Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 51733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 172(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 172(@300wpm)
She knew what she was doing was wrong, but—
Help me, God.
She didn't want to kill anyone, but when she thought about how this man she was fighting against could be the same person who was responsible for Giancarlo's disappearance—
Please.
Because all she could see was red even as her heart started to bleed tears.
This is not the way to avenge me, dolcezza.
Shock blazed through Sarica's body as she heard the unmistakable sound of Giancarlo's voice whispering inside of her mind.
And even though she knew this was nothing but a hallucination—
She also knew it was God answering her prayers as her mind broke free from the chains of vengeance.
Thank You.
The knife slipped from her fingers just as her opponent's full force slammed into her, sending her crashing to the ground. The impact drove the air from her lungs, stars exploding behind her eyes. She waited for her life to end, but something rough scraped against her face instead.
A blindfold?
Her captor's touch was oddly careful—-and that worried her more than brutality would have. Was this because her face was no longer hidden? Had her opponent recognized her—-and intended to ransom Sarica back to the Marchettis?
Every instinct screamed at her to stay alert as her captor bound her hands, the restraints firm but not cruel.
She struggled to keep track of her surroundings as her captor led her to the back of a vehicle. But memories of the past three months persisted in distracting her.
Only his famiglia knew the truth of what she had been doing, and because the Marchettis had agreed to play their role as coldly furious almost-in-laws to perfection, the entire world was happy to hate on her alongside them.
Night after night, all eyes were on her, a girl who shamelessly painted the town red using her missing fiancé's money.
And that was why...
None of them ever cared enough to look beyond the surface.
None of them ever cared to know what exactly she was doing inside the clubs owned by the Prince of Killers.
Because if they had—-
Then her secret would have long been exposed.
They would have known Sarica Nuñez and Seijcut were one.
And that she had completely lied about her reasons for placing a bounty on Giancarlo Marchetti's head.
The people she had met as Seijcut were exactly as she imagined. People who actually had no information to give—-but because they hated the man she loved, they had wanted to work "with" Seijcut in finding Giancarlo.
They had wanted to exact revenge on him if he were ever found...
And that was why Sarica had passed them on to the Prince of Killers, and they, too, went missing the way Giancarlo did.
The vehicle hit a bump, her body swaying as her unseen driver made a turn, and with it, her thoughts swerved similarly. Viktor Biancardi's face flashed in her mind, and her fingers curled into fists behind her back.
Please, God.
Please.
Please keep me from killing him.
Tears burned her eyes as she thought of Viktor still walking around a free man while her Giancarlo, oh God...
She squeezed her eyes shut, and that was when she heard it.
This is not the way, dolcezza.
Giancarlo's beloved voice.
You cannot kill him.
Must not.
Because I cannot keep my promise to you if you're behind bars.
GIANCARLO STOOD AT the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, the city of Kivr's capital spread before him, and beyond it, the vast desert. His reflection stared back at him: still in tactical gear, mask discarded on his desk, the silver streak in his hair gleaming under the moonlight.
For sixteen months, he had walked the razor's edge between life and death. Had done things that would haunt him until his last breath. But nothing—not the fall, not the months of rehabilitation, not even the choices that had led him here—nothing had prepared him for tonight.
Seijcut.
The name had been all everyone in the underworld could talk about for the past three months. A mysterious entity offering obscene amounts of money for information about him—-dead or alive. Two hundred million dollars total, sourced from his own inheritance to her.
He had spent weeks analyzing Seijcut's every move, every decision. The careful wording of the bounty. The way targets were chosen. How those who claimed to have killed him mysteriously disappeared, while those who offered genuine information about his survival were left unharmed.
No wonder the moves had felt familiar.
No wonder each strike had carried echoes of his own training.
Because it was her.
Sarica.
A part of him still had a hard time believing that after sixteen months of thinking they would never cross paths again—-
She was now within reach.
Locked in a room that only he could open.
And his to do however she wished.
In the sixteen months he had been away, his contact at the FBI had regularly sent reports to him about Sarica and his famiglia. It was the only thing that kept him sane. To know that they were safe. But while he was able to read the reports on his kin, everything about Sarica went straight to the file cabinet...until now.