Page 9 of Beauty and the Daddy

"Sure." He shrugged, his eyes clouding all my thoughts. "I'll ask your father to send him over, along with your clothes."

He leaned in, just close enough for me to feel the heat rolling off him. "Better hope Bruno doesn't have a taste for little kittens."

I'd shivered at how I felt his words deep somewhere inside my bones.

I pace the room with my mind spinning. I need a plan.

Sitting here replaying every awful second won't get me anywhere.

I've already clocked the security cameras in the halls, their little red eyes tracking every movement.

There are four armed guards downstairs, all carrying guns. There's no way in or out, except through those eight feet high gates, wired with motion sensors.

This place isn't just a mansion. It's a fortress.

And I can't just walk out of a fortress.

But every fortress has a weakness. I just have to find it—before he finds me breaking.

In the meantime, I can handle one ridiculously hot mafia boss.

Even if the thought of him makes my stomach flip like I'm sixteen again.

I crack the door open. No guard. Just cameras dotting the hallway like electronic breadcrumbs.

"Watch me all you want," I mutter to the nearest one. "Hope you enjoy the show."

The mansion is schizophrenic—crystal chandeliers hanging above military-grade locks, priceless art watched over by men with earpieces and barely concealed weapons.

Like Martha Stewart decorated a maximum-security prison.

Every door I pass is closed. Every window has bars disguised as decorative ironwork.

Pretty cage is still a cage.

I head downstairs, ignoring the staff and guards I pass by.

No one said I couldn't get a feel of the place, and no one tells me to go on back to my bedroom.

So maybe, I'm not a prisoner after all. Or maybe, this whole estate's my jail.

Fuck do I know.

A wall of windows catches my eye, and I drift toward it.

The view is spectacular, with manicured grounds stretching out to the distant trees, a slice of the city skyline visible beyond.

But it's what's happening on the lawn that stops me dead in my tracks.

Below, in a courtyard that looks designed for violence, Luca Moretti is destroying people.

There's no other word for it.

He moves through opponents like death through a nursing home—inevitable, efficient, almost gentle in its brutality.

Shirtless, because apparently God has a sense of humor.

Sweat runs rivers down his chest, following lines of muscle that belong in anatomy textbooks under "how to make women stupid."