Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
They had a long-standing agreement. Lucia would protect Franchesca when she could, and Franchesca wouldn’t ask questions when Lucia came and went through the hidden passage.
Her neighbor was a passive woman and didn’t have enemies—except for a dirtbag father, who came around every couple months to beat her. While Lucia did favors for her, like getting the dog back tonight, it didn’t mean she trusted Franchesca. If the price was right, Franchesca would sell Lucia down the river.
With a steadying breath, she left the woman in bed and strode toward the rear of the room.
Lucia’s apartment sat at the intersecting point of a T-shaped complex, surrounded by other units on three sides. But Franchesca’s apartment didn’t, and she had a back door. Lucky for Lucia, her guards didn’t watch the rear alley.
She slipped out the back, and fifteen minutes later, stood in front of another apartment door in an unlit corridor. This was where her plan met its first obstacle.
The apartment building was a shit hole, much like the rest of the slum. She’d expected a flimsy lock, one she could pick without making a sound.
This lock had been upgraded with a heavy-duty, electronic-looking thing. Goddammit!
It’d been added recently, given the shiny steel casing. Definitely not the kind of hardware one would find in a shanty town.
Her pulse sped up. Who the fuck were these guys?
Deep breath.
She could shoot off the deadbolt, rush in, and take them by surprise. Gunshots rang out all night long, so the neighbors wouldn’t bat an eye at the racket.
Or, since there wasn’t a peep hole, she could knock and let one of them open it to the barrel of her 9mm.
Option two was less dramatic, so she drew one of the Berettas from her waistband and rapped on the door with her knuckles.
She expected to wait a while or maybe hear an apprehensive Who’s there? on the other side. But the lock turned within seconds.
Were they stupid?
Then she saw it. Wedged in a crack high on the door frame was a tiny black disk.
A camera.
The door opened, and with a racing heart, she trained the gun on a chiseled bare chest. Shifting her gaze, she followed the stretch of tight boxer briefs to carved packs of muscle and inched upward to a dark trimmed beard, a toothpick lolling from smirking lips, a mean-looking facial scar, and finally, the sharpened slits of silver eyes.
So this was the American’s companion. Despite the welted laceration across his cheek, his smile was arresting, and he ranked pretty high up there on the handsome scale. But there was an echo of something in his eyes, something chilling and fractured, like a frozen scream in a haunted basement.
“Don’t make a sound.” She locked her outstretched arm and rested a finger against the trigger of the gun. “Do exactly what I say.”
“I appreciate the spirit in that,” he drawled with an American accent. “But when it comes to orders, I’m a giver, not a taker.”
He motioned for her to enter the unlit apartment. She didn’t move.
“I can see how that’s worked out for you.” She flicked her gaze between his scars—a bullet wound on his shoulder and a knife wound across his cheek. “I won’t hesitate to put another bullet in you.”
“Suit yourself.” With a shrug, he retreated into the apartment and flipped a light switch. “I’m Van, by the way.”
The fluorescents flickered on, illuminating a sleeper sofa converted into a bed, an open kitchen, a bedroom door, and leaning against the frame of that door was the man who had fucked her so soundly she still felt him in her teeth and her legs and everywhere in between.
Head tipped down, he stared at her from beneath heavy brows. His arms folded across his chest, with one sleeved in tattoos. Like his friend, he was clad only in fitted boxer briefs, his short hair disheveled and eyes sleepy.
She must’ve woken them. Neither man was armed, and the weapons they carried earlier were out of reach on the kitchen table. There were probably more firearms, but hers was out and ready.
Drawing the second Beretta from her back, she trained a gun on each of them, stepped into the apartment, and kicked the door shut behind her.
The one with the toothpick—Van—tilted his head as he watched her approach. “I expected you to walk funny. With more of a limp.” At her confused look, he said, “As small as you are, it wouldn’t have been easy to take Tate’s beast of a cock.”
Tate. The name fit him, and his cock… Her inner muscles clenched in memory, reawakening the delicious soreness there.
“How was it?” Van asked. “Did he ram it inside you with all the ferocity and pain it deserves?”
“Boundaries,” Tate growled. “Heed them.”
“Did the ol’ dog at least make you come?” Van asked conversationally, as if she weren’t aiming a bullet at his chest.