Evie:
As I stood on the terrace of my luxury suite in Vito Rocco’s huge villa on his private island, Isla Donna, my gaze drifted over the dark coastline in the distance. The lights of Naples were sprinkled over the headland. A crack of lightning split the evening sky, illuminating Capri, five miles away.
My heart swelled. My sister Mia had just married a Mafia boss and I couldn’t be happier for her.
Eight months ago, I’d persuaded Mia to have a wild night with the owner of a superyacht in Naples whose exclusive party we’d managed to finagle an invite to.
Of course, we hadn’t known then that Vittorio Rocco was the head of a powerful crime syndicate, or that he would get Mia pregnant that night and end up capturing her heart.
I blinked back happy tears.
Mia and I had been on our own since I was twelve and Mia just fifteen, after our mum had run out on us. My older sister had always been so responsible, so grounded, so willing to take on any burden to protect me. But there had been no one there to protect her—which was why, despite the danger Vito lived in, I loved that they had found each other.
Their wedding today—which he’d insisted on, because my sister was due to have his baby in a few weeks’ time—had been nothing short of magical.
Vito hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her.
As I watched the storm clouds massing on the horizon, I couldn’t deny a twinge of loneliness though.
I’d spent Christmas alone this year for the first time, in the flat in London we’d once shared, because Mia’s life was with Vito now. And she was determined not to let me get any further into his world, because she was still my big sister…
I rubbed my arms, feeling the chill—even under the sweater I’d donned over my blue silk maid of honour gown.
‘You’re jealous,’ I whispered to myself.
Mia thought I romanticised her life here too much, perhaps because I’d got a bit obsessed with the man Vito had been keeping prisoner on the island for months now. The man I’d spotted yesterday morning while on my run. Mia had been furious with me when I’d asked about him, after realising he had to be related to Vito, because they looked so alike…
I hadn’t told her though, that I’d got close enough for him to see me, too. The way his intense blue gaze had scoured my body had been as exciting as it was disturbing, just before the two men who were guarding him had forced him to his knees, while shouting at me to leave immediately.
Sympathy and guilt welled in my chest, and I pressed my fist to my heart.
‘He’s not hot, he’s a killer, Evie,’ I whispered, forced to recall what Mia had told me yesterday by the pool.
Dante Malvini, Vito’s prisoner, might be his half-brother, but he was also the rival Mafia boss who had tried to kill both Mia and Vito all those months ago in Naples… On the night they’d first met. The night Mia had become pregnant.
A strange popping sound above the distant rumble of thunder snapped me out of my thoughts. Shouts came from below me in Italian, too distant to hear properly, and lights flashed along the road I’d taken yesterday to reach the cove where their prisoner was being held.
I dashed inside and closed the terrace door, breathing heavily, the sense of threat not at all romantic. I had no idea what was going on, but I was probably better off not standing exposed on my terrace.
I was so freaked out I didn’t notice the shape in the shadows behind me until a wide palm slapped over my mouth, cutting off my terrified scream.
An arm—strong, muscular, unforgiving—wrapped around my midriff and yanked me backwards, knocking the air out of my lungs when my back hit something solid.
I struggled to breathe and tried to fight, but my body was trapped against another, much bigger one, its strength immense.
‘Silenzio!’ The rough whisper against my ear had shock turning to fear. I started to shake.
Dante! It had to be him. The man I had been so fascinated with had escaped. And he was going to kill me.
In my panic I dragged in a lungful of his scent, which only disorientated me more because I caught the wild rose smell of my own shampoo. Had he been in my shower? While I was daydreaming about him?
I struggled against his hold, but my limbs seemed to weigh several tons. He lifted his hand from my mouth, only to gag me with a piece of torn fabric.
Tears welled in my eyes. My mind floated on a sea of terrifying thoughts while he tied a rope around my wrists.
How long had he been in the room? Long enough to prepare for my arrival. I hadn’t turned the lights on when I’d come into the suite earlier, still dreamy after the wedding and captivated by the romance of the night-time view from the terrazzo as the storm approached.
You clueless idiot, Evie.
