I’ve witnessed his danger. Tasted it. Survived it. This is different.
My attention shifts from his legs, coated in lean muscle, filling out his suit, to the hacksaw in his hand. Covered in blood.
I’m sorry,what?
“I’m a little busy, Trouble.” Benny’s brows dip. “Is that my suit?” His tone is even, with zero care for the damn saw in his hand.
What. The. Fuck?!
“Mm-mm.” I shake my head slowly, my eyes wide, unable to look away.
Just test drive him once.
Let him put you through a mattress.
You’ll be fine.
Lies!
My elbows give out, tipping my gaze from the man who’d pummeled me into his high Egyptian thread count to a body suspended from the ceiling.
Metal hooks tear through motionless flesh. A head lolls to the side at a weird angle, matted auburn hair clinging to a forehead in clumps. Gashes in the torso dripping blood onto the floor clog a scream in my throat.
My lips part, but nothing comes out.
“Bianca,” Benny calls out.
I fall back on my hands, legs flailing to push me out of the room. Jagged concrete in the hallway scrapes across my palms, which eventually land on Italian leather. I follow the pleated black pants up to a blazer and a cleft chin engraved with a scowl. His crooked nose and the scar across his brow are unfamiliar. His voice scratches at a memory.
He says something to Benny in the same language Alfred first spoke to me, which I now assume is Sicilian. Benny’s eyes shift from the gargoyle’s to mine.
“You beat Simone unconscious with a skillet?”
“Oh shit,” a man next to him chuckles.
The corner of Benny’s quirked mouth falls at Gargoyle’s mention of Diana Peretti.
That can’t be good.
He sighs and with a sneer says, “What a disappointment. Take her.”
What?
I scramble to my feet and lift my hands. “Wait!” I’m not trying to end up like that man on the ceiling.
Gargoyle pulls me into his chest and drags me out of the room spritzed in torture and commercial-grade cleaner.
“I’m not her!” My plea bounces around the cold hall. Benny’s emotionless figure shrinks.
“Help me!” I scream in Italian and English, gripping the side of one of the steel doors that Gargoyle snatches open. He pulls my hips and grunts at the hail of elbows I rain down.
“Let me go!”
I had Benny’s penis in my mouth—however many hours ago that was—andthisis how it ends? The least he could do is hear me out before he clips my fingers off like I’m some stranger.
You are some stranger.
I’m never going on a solo trip again!
