Enthralled (The Enslaved Duet 1)

“Two days after she left with Edward, who was a strong, beautiful lad, four years younger than Alexander, Edward called home. It was Alexander who picked up, and it was Alexander who was first told his mother had been killed.”

I gasped. “Killed? I thought she had an accident?”

He waved the words away. “That fabrication only came later. At first, Edward himself acknowledged that she has been killed, that he had heard her scream, and then a moment later, the sound of her death against the ground. The police got involved, but nothing was found. If someone pushed her, it had to have been someone in the house.”

I blinked at him, imagining the scene, destroyed by the obvious truth. “You think it was Amedeo?”

“I know it was Amedeo,” Noel confirmed. “But that is not all. You see, Edward never came home after that. He stayed in Italy with the murderer and pledged to the police that Amedeo had not pushed Chiara over the ledge. I begged him to come home, to speak to us and explain, at the very least, to attend the funeral, but he didn’t, and he hasn’t returned since.” He turned from looking at the cold stone hearth into my eyes, and his were dark as empty coffins. “That is why we do not speak of the death of Duchess Greythorn and why the name of Edward Davenport has been scrubbed from our minds.”

“But how? I mean, why in the world would Edward stand up for his uncle when it’s so obvious he committed the crime?” I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “You must be missing some details of the story.”

“I am missing nothing, but Amedeo’s confirmation of his crime. Since then, I’ve done research into the man with the help of some very powerful friends, and I’ve learned that he is a member of the Camorra.”

Shock stoppered by breath.

“In fact, you might know Amedeo as Capo Salvatore. I see you know him,” Noel said with a small, enigmatic smile. “I take it he has rather a powerful hold on Napoli and the surrounding regions.”

“He does,” I admitted as my stomach cramped and my heart stuttered.

I felt like a flailing engine.

“Haven’t you wondered why Alexander chose you when he could have had any woman worth buying in the entire world?” Noel taunted.

“Yes,” I whispered, my hand going up to massage the great stone mass suddenly obstructing my throat.

I had wondered and wondered, and now that I was faced with the ugly truth of it, I didn’t want to know.

“He wants to use you to infiltrate the Camorra. To get close to Amedeo Salvatore and end him.”

The words thrust through my mind like a bullet, tearing apart my brain and spewing everything I was across the beautiful library like lost grey matter.

How had Alexander known my connection to Salvatore? Had he known the day I saved his life and spoken my name aloud or even before that?

How could he expect an eighteen-year-old girl to infiltrate anything, let alone one of the most notorious mafia outfits in the entire world?

I’d been so curious, but now that Pandora’s Box was spilled open at my feet, I wanted to stuff the answers inside because they only led to more questions.

I woke up sometime in the night when the sky was at its darkest and everything felt too close, like ink spilled from the black bowl of the atmosphere and dropped between every crevice. It took me a moment to orient myself because it was immediately obvious I wasn’t on the cold, hard ground of the ballroom as I’d grown accustomed to.

I shifted slightly, and my hands caught, jerking back against some invisible bonds. I pulled again and unwittingly kicked out my legs to find that they too were bound.

I was spread open and apart in a giant X across the bed, my limbs tied off at each post.

My mouth opened to scream, but a hand clamped down over my mouth before I could emit a sound.

“Hush, my beauty,” Alexander’s crisp words rustled like papers in the still air. “It’s late and the whole house is sleeping.”

I tried to protest behind his hand, but he kept it firmly banded over my lips.

His warm breath fanned over my cheek as he leaned closer to run his nose over my ear and whisper, “There is no need to struggle, topolina. I have you pinned like a butterfly to this bed, and I mean to treat you thusly. With reverence and tenderness, like the beautiful and fragile creature you are.”

I moaned, and he seemed to perfectly translate the words I wasn’t given permission to speak aloud.

“This isn’t about what my father so wrongly told you this afternoon. It was not his place to unlock the doors and secrets in his house. We will talk about the lies he told later. This isn’t an act of forgiveness for my roughness with you last night or the one before that. I will never ask your forgiveness for the things I do to your body.” He shifted in the dark, a great looming monster of shadow like a demon summoned up from hell. The wet tip of his hard cock smeared over my hip as he straightened and reached for something on the bedside table. A shudder of rampant desire went through me at the knowledge that he was naked.