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Rich and powerful and with targets on our heads. Our lives hadn’t been the same since, but it beat the alternative. With our parents, we didn’t have a life.
We just survived.
I inched the diamond ring down my finger, doing my best to keep a strong hold on it. It was the only reminder I had of my men. They would come for me. The Salvatore brothers would burn down the world and everyone in it for their queen.
I stuffed the ring into my back pocket. It was the one thing I would never let my mother take from me. She had tried to strip me of my self-esteem and my sanity growing up. Every day with her felt like my own version of Hell.
Locked closets.
Dark rooms.
My screams.
Her laughter.
A nagging pain stabbed the side of my head, pounding from the lingering effects of the drugs and the migraine penetrating my skull. Images of the past flashed through mind, like a highlight reel of all my pain and suffering. She never cared about me, never loved me like a real mother. I was nothing more than a bargaining chip she held over my grandfather’s head.
I still couldn’t believe she tried to use my sketches to get my grandfather to let her back into his life. To regain the fortune she had lost. My entire life she treated me worse than trash, tormented me when she didn’t get her way with my grandfather. The truth made me sick to my stomach.
She killed my idol.
Stole a mother from her children.
A wife from her husband.
Years of suffering and beatings and torture my men received from their father. All because he was hurting over the death of Evangeline. Because he was so madly in love with his wife that losing her destroyed him.
His sons almost did the same to me.
A cloth that smelled like smoke covered my mouth. The scent was so overpowering it made my stomach churn, creating a nasty taste at the back of my throat. My morning sickness had been taking its toll on my body. A wave of nausea smacked me in the face, hitting me so hard I had to force down the chunks.
I was pregnant.
And they drugged me.
I said a silent prayer the baby would be okay. That no harm would come to him or her. I wasn’t ready to be a mother, but I wanted this baby.
Blinking a few times, I refocused my gaze and saw nothing but black. We were moving, the space dark and cramped. After escaping The Mansion, I was growing more accustomed to the dark. It didn’t scare me as much as it did before my men tested the limits of my mental illness.
My head pounded like a jackhammer drilling into concrete. Waves of nausea washed over me every time I rocked from side to side. Both of my shoulders hurt. They must have thrown me into the trunk like an old gym bag. Not a second thought that I was a living, breathing human being.
Luca told me pain is weakness leaving the body, a lesson he learned from his father. As I let his words wash over me, I thought about his rough touch and strong hands that had brought me to the brink of insanity for years. Being with my men had prepared me in different ways.
I prayed my handsome devils would find me. That they would gather The Devil’s Knights and not stop searching for me.
When the car stopped, I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep. I had no way of freeing myself from the restraints. It was better if they thought I was still unconscious. Then maybe I could use my senses to figure out where they were taking me.
The trunk opened. Saltwater penetrated my nostrils. Waves crashed from a distance.
One man reached into the trunk, dug his fingernails into my skin, and lifted me over his shoulder. He held me against his hard chest and smacked my ass. I ignored the pain, which shot up my leg, and pretended to sleep.
We moved closer to the water.
From what I could tell, we were at a marina. Fishing boats and yachts surrounded a large pier.
My heart slammed into my chest, the adrenaline and fear taking over. If we were traveling by water, how would they find me? Tears stung my eyes as he dropped me on the ground like a bag of garbage.
I groaned as my shoulder hit the wooden planks. Overcome by an intense pain traveling down to my lower back, settling into my bones, I cried out. But the handkerchief muffled the sound.