He murmured something in Italian, the tone harsh and unmoved. I only caught a couple of words—silenzio again, and obbediscimi—which I guessed meant obey me, but my Italian was barely functional at the best of times. And these were not the best of times.
He yanked the rope attached to my wrists, hauling me through my bedroom and into the bathroom, then flicked the light switch.
My breath clogged as I got my first good look at him, much closer now than he had been on the beach yesterday. He wore only a pair of dirty jeans. The muscular slopes of his bare chest flexed, covered in tattoos and a dusting of dark hair that trailed down to a fine line through lean abs. He turned his back on me. My shocked gasp was audible above the hum of the room’s fan.
His back was covered in scars and bruises, some old, but many new. The welts crisscrossed his spine, his ribs visible. He was thin, too thin, but still appeared overwhelming, his shoulders wide, his arms roped with muscle, his damp hair an inky black in the fluorescent light. His tanned skin gleamed, the elaborate tattoo of a winged beast covering one shoulder and the gold cross around his neck somehow more vivid against his swarthy complexion. I noticed the blood-stained towels on the bathroom floor and the torn remnants of a dirty shirt in the tiled cubicle.
So, he had taken a shower. Probably while I was celebrating the marriage of his brother to my sister.
People had always called me petite because I barely scraped five foot. And I’d always hated it, but I felt petite now, in fact I felt totally insignificant. He towered over me as he strode towards the bathroom cabinet, still yanking the rope, forcing me to follow.
He rummaged through the cabinet. Then I spotted the butt of the gun tucked into the back of his jeans.
I’d seen guns before now—all Vito’s men were armed. But only from a distance. Up close, this weapon looked much more deadly, no longer like a movie prop, but horrifyingly, terrifyingly real.
His gaze connected with mine in the cabinet mirror as he slammed it shut. He stuffed the box of painkillers he’d grabbed into his jeans pocket then turned around. And drew out the revolver.
I began to shake again. Absolutely petrified now. My mind numb with fear.
‘Please don’t shoot me…’ I said, but the plea came out in a muffled grunt around the gag.
He tugged the rope until I was so close to him I could feel the heat of his chest, see the nick on his chin where he must have shaved with my razor… His clean musty scent filled my senses.
Then he trailed the barrel of the revolver over my cheek and down my neck, the light touch chilling my already clammy skin.
‘Obbediscimi,’ he ordered again, his tone low, but the demand for me to obey him unmistakable. His pupils widened to edge out the cerulean blue of his irises as he whispered the word.
What was that? Awareness? Arousal?
I shuddered.
But then he frowned, as if his response had annoyed him.
Was that frustration on his face? Anger? Denial? God, I hoped so, because I did not want to get assaulted right now.
I had virtually no experience when it came to sex… The truth was, I’d never even gone all the way with any of the tame boys I’d dated in secondary school. Mia had once joked that I was a clueless romantic. I wasn’t waiting for Mr Right, because I wasn’t quite that naïve… After all, I’d grown up without a dad, just like Mia, because neither of the men who had got our mum pregnant had been interested in being fathers. Not a massive surprise, given that our mum was the worst judge of character imaginable.
But what I had been waiting for was the connection I’d read about in novels—you know, the visceral connection that made your heart pump and your body go limp with longing. The hot instant spark which I knew could turn into something real and lasting, because I’d witnessed it happen between Mia and Vito.
But I regretted waiting for that spark big time now. Why had I waited, when I was about to die?
I jerked back from the gun barrel, tears scalding my eyes.
I tried to plead with him again. But it was no use, the gag made it impossible. And anyway, I didn’t speak Italian. I only understood a few words.
But as he tucked the gun back into his jeans, I suspected even if I had been fluent and not gagged, pleading with him wouldn’t have done me any good. Because it was obvious from his ruthless expression, he had intended to terrify me.
Wrapping the end of the rope around his hand, he hauled me back into the bedroom and started searching my chest of drawers.
The popping sounds came from outside again, and more shouts in the distance, closer now. I clung to them. Maybe Vito’s men would discover us, before anything really bad could happen.
But what made me less confident was Dante’s indifference to the gunfire. He didn’t even flinch at the sound.
