Page 9 of Brutal Devil

It’s the first time he’s called me by my real name since I walked through these doors earlier. And it causes a strange reaction to cut through me. Heat and shock. Like lightning in a summer sky, it’s electric.

“I need to get a few things,” I hedge, trying to buy time so I can make good on my escape.

He laughs, the sound dark and bitter. “Do I look stupid to you?”

No, he looks like a mobster, a criminal. Like a devil who will melt your panties one day and put a gun to your head the next. A heartbreaker and a callous killer. Everything I’ve spent the last five years trying to flee.

I can’t say that, though. I refuse to give him any more of the upper hand than he already has on me.

“I won’t run, if that’s what you’re thinking. I have nowhere to go.”

That’s the truth. Idon’thave anywhere to go. I may be an independent twenty-four-year-old woman, but I’ve been working my ass off, paying for college and my MFA myself. Ispent every last bit of savings I had on my Uber and plane ticket to get here. I have no car, no cash, and no home. Nothing but my precious collection of books in my apartment in Iowa, my laptop, my phone.

No future either, judging by the way this disaster of a reunion with my father is going.

“I’ll send a guy,” Priest says. “Just tell me what you need, and it’ll be done.”

Hell no. If hesends a guy, I have no chance to escape. He can’t send a guy. And I can’t go with Priest. What am I going to do? Tackle him and try to steal his Glock? I’ll be dead in a millisecond.

“I want to do this myself,” I tell him, leaving out the salient part.

“Then I’ll go with you. Another day. Today, you come with me.”

“Against my will?”

I’m getting desperate. And I know he doesn’t have a conscience or a soul, but I’m trying to appeal to the part of him that’s still human, if it exists.

“Don’t play games with me,” he warns coldly. “It won’t work.”

I take a deep breath and ditch my pride. “Please, I’m begging you?—”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” interrupts a different Andriani. They’re all running together now, bleeding like ink in the rain. I think it’s the brother who shot out the light fixture. “We need to get going, Priest. Speed up the process, or I’m going to start shooting again.”

Confirmed. It’s Mr. Trigger-Happy.

And he looks like he’s about to make good on his threat. He points his pistol in the direction of the lights in the DJ booth. Yep, it’s official. Criminally hot and criminally insane runs in the family.

“Bella, look at me.”

It’s my father’s voice. I shift to the right so I can see past Priest. My father looks pale and old, rubbing his jaw. Different. He was always hearty and sturdy as a bull. For the first time, I realize he’s lost weight. His suit sags on his frame.

There’s something in his eyes that stops me. Shocks me. Whatever is happening here, it’s bigger than him.

“If you don’t go with them, I’m a dead man,” he says. “But you, Luna Alessandra Revello? You’re dead too.”

I shouldn’t trust him. I know I should tell him that he’s put the final nail in the coffin of our father-daughter relationship by tricking me into coming back here, selling me to a mobster, and hitting me. But he’s still my father, and he’s been fucking up my whole life—lying to me, disappointing me, hurting me—and I still love him anyway. I don’t want him to go down in a hailstorm of Andriani bullets. I want him to live, to fight.

And I want to live too.

It takes every ounce of strength I have to turn back to Priest like I don’t have a care in the world and shrug. “Fine, then. I’ll go with you.”

You can do this, I tell myself. It’s the world’s worst pep talk. Idon’tthink I can do this. I don’t think I can go from writing workshops and cornfields to Glocks and kidnappings and forced Mafia marriages. I’ve been running from the monsters of my past for years, and they’ve finally caught up with me.

Priest watches me with a glittering stare, like he’s trying to look into the darkest places inside me, the shadows where all my secrets dwell. His gaze is so unnerving that, for a second, I’m afraid he can.

But then he jerks his chin toward his brothers. “We’re finished here.”

Their guns go back into their hiding places. Priest takes my hand in his huge, tatted one, lacing our fingers together, andhe brings my hand to his surly mouth for a kiss like we’re in a historical romance novel. The silken brush of his hot lips makes every part of me tighten up against my will, and I clench my thighs.