Prologue Part I

Alcee woke with a start and clutched her chest as the loud bang of furniture being knocked over forced her to an upright position.

Hollering in the adjoining room was coupled with the sound of fists flying and she scrambled from the bed. Digging around for the clothing and trench coat she’d worn to this hotel room, she considered her clothes were returning to her body with far more alacrity than her paramour from the night before removed them.

The sound of a man begging another to not kill him raised her hackles. Looking around frantically she knew there was only one door from the bedroom to the main hotel door but as she looked at the sliding balcony door, she deliberated whether the balcony met with the other room she’d crossed through the night before.

Grabbing her phone, purse, and shoes in her hands she quietly tiptoed to the balcony, flinching when the unmistakable sound of a silenced gun went off. She knew the pop sound as sure as her last name was Mariani.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Alcee you idiot!” she whimpered to herself as she stepped onto the patio. The sun was barely breaking the horizon, and the view would have been breathtaking had she not quite possibly just heard someone being murdered in the adjoining suite. “Please don’t let them be Dad’s men.”

Desperately she leaned over the balcony and noted the height of the room she was in and mentally berated herself for falling asleep. Turning to slide along the cool concrete of the balcony, she peered through the crack of the curtains into the room and saw the man she’d spent the night with unscrewing the silencer off the pistol in his hand and glaring down at the body on the floor.

She didn’t recognize him at all and as she looked around the room, she admitted even the three other men in the room who were on their knees in front of her lover and two other men towering over them, were also unknown to her. It wasn’t like she knew all of her father’s men but if someone was coming to drag her sorry ass back, he’d send someone she knew.

Which meant, she was in a hotel room with a man who in the last several minutes committed murder, and she was a witness and if her father found out, he’d order a clean up of the entire group. Not that she’d live to see it if he found out what she’d done before she made her escape. Or worse, if the man in the next room opted to simply get rid of the witness he’d fucked the night before.

She looked around again and grimaced as she looked upward. They were in a penthouse suite. The man who’d purchased her virginity for a cool million the night before was living large. She dropped her trench coat, figuring if she was going to have to shimmy onto the roof of the balcony and try to get to the roof of the hotel, she wasn’t going to be able to do it wearing a long coat. Then her eyes caught the drop again and she knew there was no way she was going to be able to get off the balcony.

She needed to find another way. She was a nerd not an athlete and scaling a building to a rooftop was going to lead to her death and she hadn’t just boldly defied her father and grandfather by giving up her virginity to a stranger instead of the man they’d betrothed her to since she was a teenager to die falling off a building.

“Good going Alcee,” she muttered under her breath, “you managed to find your escape from the Mariani family only to stupidly fall into bed with a murderer. Fuck.” She kicked a chair and then cringed as the metal scraped along the concrete floor of the patio then clattered against the glass door.

When the patio door slid open and her lover from the night before stuck his head out, she immediately cowered in the other chair. Bruno was drop dead gorgeous and incredibly massive. Easily six foot six with shoulders as wide as a linebacker’s and his feet were twice the length of hers. Her body clenched with the memory of what else was humungous on him and she shivered. If she hadn’t been so terrified in this moment, she’d be parting her legs like Moses did the sea.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Watching the sunrise,” she met his gaze fearfully, swallowing her terror where it boiled like a festering sourdough-starter in her gut. “I was going to leave but you seemingly have company.” Her hands were visibly shaking.

“Aya,” he spoke her fake name gently, moving to kneel in front of her, his hand brushing a dark curl off her forehead before gripping her fingers. “You should still be sleeping. Did I not wear you out enough?”

She shook her head unable to meet his gaze, “you, um, there was yelling, and I don’t like confrontation, so I came out here until the yelling stopped.”

“Did you look in the window?” He motioned from where he just emerged.

“No. I came out here as soon as the yelling got really loud, and I simply sat here.” She rested her chin on her knees and prayed he bought her story.

“Good girl,” he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I would very much like for us to see each other again but I can’t do so if you’re poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“I understand, Bruno,” she whispered twisting her lips.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” he whispered as he leaned closer stroking her cheek. His eyes were a warm honeyed brown with flecks of gold, and they stared into hers like he was staring into her soul.

The scent of gunpowder was on his fingers, and it made her heart pound with fear, but she feigned ignorance as she closed her eyes when his lips connected with hers.