Bought: Destitute Yet Defiant Read Free

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.
    Her thoughts were oddly detached as she prepared herself for the end. With Silvio by her side, there would be a fight, she knew that. But it was a fight they couldn’t possibly win.
    Would the end be quick?
    Would it be a knife? A gun?
    Suddenly she realised that she didn’t want Silvio to die. Not for her.
    She drew breath to speak but before she could utter a sound Silvio brought his mouth down on hers in a brief, scorching kiss.
    Jessie was too shocked to protest, or perhaps her lack of resistance had something to do with the fact that her thoughts had skimmed perilously close to this exact scenario in the last few moments. Her lips parted beneath the pressure of his, hot, liquid pleasure diluting the fear. Far from resisting, she kissed him back passionately, her desperation as powerful as his, her demands every bit as urgent.
    For most of her adolescence she’d fantasised about this. Even after that terrible night, when her world had darkened and her attitude towards him had irrevocably altered, perversely she’d still thought about it.
    But of all the dreams she’d had, none of them had come close to the reality.
    His mouth drove every thought from her head except one…
    That if she had to choose a moment to die, this would be it.
    Through a haze of desire she heard a snigger from the watching men. ‘Now, that’s just greedy,’ one of them complained.
    Her head still spinning from the kiss, Jessie didn’t even realise Silvio had released her until he stepped forward out of the shadows. There was an air of menace attached to that simple, understated movement and she shivered as she watched, frightened and fascinated at the same time. He didn’tspeak or bluster—instead, he was terrifyingly cold, his spectacularly handsome face displaying not a single flicker of emotion as he confronted the men. And that, Jessie thought numbly, said everything there was to be said about Silvio Brianza. A lone warrior.
    Her legs were threatening to give way, although whether it was from desire or fear she was no longer sure. All she knew was that she wanted to shout a warning. She wanted to warn him not to die for her, but her lips had been paralysed by the touch of his mouth and she couldn’t think of anything except how it had felt to be kissed by him.
    And then she realised that this scenario wasn’t playing out the way she’d anticipated. Instead of attacking Silvio, the group was falling back. They’d lost the fierce bravado of a pack intent on a kill and instead they were just staring at him.
    Water dripped from the gutter down the back of her neck and Jessie shivered as she tried to work out what was happening.
    Why would six men retreat from one?
    Confused, she glanced at Silvio and realised that he was standing in the faint shaft of light created by the final flickers of an exposed bulb presumably intended to provide light to the dank corners of the filthy alleyway.
    And suddenly she realised what they’d seen. The distinctive scar that ran down one cheek—the only blemish in a face so insanely perfect that if it hadn’t been for that one single flaw, his features could have been the work of Michelangelo.
    Jessie strained her ears to hear what was being said but the relentless drip of water from the surrounding roofs all but drowned out the words he