Bought: Destitute Yet Defiant

Stunned, she stared into the face she’d just punched. ‘Silvio—?’

‘Stai zitto! Be quiet! Don’t say a word,’ he commanded, his fingers tightening on her wrists as the men finally caught up with them.

Jessie’s mind went blank with shock.

Silvio Brianza.

Images exploded in her head. Images of the last time she’d seen him. Images she’d banished from her brain.

‘Hey—thanks for catching her.’ This was a different man from the one she’d injured with her shoe and Jessie wondered numbly whether his friend was still lying in the alley, clutching himself.

She didn’t even care.

She was no longer worried about them.

The air was suddenly choked with an entirely different sort of tension and her emotions were focused on the man whose powerful body was pressed against every contour of hers.

Jessie tested his hold but it was like being held in a vice and her attempt to free herself drew a hiss of anger from him. She wished it had been anyone but Silvio who had come to her rescue.

‘Let me go. I don’t want your help.’

‘Of course you don’t—you’re doing fine by yourself.’ His scathing tone brought the colour rushing to her cheeks and Jessie felt a flash of humiliation that he should find her in this state.

‘I can handle it,’ she muttered, but she knew there was no chance he was going to let her go. Silvio Brianza was too much a man to let a woman fight for him.

Thinking about him as a man was a mistake and the colour bloomed in her cheeks as she remembered how he’d felt against her hand.

Grateful for the darkness, Jessie gave a hysterical laugh.

She was about to be killed and she was thinking about sex again. Only this man could have that effect on her. He’d always made her think things she wasn’t supposed to be thinking.

‘You’re going to be killed, Silvio.’

‘I thought that was what you wanted.’

His reference to the last time they’d met made her shiver.

How many lonely nights had she spent planning his fate when the rest of the world had been sleeping? A thousand ways to kill Silvio Brianza.

Was that what she wanted? She couldn’t think straight with the dangerous thrill of awareness gripping her shivering body.

All she knew was that the terrible fear had gone. Locked against his muscular frame, she felt safe. Which was ridiculous. She’d never been less safe in her life.

‘Back off. She’s ours.’ The rough voice was thick with menace. ‘You can hand her over and get back in your fancy car. We’ve got no quarrel with you.’

Fancy car?

Jessie turned her head, saw the low, sleek Ferrari parked at the end of the seedy alleyway. It was like a portal to another life. A reminder of how far Silvio had come.

He’d left all this behind. This wasn’t his world any more.

So what was he doing here?

Why had he picked tonight to step back into his past?

The man she’d stabbed with her shoe finally joined the rest of his friends, his eyes burning with anger and resentment as he focused on Jessie.

She looked into those dull, drug glazed eyes and saw her own death.