CHAPTER 1
“Midway upon the journey of our life,
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
-The Divine Comedy,Dante
BLAKE
In the first few hours of December twenty-eighth, we pull into the far end of a parking lot outside a small Las Vegas chapel. It’s the kind of place where people get hitched after they drink enough to think getting married to a stranger is a good idea.
The door to the chapel opens, and a couple comes tumbling out, the woman’s fingers getting tangled in the man’s hair as they exchange a vigorous kiss. She giggles and leans against a wall while he devours her neck. A few long seconds pass with them feeling each other up before they manage to pour themselves into a waiting cab. I watch them drive off, feeling more sober than I’ve ever been in my entire life.
We’re next.
I’m about to start my year by marrying the man sitting beside to me. Not that I want to. Not that it’s my choice.
“Blake. Listen to me,” my kidnapper says. My captor.
Not Rowan Miller, the man I fell for, but Nero De Luca, the man I don’t know.
“I’m going to step out of the car and come around to your side.” His voice is low and steady. It infuriates me how he can sound so calm while he’s destroying my life. “Don’t run, and don’t try to fight me.”
At first, I tried to run each time we stopped at a red light, but I can’t do that anymore. Not since Nero attached my wrist to the door handle with a zip tie.
But he’ll have to cut the zip tie off to get me inside the chapel. Which means this will be my best chance to try again.
I look out the window, searching for anyone who might be able to help me.
I’ve never been to Vegas. As far as I can tell, we’re nowhere near the famous strip with the hotels and casinos.
This area is desolate. Run-down. The only other business that’s still open at this hour is the porn shop on the other side of the four-lane highway.
Euphoria Emporium.That might be my best bet.
“And if I do?” I ask while keeping my eyes on the shop.
“You’ll get yourself hurt.”
“You mean,you’llhurt me.”
“I have no intention of hurting you, Blake.”
My hands turn to fists in my lap. “But you will, if you have to.”
Rowan Miller was a lie.
And this man? A liar.
I can’t believe that before I found out who he really was, I was going to tell him I loved him.
In love with a criminal, just like my mom.
I spent my whole life determined to be nothing like her, and then I went and did it anyway. I fell for a man who’s no better than my father.
Nero betrayed me, but I betrayed myself.Again.I was cautious, until I wasn’t, and then I was so invested in proving Brett wrong about him, that I refused to acknowledge the signs that something was amiss.
