Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Tears formed in his eyes, and I let go for now. I’d made plenty of men cry, made them sob and beg for mercy I was never going to give them, but I couldn’t stand seeing Liam like this.
I should never have left him last night. He’d needed to be held. Even if all he cared about was paying the debt, he was my responsibility. He was mine and I needed to make him see that, even if he couldn’t love me, I wasn’t letting him go.
“Fine. Keep your secret for now.”
I was going to find him an apartment and cut him a deal on rent, and I would see that he took care of rent and food before he paid me. I didn’t care how long it took him to pay my family back, I wouldn’t allow him to be hungry or homeless.
I went through a fast-food drive-through and got him a breakfast sandwich and a coffee. He polished them off like he was starving. “When did you last eat?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Liam, when did you last eat?”
“Lunch yesterday. I had some wings.”
I growled. “That’s not acceptable.”
“Do you want me to stop buying gas and walk home from work at two in the fucking morning so I can afford more food? What do you want me to give up that I haven’t given up already?”
I didn’t have a good answer.
I pulled into a big box store and turned to look at him. “I’m going in to get you some food and a generator. You will stay put. If you and my car are not sitting right here when I return, I will track you down and make you very sorry. If you think I tormented you last night, that was nothing compared to what I’ll do to you if you disobey me now.”
His eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open. I wanted to kiss him, but I forced myself to step out of the car and walk away.
24
LIAM
My heart thudded against my chest as I watched Val walk into the store. The breakfast he’d bought me had formed a lump in my stomach. I was so fucking confused. I didn’t know how to read him. One minute he was babying me, and the next minute he had his hand around my throat threatening me. He said he was a monster, and God knows he’d treated me like one the night before, except I’d loved most of it. But a monster wouldn’t care where I was sleeping. He wouldn’t care about anything but me paying him back. It wouldn’t matter if that ultimately killed me as long as he got what he wanted, my body and my money.
Which side of him was the real Valentino? I didn’t know and if I could help it, he wasn’t going to know the real me either. All he knew about me right now was that I was a damn good dancer, I’d gotten myself into a desperate situation where I was willing to go to a loan shark, and I was living in a storage unit with hardly any money for groceries.
That didn’t sound very good. How the hell was I going to keep this up? So far, I’d managed to find enough money to keep my car running and buy enough gas to get back and forth to work, but how long would that last?
It would take me at least an hour to walk from the storage unit to Pound, and while I could ride the bus to work, I would have to walk back at night when there wasn’t any transportation. If I couldn’t buy gas, I sure as hell couldn’t afford a car service.
But if I let Val pay for an apartment, then he was paying my debt, and he said he wouldn’t do that. If I had to pay for it myself from my Pound earnings, it would add to my debt. I really would be an indentured servant. It would take years for me to pay it off, if I even could with interest piling up. I’d be stuck having to dance at Val’s club and fuck him whenever he wanted.
There were worse ways to live, but I wasn’t ready to let go of the hope that I was going to get out from under this and be able to be my own person again. No matter how much I loved the way Val touched me, no matter how conflicted he might be about whether to treat me roughly or take care of me, that ultimately didn’t matter. He was a loan shark and an enforcer. I’d watched him kill two men already for doing nothing but touch me.
Sure, they deserved to be punished, but he’d acted as judge, jury, and executioner, and that wasn’t going to change. He wasn’t going to walk away from his family. The only hope I had of staying with him was if he could convince his father to let him keep me. But then I would be his, a possession. I would be part of his criminal life, an accessory to trapping people into loans they couldn’t pay, to all the torture, killing, and God knows what else the Marchesi family was involved in. Could I accept that?