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Instead of touching me sexually though, he grabbed my arm, hauled me around the bed, then shoved me onto a sofa on the far side of the vast bedroom away from the door. Taking a quilt off the bed, he threw it over me. I gripped the silk covering, trying to stop shaking, trying to think through my exhaustion. He tugged a phone from his back pocket. Then held it up to my face to unlock it… My phone. He must have stolen it while he was lying in wait for me in my room.

He tapped out a text. Then he dialled someone. He spoke to them in rapid Italian, his tone commanding. My brain was too fatigued to even attempt to decipher what words I might know. After ending the call, he dropped the phone, then stamped on it repeatedly, crushing it beneath his boot. The fog was starting to envelop me, the thunder and lightning crashing outside felt strangely cathartic, the rhythm of the rain pelting the glass soothing. He stripped out of his clothing, down to a pair of boxers, his scarred body strangely magnificent gilded by the shadowy moonlight. But then lightning struck again and illuminated the scarlet stain pumping from his side…

Blood. He was bleeding. Had he been shot? During the escape?

I lay there, trying to make sense of the nightmare as he strode into the adjoining bathroom. Should I get up? Should I run? But I lay motionless, anchored to the sofa, shivering violently, vaguely aware of the noises coming from the bathroom but unable to make my mind engage to plan any kind of coherent strategy. I heard swearing and a hiss of pain. When he reappeared, he had a bandage wrapped around his midriff, his face expressionless, but for the thin lines of strain around his mouth. The knife appeared again and, for a second, terror shot through me, but all he did was cut off the gag. Then I noticed a prominent shape in his boxers. What should have scared me barely registered though, through the fog of misery and fear.

‘Dormi,’ he demanded.

Sleep.

I watched him walk over to the door, lock it and put the key and the knife under the pillow on the bed, before he lay down on it and pulled the remaining covers over himself. I listened to his breathing deepening above the distant thunder. I should stay awake, should find a way to escape. Get the knife… My hands were still bound.

But my limbs refused to obey the frantic thoughts sprinting through my head.

Eventually, instead of getting off the sofa where he had dumped me, I found myself drifting to another dimension, my breathing slowing to pulse in time with the heavy rhythm of my heartbeats.

Why couldn’t I move? Why couldn’t I do anything? I pondered, but my thoughts lacked urgency as my breathing deepened and lengthened, leading me towards another place, where the comforting safety of oblivion beckoned.

CHAPTER TWO

Dante

Waves of pain woke me into burning agony. I groaned, aware not just of the gunshot wound in my side, but also the insistent throbbing in my cock.

Dull winter light brushed over the shape on the sofa beside the bed and the pale face visible above the quilt. I breathed in the scent of sultry feminine sweat tinged with roses—and the pulsing in my cock got worse. I eased onto my back, annoyed by my reaction.

The movement shot more pain through the wound. I cursed, becoming aware of an excruciating headache now too, radiating from my temples, and the emptiness in my stomach, and all the other aches and pains which I had managed to ignore the night before… To get free of my brother’s island.

The good news was the accumulated agony killed the morning erection.

The girl’s heavy breathing suddenly stopped. I turned my head carefully and noticed her stiffen as she became aware of her surroundings, and what had happened the night before… She said nothing, made no sound, but I knew she was awake.

I wondered if she would whisper to herself, letting me into her thoughts. I hoped so.

Keeping my fluency in English a secret from Vito and his men had been an advantage I had utilised. They had spoken in English when they wished to keep information from me… This was how I had discovered the girl’s existence. And that of her sister. My brother’s new wife, who was pregnant with his child.

Bitterness assailed me.

I did not know why Vito had not killed me as soon as I had been captured and brought to his island. But in the months I had been kept imprisoned there—beaten, abused, spat on—I had come to the conclusion he had kept me alive to punish me, for defying him, and demanding what was rightfully mine.

Fuck him. The torment and degradation had only made me more determined to get my due, by whatever means necessary.

I deserved a part of the Rocco empire, our father’s empire. Maybe that bastard Salvatore Rocco had discarded my mother and I, maybe I had never been his legitimate heir, but I was still of Rocco blood. I had worked like a dog—from the age of eight—to claw my way to the top of the Malvini family, a street gang originally formed by my mother’s brothers. And once I had become the Malvini boss at the age of eighteen, I had worked for ten years to turn it into a lucrative criminal enterprise which had made me phenomenally rich.

Maybe we did not have the scope or ambition of the Rocco Syndicate. Yet. But Vito had underestimated my ruthlessness and my determination to get what I deserved.

I breathed through the new wave of agony while I tested the wound. The bullet had torn through the fleshy skin in my side and did not seem to have hit anything vital. I had doused it in antiseptic last night and bandaged it. I would survive. I had suffered worse injuries.

The girl still hadn’t moved. But I could feel her fear.

Fear was good, it meant she would obey me.

I would keep her with me as a bargaining chip. Now I was free, I would be able to lead any negotiations with Vito. That bastard had tried to call a truce with the Malvinis, but I had refused to sanction any deal while I was a prisoner—knowing Vito’s real motivation behind the offer was to trick my men into accepting his dominance, before he killed me.

Vito might pretend to call me brother now. But we both knew that relationship had died the day our father had thrown my mother and I off Isla Donna—the day Salvatore Rocco had turned my love and respect for him into hate and resentment.

I still remembered too, how Vito had stood by, frozen—my older brother who I had begged to help me—and done nothing. Not one thing to stop him.