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Chapter 2
Arabella held her composure until she had reached her private quarters on the villa’s second floor. Once inside, she leaned against the closed door and let her revulsion leak out of her on a shudder. At least she was getting better at the charade. There was a time when she might have had to bite back a scream.
Her skin crawled everywhere Vito had touched her. She could still feel his hard fingers on her body, on her breast. The sting of his offensive smack to her backside burned her dignity even more than it did her ass.
She hated being trotted out in front of his friends as his personal show pony, forced to dress and act as if she belonged to the coarse, criminal Breed male.
Though to be fair, in many ways Massioni did own her. Her life. Her freedom. Her unique Breedmate gift for premonition—the thing that first brought her to his attention three years ago. He owned all of that, no matter how much she despised him.
He might have owned her body, too, if she hadn’t found a way to convince him that the price of taking that part of her would cost him the one thing he couldn’t afford to lose.
The threat had kept her out of his reach so far, but there were times when she knew he’d been tempted to test her. She only hoped she wouldn’t kill him if he tried. Because no matter how clever she wanted to think she was in dealing with him, Vito Massioni always had one final, terrible card to play.
And so long as he held that over her head, she had no choice but to serve him.
She could never escape him, not even in death.
He’d made certain of that.
Arabella knew better than to keep Massioni waiting. He’d sent her away to fetch her scrying bowl while he entertained his boot-licking cronies in the grand salon. They were gloating over a large payout from a shipment of Red Dragon to the States and the United Kingdom—a narcotic that destroyed the minds of their own kind, the Breed, creating blood-addicted monsters from just the smallest dose. They didn’t care that their sudden windfall came at the expense of both Breed and human lives. She had learned a long time ago that Vito Massioni’s greed knew no bounds.
Nor did his violence.
That her gift had helped him amass his growing fortune, and the power that came with it, made Arabella want to retch.
How often had she thought about giving him a false reading from her scrying bowl?
How many times had she dreaded that her visions would one day prove incorrect?
But she hadn’t deceived him, not once.
And, thankfully, her visions had never been wrong.
Either of those failings would come at the cost of innocent lives. Not her own, but the people she cared about most in the world. The only family she had left now.
It was those precious lives she held close in her heart as she walked over to the cabinet across the room and retrieved the hammered gold bowl she would need for her reading downstairs. In reality, her gift would awaken when she peered into any standing pool of liquid, but Massioni insisted she use the ridiculous carnival fortune-teller’s style bowl for dramatic effect whenever she performed a public reading.
Cradling the shallow bowl in her palms, she drew the empty vessel out of the cabinet. Her own face stared back at her in the reflection on the polished gold basin—but that wasn’t all.
Behind her stood the ominous shape of someone else.
A man.
Tall, immense.
An intruder dressed entirely in black tactical gear.
Bella sucked in a startled breath.
Fear streaked through her, but before her shriek could rip up the back of her throat, a broad palm came up to cover her mouth.
Oh, God.
The bowl slipped out of her grasp, thudding onto the thick rug. Muscular arms caged her from behind, immobilizing her. She staggered on her high-heeled sandals, drawn helplessly against the unmistakable heat of a very strong, very male body.
Not Massioni’s. This wasn’t any of the other men gathered in the salon with him either, although there was no question that the male trapping her in his unbreakable hold was Breed.