I found myself fixating on the revolver again, the vicious scars and bruising covering so much of his body, and the methodical way he had hunted up the painkillers and bothered to shower and shave when I could have discovered him at any moment. He produced one of my bulkiest sweatshirts and put it on one-handed, the fabric stretching tight across his broad chest. Every one of his movements was imbued with a fatalistic, methodical efficiency—suggesting he didn’t give a damn about his own safety, so why should he care about mine.
He’d been a prisoner here for months… I knew that much. And from the way Vito’s men had treated him yesterday, not to mention all the welts and bruises, I also suspected he had taken a lot of punishment.
And the whole time he must have been planning this escape. Because it was obvious he had come to my room deliberately.
Hopelessness sapped my ability to resist.
Maybe I should have been tougher, stronger, more ready to fight… But my fevered mind just kept repeating the thought: If I just do exactly as he tells me, maybe he will let me go, and no one will get hurt. Especially me.
He’d shrugged off his response to me—so while he might be a Mafia boss and a killer, I reasoned desperately, he was too pragmatic to waste time assaulting me tonight.
‘Good to know while he might shoot you, he’s too busy to rape you,’ I grunted round the gag.
He glanced round, then gave the rope a sharp tug.
‘Stare ferma,’ he demanded, the impatient tone helping me to translate the instruction.
Be still.
Of course, that just made me tremble more. Because I was still terrified, despite my frantic attempts to reason myself out of a massive panic attack.
‘Don’t make it any worse,’ I whispered behind the gag, because I always got verbal diarrhoea in times of stress.
Sitting on the bed to put on the boots he’d left on the bedroom floor, he glared at me, his scowl visible in the light from the bathroom.
‘Silenzio,’ he demanded again.
I nodded, tears filling my eyes.
This is really not a good time to start talking to yourself, Evie.
At least I managed to keep that damn thought in my head, the way I’d learned to do in school, when the other kids had laughed at my nervous habit.
After stamping on the boots, he reached in to flick off the bathroom light and plunged the suite into darkness.
He hauled me roughly along behind him, back into the lounge. He found the shoes I had discarded by the door after my run today—when I’d been careful not to go anywhere near the other end of the island after my sister’s warning—and dropped them in front of me.
I put them on, my fingers shaking so violently it took me forever to tie the shoelaces. He waited with surprising patience, but as soon as I stood up, he yanked the rope, dragging me towards the suite’s French doors.
He slid them open, and the cool night air hit me. Rain sprinkled us both, but he didn’t seem to notice the coming storm.
He hauled me to the end of the large terrazzo, but I had less than a second to realise where he was going before he bent and hefted me onto his shoulder.
He jogged down the steps towards the pool terrace carrying me as if I weighed nothing. He edged around the side of the two-level infinity pool, to avoid us being caught in the lights which gave the water a deep aquamarine glow. He moved so stealthily I found myself holding my breath, even as my stomach bounced against his shoulder blade.
A part of me knew I should try to make some noise, to alert the men whose shouts I could hear fading away—because they were searching in the wrong place. But the scream was locked in my lungs, my horror a living breathing thing with its claws around my throat, trapping my terror inside me.
Where was he taking me? Because each step down to the villa’s private cove was another step away from safety, from security.
Hysteria brewed under my breastbone, his strength and agility so overpowering I was scared to breathe too deeply in case the movement upset him.
Good God, are you already suffering from Stockholm syndrome?
The panic tightened its grip on my neck when we arrived on the shadowy beach, and I realised his destination. A speedboat was tethered to the dock on the far end of the cove.
It was one of the patrol boats Vito always had circling the island. Some of the guards must have docked it here to help in the search.
After walking across the cove and down the short dock, Dante bent to unhook the guide rope then jumped onto the boat, which rocked furiously. The trapped shriek shot out of my mouth beneath the gag as I imagined myself toppling off his shoulder, headfirst into the water, with my hands bound.
‘Silenzio!’ He gave my backside a firm slap—more humiliating than painful—before he dropped me onto my feet.
I tried to resist as he tugged me towards the front of the boat, but all he did was lift me off my feet with one muscular forearm and dump me in the passenger seat. Then he tied the rope attached to my wrists around a stanchion.
