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I can't look at him anymore; it makes my chest ache to see what he's become. I turn from his piercing blue gaze and continue rifling through the shopping bags filled with jeans, t-shirts, panties, bras. He’s right—everything I could possibly need, except my phone.
“Well, I don’t know,” I start. “You kidnap me, threaten me, and steal my things. Sounds very Mafia to me.”
“You have no idea who,or whatI am.”
As if that answers anything.
“And,” he continues, “as soon as your father gives me what I need, you can go back to your life and marry your pretty little politician wannabe.”
Never. It took months and months of planning to get everything in place to escape a wedding to that asshole. “My father will never give you what you need. Looks like you did all this for nothing.”
The heat from his body sears my back, and the towel is yanked from around me. I spin to face him as he dangles it from his fingers.
“Xavier,” I yell, grabbing a handful of clothes to cover myself, “why did you do that?”
“Don't patronize me, Rhiannon,” he warns. “One way or another,” his heated gaze sets fire to my skin, “I'll get what I want.”
He drops the towel and slams the door on his way out.
Chapter 11
Xavier
Mafia.
What exactly is Mafia these days? Gone are the days of the 80’s where made men would shake down their enemies in the streets. Gone are the days where they handled things out in the open. Mafia nowadays is a loose term.
I’m a different kind of mafia, the CEO of my very own new world order. Security systems. I’ve designed the best in the world. My businesses are owned by my shell corporations, hiding my wealth, to make Mossack Fonseca look like a newspaper route company next to mine. I don’t have soldiers shaking down people in back alleys; my dealings are in boardrooms. And my army is the trained computer hackers who graduated top of their classes from MIT.
My hands are definitely not clean.
I didn’t get the nickname Dark Don of the business world for nothing. I’m a ruthless motherfucker, and I’m not afraid to play dirty.
“Mr. Stone,” Justin, a member of my security detail, calls out, semi jogging up beside me. “Got five minutes?”
“It’s late.” I continue to my office and sit behind my desk to finish work I dropped the instant the call came in she was making her move.
“I need to talk to you.”
My eyes lift from the documents, neatly stacked, waiting for my signature. “Make it quick.”
He takes a seat and bobs his legs with nervous energy. “Seems they already know Rhiannon is missing. Mr. DeLaurio says he’s offering a lot of money for her safe return.”
“Safe return? Ah, ok.” I let this information roll off my shoulders. He knows his daughter is missing. Good. Cause I’ve got her, and I’m not letting her go that easily.
Let him offer all the money in the world. I have just as much. If not more.
After a few more details, I dismiss Justin, finish up, and go to check on my little prisoner. Seeing Rhiannon again was not how I imagined. Agreeable, sweet, submitting to my every command is what I pictured. Because, although she's always been in this life, she somehow remained untouched by it all. But, she had some fight in her; I saw the scorn in her eyes when she looked at me as if I were shit on her shoe.
It’s quiet, too quiet, as I roam the halls of this massive house like a ghost. My proverbial sheet is a suit and tie as I stride down the endless hallway which leads to her room. Her ‘cell’—which is pretty fucking far away, I could probably drive there quicker—sits on the opposite side of the estate. Obviously, I didn't need a house this large—no one does—but it’s a statement. A statement written in bold across the front of the sprawling structure: don't fuck with me, or I’ll fuck you harder.
I grew up with nothing, and now I have everything I could ever want. Except, what's behind the locked door in front of me.
The lights are dim when I step inside and move to the bed where she sleeps bundled under the navy comforter. One small foot, with pink toenails, peeks from beneath the blanket.
Her chest rises and falls as she breathes through her tepid dreams.
As I study her, I take in the perfect lines and curves of her tight little figure. Pictures and small video clips showed how beautiful she'd become. But, seeing her now, in the flesh, big fucking difference. Ten years. Ten fucking years of watching her life play out from a distance. Ten years of planning and accumulating wealth to finally set my plan into action.
