan?” He clapped my shoulder, winking. “We’re still on for that poker night next week?”
“Sure.” I curled my index and middle fingers into Igor’s eye sockets, as though his skull was a bowling ball, tucking it under my armpit. A spider crawled up from one of the sockets, hurrying up my arm, searching for an escape. “Nothing personal.”
Eyeball in pocket, I leisurely stopped to admire their different torture devices on my way out.
CHAPTER TWO
LILA
The ground shook beneath my bare feet.
A flash of a shadowed figure zipped past me from the corner of my eye.
I snapped my gaze up from the sketchbook in my lap, on high alert. I was sitting on the stone fountain in the courtyard, pouring the shape of the Amalfi Coast from memory onto the page.
I wore my pink satin nightgown and my hair was in a loose, long braid. It was pitch black, save for the amber light spilling from the windows.
My vision had always been good. Compensation for what wasn’t, Mama told me.
I spotted a figure prowling from our entrance door toward a gunmetal Mercedes-Benz G 63 that blocked one of our three garages. An uncommonly tall male, pale as a vampire and equally as frightening, stalked outside. He wore a dark coat and moved like a serpent, gliding through the night with the unnerving slickness of someone who belonged to it.
Look away now, quick, before he sees you, Mama’s voice reproached in my head. You’re not to make eye contact with people, Lila!
But what was the harm?
It was too dark for him to notice me.
I’d always watched people secretly. It was the morsel of normalcy I was still allowed. My loneliness was so intimate, so familiar to me, it became a friend in itself. It was my only companion other than Mama and Imma.
I kept staring, hoping it was Tate Blackthorn. The man who gave me the most wonderful present I’d ever been gifted—a dance. A moment of feeling like a woman.
Not a child, not a disabled person, a woman.
It happened a year ago at my brother Luca’s engagement party, and I’d been playing it in my head every night since. My most monumental moment in my eighteen years on this planet was with a complete stranger who used me as a tool to make his wife jealous.
And the sad part was…I’d let him do it all over again. This was how badly I craved human connection.
My eyes drank in his silhouette—obstinate jaw, chiseled cheekbones, features as smooth and icy as winter frost.
Could he be Tate? Could he give me another dance? Could I be so foolish as to ask for one?
He weaved through the shadows dancing across the pebbled front yard. Stopped. Tipped his head up to the moon. The moon stared back, like they were sharing a secret.
The light from one of the windows caught his hair, tangling into the strands. It burned burgundy. Rusty, like medieval copper. Not the gleaming stygian of Tate Blackthorn.
My solar plexus tightened.
It wasn’t him.
This man looked like he was sprung from fire. His hair tousled like dancing flames. And still… He appeared unbearably cold. I had the feeling I’d get frostbite if I touched him.
The pencil slipped between my fingers.
Hit the cobbled ground with a clink I couldn’t hear.
The man stopped abruptly. Froze.
Shit, shit, shit.
He heard.
I wasn’t supposed to be outside. Alone in the dark.
My legs clayed into stone. I couldn’t run even if I wanted to.
His head twisted in my direction. Slowly. Leisurely. Almost tauntingly.
Our gazes clashed in the moon-frosted courtyard. Two animals—a predator and prey—standing on opposite sides of a riverbank.
His shadowed face twisted. He was contemplating something.
Assessing. Scheming.
A rakish half smile pulled at the corner of his lips.
A decision had been made. My belly coiled into knots.
He advanced toward me. I scooted back, my butt dragging along the fountain’s edge until I felt the water skimming the back of my thighs. It was ice cold. Running would be futile. He’d chase me, then catch me, then punish me.
I knew that, even though I didn’t know him.
As he got closer, I saw he was missing an eye. The entire left side of his face was scarlet red. His nose was broken. A human skull was pinned under his arm.
And yet…he was beautiful. Beneath the blood, drainage, and fluid coming from his eyeball, and bruises, and gore.
Beautiful like violent art.
His entire demeanor was abrasive, even without all the blood. Like his existence was an attack on mine. And yet, I couldn’t look away.
My heart felt like something foreign I accidentally swallowed. I wanted to vomit it out of my body. I’d never been so scared in my life.
His mouth moved, and my eyes clung to it.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?” He examined me through his one good eye, lethally amused. “If it isn’t the Ferrantes’ innocent little princess.”