I was shivering so hard now my teeth were chattering. He placed his finger against the gag, but when he gave me the familiar command for silence I could hear tension as well as impatience in his voice.
Did he regret scaring me so badly? Somehow, I doubted it, but I clung onto the thought, knowing how helpless I was. He was kidnapping me, so he could get past the patrol boats. Was he planning to use me as a human shield?
My teeth clattered together like castanets as I prayed Vito’s men would look first, before they started shooting. But what if they didn’t see me?
He’d obviously thought of that too, because he grasped my upper arm and lifted me to my feet, then positioned me between him and the boat’s controls.
My breathing became ragged, his muscular body enveloping mine and making me even more aware of my vulnerability.
The boat’s key was in the ignition. The minute he turned it and the engine throbbed to life, lights flashed on in the villa above. The shouts started to get louder. Pops of gunfight from the terraces were followed by hissing sounds as bullets sliced into the water on either side of the boat.
I started to cry, my muffled sobs contained by the gag.
With one arm clasped around my waist, he used his other hand to shift the gears, apparently oblivious to my distress.
He didn’t even flinch as the pops and hisses continued, his body protecting mine, which seemed so strange. The powerful craft lifted into the water and suddenly we were shooting out of the cove, away from the shots above. But as soon as we cleared the headland, I saw another patrol boat, its lights blazing, speeding towards us across the wake.
He steered the boat effortlessly with one hand, the only suggestion of effort his coarse breathing against my hair. The engine noise drowned out the thunder of my heartbeats as my panic and fear began to choke me. More popping sounds, more hissing as the men on the other boat fired. A force punched my back and he slammed against me. He sucked in a breath, but then he shifted back. He was no longer crushing me against the boat’s steering column but holding me up, my knees liquid. My fingers cramped as I clung to the stanchion my hands were tethered to.
He shouted something in Italian, and I caught the word sorella… The word Vito used with affection to describe me. The word I knew meant sister. He fired the gun over our heads. I cowered. But as our boat shot across the open water, the claws around my throat released their death grip because the boat which had been chasing us, carrying the men firing on us, had slowed to a stop.
They were letting us go. They knew I was on board.
The terrified breath crushing my chest released in a rush. But silent tears flooded my eyes. Tears of alarm and apprehension as my mind struggled to engage.
We travelled for an eternity over the choppy water, with him effectively keeping me upright, my legs no longer strong enough to hold me up on my own. Until I spotted lights scattered on the horizon.
Capri. Maybe.
The sprinkle of rain turned into a deluge, the wind picking up to whip at my clammy skin and turn the sea into a cauldron. But I couldn’t feel the cold, the wet. I couldn’t even feel the fear anymore, my whole body weightless now, floating, bouncing with the boat, my heart wedged in my throat, my mind so exhausted I couldn’t feel anything clearly… Except the solid punch of his heartbeat against my shoulder.
At last, we reached a land mass, its cliffs looming over us in the moonlight. He drove the boat into a cove made from a crevice in the rockface. The outline of an uninhabited villa appeared on the cliffs above, the imposing structure obscured by the sheets of rain. He slid the boat into a dock and shoved me into the passenger seat, before climbing out and securing the guide rope.
Fatigue dragged at my mind, my body. Climbing back into the boat, he produced a knife, sliced through the rope attaching me to the stanchion, while leaving my wrists bound. Then he hauled me out of the boat. He was saying something in Italian, the first words he’d spoken to me since we’d boarded the boat on Isla Donna, but I couldn’t make sense of anything above the incessant buzzing in my head, my terrified tears mingling with the rain slicking my face.
He didn’t lift me back onto his shoulder. Instead, he forced me to walk up a never-ending staircase hewn into the rock, leading towards the dark house. I don’t know how I made the climb, with my knees like jelly and my breathing so laboured my lungs felt as if they would explode. He stopped halfway up, to prise open a metal box by the path with the knife and cut through a series of wires.
That was when I realised, while he knew this house, it didn’t belong to him.
He grasped my upper arm, forcing me up those endless steps again, past the dark terraces, the rain hammering us both. A slash of lightning illuminated his face. Unlike before, his face looked gaunt, his eyes no longer calm, no longer impassive, but before I could figure out what that meant, we had arrived on a patio. A large pool lay empty, probably because this was some kind of luxury holiday home and it was months before the season would start.
