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“Three days,” Dante corrected, red slowly creeping at the edges of his vision, his blood rushing to his ear as the vein beside his neck began to throb.
“Y…yeah,” the guy stuttered. “He… was warning me. Telling me he had them torture and rape her just to see if she knew anything, and then had her rescued by an anonymous tip.”
Torture and rape her.
Torture. And. Rape. Her.
Rape her.
Amara.
His Amara.
At fifteen fucking years old.
All his doubts over the years solidified and suddenly memories flashed through his mind – her stiffening if he came up behind her, her hesitation the first time she’d undressed him, the panic that hit her out of nowhere in the middle of fucking sometimes. Dante had always chalked it up to her post-traumatic stress, well aware that the experience of her physical torture would never entirely leave her. He had had his doubts sometimes, but never, not once, knew she’d been violated like that. The doctor had never said a word about it during the days he’d spent at the hospital, the police report had nothing about it. She had never said a word. Not. One. Word. Every time he had been with her, fucking her brains out or eating her pussy or talking dirty to her, she had never shared something that he should have known.
And now she had vanished.
It all crashed around him, shaking his trust in the one woman he had trusted more than anything else.
Dante pulled his gun, aimed it at the man’s head, and shot. His finger didn’t leave the trigger, shot after shot ringing out until the gun ran out of bullets and the man’s body ran out of place.
It was time.
Time for him to take the throne.
Time for him to find MrX.
Time for his queen to come home.
Lorenzo Maroni’s countdown had begun.
Amara looked at her first client in the new city, a giant dark-haired man – and she meant giant, even bigger than Dante, who was the largest man she knew – and tried to keep her facial expression serene. Because this guy wasn’t just a giant, he was a scarred, one-eyed giant. And he had a real eye patch over his right eye. She’d never seen anyone with an eye patch.
She suddenly had flashbacks to the bodice rippers she used to read in her teenage years, of sexy, dashing pirates and damsels in distresses. He was definitely sexy, in a rough, dangerous way that as a woman Amara could appreciate.
She opened her door wider, pasted a polite smile on her face, and welcomed him into the office.
“I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding the place, Mr. Villanova,” she sat down on her comfortable armchair, the view outside the window lush, tropical green.
The man took a seat across her in the matching cream armchair, watching her with one eye such a light hazel it almost looked golden. She had never seen anyone with that shade of eye color either. His other eye, the one with the eye patch, had a wicked-looking scar going under it, from the side of his skull to the edge of his lip, pulling it down in a permanent half frown.
“Call me Alpha,” he spoke smoothly, his voice rough.
Amara felt her eyebrows go up at his name. Well, she’d never known an Alpha either. Seemed like this city was going to be a lot of firsts for her.
“Alpha,” Amara corrected herself. “I’m Dr. Mara Rossi. What can I do for you?”
“May I call you Mara?” he asked, looking around her medium-sized office. After selling her apartment in Shadow Port and grabbing Lulu, Amara had packed up her stuff and asked her half-sister Nerea to arrange a fake passport for her under a fake name that was close enough that she’d still recognize it, just so she could travel to a location unknown. She had ended up traveling down south to the tropical big city of Los Fortis, a place she’d researched well before for any connections to Tenebrae or the Outfit. There were none.
She needed to put her old life behind, everything except her mother, whom she still called every other day through a burner phone, swearing her to secrecy. Her mother, she knew, would keep her secret this time. And though a huge part of Amara wanted to call Vin or Tristan or Morana, she knew a clean break was for the best. Especially from Dante. They were through.
“Of course,” Amara replied to the man, focusing on him. After getting her degree and serving her clinical hours under the supervision of the University counselor, Amara had been a practicing licensed therapist for six months. And she hadn’t even advertised after moving to Los Fortis, so getting the call from this man to schedule an appointment had been a surprise.
“I’m not here for therapy, Mara,” the man told her, and suddenly, Amara felt her palms begin to sweat. His size and form, which she had appreciated a second ago, became more threatening.
She stayed calm, practicing her counting. “Then, why are you here?”
