Unwrapping His Mountain Package

The wooden crate that Angelo’s men had stuffed me in had splintered open during the crash. And when I went tumbling out across the cold, frozen, metal floor of what felt like the back of a pickup truck, the world had spun for a second. And then, I’d started screaming. Screaming and hammering at the frozen metal wall.

Because I was not going to die here, freezing in the back of a crashed truck in the middle of winter. Even if I was pretty sure that dying was better than whatever “Mr. Black” had in mind for me. Because that’s where I was headed. Or, that’s where I’d been headed, before now.

This whole thing had started with a poker game. Well, no. It’d started with me not knowing how to leave my abusive piece of shit boyfriend Tony. But, that’s how abusers work. They make it hard to leave. I guess I’d never really gotten that, even when I heard it from other women, until it was happening to me.

Besides smacking me around and sticking his limp dick in basically anything that moved besides me, Tony worked for Angelo Capello. Yeah, the Angelo Capello. Tony was hardly a heavy hitter in the crime family, but he did work for some really bad people. He also liked to gamble with them.

Now, most people are smart enough to understand how to interact with their boss. If you work in an office, and your boss treats everyone to drinks, you have one, smile, and say thanks. That’s it. But Tony never got that memo. So when he managed to get invited to the biggest poker game of the month and found himself at the table with the freaking head of the whole mafia family, he was an idiot.

Everyone else basically humored Angelo, and let him win. But Tony had to go for it. Tony decided his way to a higher position was to play hardball at the card table with the most dangerous crime boss in the country.

And in the end, Angelo had him so deep in a hole, there was no crawling out.

All the money Tony had in the world wasn’t enough. So he did what any abusive, shitty boyfriend who sees their girlfriend as a piece of property would do.

He offered me as payment.

I’d screamed when they’d come for me that night and yanked me right out of bed. But it was useless. Angelo owned the whole city, and his word was law. I’d almost vomited on the way to his headquarters, thinking the worst possible thoughts of what he had in mind for me. But as it turns out, Angelo didn’t want me for himself.

He had far worse plans.

I didn’t know who “Mr. Black” was, except that it was obviously a fake name. But when I saw the look on everyone’s faces when Angelo told me he was handing me over to him to “settle a debt”, my gut knotted.

…Anyone scary enough to make a room full of mafia captains pale, and anyone who the head of a mafia family owes something to sounded like the last person in the world I wanted to be “gifted to.”

But like I said, Angelo’s word was law.

Gagged and bound, they’d stuffed me into that fucking box and then dumped it somewhere dark and cold. The engine told me it was a truck of some kind, and hours of freezing half to death later, here I was.

I’d long stopped hoping for a miracle to stop me from being sold like cattle to this terrifying sounding mafia guy. But then here was my miracle. A car crash, or whatever had just happened. And I had to try. I screamed and hammered at the walls — after all, if there was a crash, there’d be people around, right? And if I just yelled and pounded long enough, someone would—

The door to the back of the truck suddenly wrenched open, and I whirled, ready to lunge to safety until suddenly, my eyes landed on him.

I blinked, my heart skipping, and for one frozen second, everything went still.

Holy shit, he was gorgeous.

It was his eyes I saw first — these piercing blue diamonds searing into me, sending this shiver through me as they drank me in. Dark lashes, a scruff over his chiseled jaw, and the hint of tattoos peeking out from around the hood of his huge snow jacket.

Good Lord.

Of all the people to come rescue me? Well, yeah, I’d take the hot one with the sexy eyes any day. Except suddenly, I saw it. My eyes dropped down over the open front of his coat, over his muscled chest, and down to his waist.

…And onto the gun, shoved into his belt.

My pulse thudded, my eyes darting over him, my sore muscles coiling. Fuck. Clearly, it was one of Angelo’s guys. Probably the driver. I glanced past him, seeing swirling snow and blinding white light, and I took a shaky breath. If we’d been in a crash, there was going to be people rushing to help. And even if the driver was the first one to get to me, what was he going to do, tell people to ignore a girl in her underwear screaming about being kidnapped?