The villa was not quite as spectacular as Vito’s, but it was still impressive, the arches of its historic frontage covered in wisteria—which would be beautiful when it bloomed in the summertime but was like the dead tangled vines choking Sleeping Beauty’s abandoned castle tonight. He hauled me around the side of the house until we came to a door with glass panels. Pulling off the tight-fitting sweatshirt he’d taken from my dresser, he wrapped it around his fist and punched the glass.
After reaching through the broken panel to open the door, he dragged me into the house, then along a corridor. I floated in and out of consciousness, my feet taking each torturous step on autopilot, the adrenaline rush of our escape giving way to bone-crushing exhaustion. My mind was groggy, my legs barely able to function. We entered a cavernous entrance lobby, the rumble of thunder outside sounded hollow against the marble floors. But as he led me towards a flight of stairs, my knees buckled.
I sagged against him. His grip was the only thing stopping me from hitting the cold floor.
He grunted something. I braced for another slap, but instead he scooped my limp body into his arms and carried me up the stairs. He shoved the first door we came to open, and we entered a bedroom suite.
After dumping me on the bed, he used his knife to slice off my soaked jumper, then the wet dress. I couldn’t even muster the strength to object as he destroyed the beautiful silk designer gown I had been so proud of that afternoon.
I shivered uncontrollably as he knelt by the bed to tug off my wet shoes. I was all but naked now except for my damp underwear.
But I was too tired, too groggy and confused to even care what he intended to do with me. The darkness made it hard to see anything except the glitter of his eyes, reflected in the streaks of lightning that hit the skylight above us.
Instead of touching me sexually though, he grabbed my arm, hauled me around the bed, then shoved me onto a sofa on the far side of the vast bedroom away from the door. Taking a quilt off the bed, he threw it over me. I gripped the silk covering, trying to stop shaking, trying to think through my exhaustion. He tugged a phone from his back pocket. Then held it up to my face to unlock it… My phone. He must have stolen it while he was lying in wait for me in my room.
He tapped out a text. Then he dialled someone. He spoke to them in rapid Italian, his tone commanding. My brain was too fatigued to even attempt to decipher what words I might know. After ending the call, he dropped the phone, then stamped on it repeatedly, crushing it beneath his boot. The fog was starting to envelop me, the thunder and lightning crashing outside felt strangely cathartic, the rhythm of the rain pelting the glass soothing. He stripped out of his clothing, down to a pair of boxers, his scarred body strangely magnificent gilded by the shadowy moonlight. But then lightning struck again and illuminated the scarlet stain pumping from his side…
Blood. He was bleeding. Had he been shot? During the escape?
I lay there, trying to make sense of the nightmare as he strode into the adjoining bathroom. Should I get up? Should I run? But I lay motionless, anchored to the sofa, shivering violently, vaguely aware of the noises coming from the bathroom but unable to make my mind engage to plan any kind of coherent strategy. I heard swearing and a hiss of pain. When he reappeared, he had a bandage wrapped around his midriff, his face expressionless, but for the thin lines of strain around his mouth. The knife appeared again and, for a second, terror shot through me, but all he did was cut off the gag. Then I noticed a prominent shape in his boxers. What should have scared me barely registered though, through the fog of misery and fear.
‘Dormi,’ he demanded.
Sleep.
I watched him walk over to the door, lock it and put the key and the knife under the pillow on the bed, before he lay down on it and pulled the remaining covers over himself. I listened to his breathing deepening above the distant thunder. I should stay awake, should find a way to escape. Get the knife… My hands were still bound.
But my limbs refused to obey the frantic thoughts sprinting through my head.
Eventually, instead of getting off the sofa where he had dumped me, I found myself drifting to another dimension, my breathing slowing to pulse in time with the heavy rhythm of my heartbeats.
Why couldn’t I move? Why couldn’t I do anything? I pondered, but my thoughts lacked urgency as my breathing deepened and lengthened, leading me towards another place, where the comforting safety of oblivion beckoned.
