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Chapter One
Vivian Anna Antonelli screamed until her lungs were on the brink of exploding. Her voice had turned painfully hoarse and she couldn’t hold onto her tears much longer, despite vowing never to shed a single drop for anyone ever again.
Her dress created its own cage of claustrophobia around her and if nothing else she wanted her hands free so she could rip off the yards and yards of Chantilly lace and tear through the ribbons binding the corset to her breasts.
Yes, she was still wearing her wedding gown.
She jerked angrily and futilely at the silk tie keeping both her wrists restrained behind her back, then further fastened onto the seat behind her, securing her in place. She had never been madder at anyone one person in her whole life than she was presently athim.And she didn’t even know who he was.
She took a moment to gather a breath. She couldn’t go on this way for much longer without passing out. It didn’t help that she hadn’t eaten much in the last two days except for a few cups of coffee and the odd slice of toast.
She glanced around the plane, or rather private jet, the epitome of luxury swallowing her whole, until her gaze landed on three tall men, who sat around a gleaming table, talking softly and seriously to each other.
She didn’t need to be able to see under their clothes to know they were powerfully built. Their equally expensive suits accentuated their broad shoulders and sculpted chests, while their trousers barely concealed their muscle-riddled thighs from her viewpoint.
All three of them had dark, almost black hair and astonishingly stormy green eyes, undoubtedly linking them as brothers.
If she didn’t know better, at first glance she would have mistaken them for models. But on closer inspection, the tattoos, the rings, the scars, the subtle but no less nefarious aura they exuded with zero effort meant there was nothing good and wholesome about any of them. A type she recognized without fault. She grew up around people like them and she hated every moment of it.
Ignoring the other two men, Vivian zoomed in on the third one. The one who had dared to steal her from her own wedding, right in front of the priest, dared to bring her onto his jet and then proceeded to tie her to the seat using his tie.
She still couldn’t believe the events that had led up to her being kidnapped in her wedding dress of all things.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Every carefully laid plan had now been ruined by one infuriating man she hadn’t known existed until the minute he appeared in front of her.
Oh, god.
She had to get off this plane, get back to DC or maybe even Athens if that was required and then try and repair the damage this whole fiasco had set into motion. Lives depended on the marriage going ahead as planned.
“I demand to be released immediately. I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with—” She addressed her perpetrator directly. It was all his fault she was here instead of being married to another man altogether.
“I know exactly who I’m dealing with. Now be quiet or I’m going to have to do something about it.”
Vivian swallowed her words, opened her mouth to speak again, and instead found herself only capable of emitting one long angry howl. How dare he tell her to be quiet? She wasn’t a petulant child that he could talk to that way, or an infatuated teen-which given his looks would make all women fall at his feet and clearly something he seemed accustomed to happening around him.
Not her.
She had enough of men in power telling her what to do and the sooner she got rid of every last one of them the sooner she could start living a normal life at the ripe age of twenty-four.
She still had plans to go to college and study something, anything, probably art, or literature. Her family had insisted that Vivian and her cousin have American tutors on the compound. So while she was fluent in Italian, Russian, and English, she spoke English without a trace of an accent.
She didn’t even know what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her mother had always told her belonging to the Italian mafia meant all she had to do was be pretty, be dumb and be quiet for the men in the family.
The same family patriarchs who had killed her mother in cold blood ten years ago, in the mafia compound in Turin, Northern Italy where Vivian had lived all her life.
“You sure about this?” One of the men asked, gesturing toward her.
“It’s done now,” her kidnapper replied, tossing his glance at her and unnerving her in a way she couldn’t comprehend. She knew she wanted to kill him for destroying their plans, but he also evoked a bizarre reaction in her that cast a wave of heat over her whole body.
“This,” she said, placing venomous emphasis on the wordthisbecause that was how she had been referred to,“is absolutely barbaric. Are you just entirely deranged? Release me at once.”
“That’s not going to happen, Princess.” The new and unexpected bane of her existence said without bothering to look at her this time.
“Do you really know who I am? I don’t think you do because if you did you wouldn’t have dared taken me in the first place. Look, I’ll forget this whole thing ever happened. Is it money you’re after? Territory? Arms? Tell me what you want, let me go and I’ll arrange it.”
That was a blatant lie. She had no money. She worked as a waitress at a coffee shop in Washington DC. Territory? Arms? She could conjure those things up the same way she could conjure chocolate out of thin air. She may have been raised in an Italian mafia compound all her life, but since the death of the Don a year ago and the disbanding of the mafia family she had done nothing but wait for this marriage, which had been cast in stone years and years before, to happen. The last thing on the list that would tie them to the Antonelli mafia.
“Nope. It’s just you that I want, Princess.”
