Bought: Destitute Yet Defiant Read Free Page A

was speaking and the eerie darkness made it impossible to read his lips.
    At one point Jessie thought she heard someone mutter something that sounded like ‘The Sicilian’, but she couldn’tbe sure and they obviously had no interest in including her in the conversation.
    Just when she was wondering whether she could slip away unnoticed, they all turned to look at her.
    Jessie stood welded to the spot and for one crazy moment she wondered whether Silvio was going to join them. Strip away the expensive clothes and he had the credentials. He’d lived his early life among people like these. He’d led the most feared gang of all.
    Those dangerous dark eyes fixed on her and for a fraction of a second he was a stranger to her. She saw what the others had seen. And what she saw was frightening.
    Jessie sucked in a breath, reminding herself that, whatever their differences, this man would never hurt her physically.
    Emotionally? Emotionally he’d achieved what a childhood lived rough hadn’t managed to accomplish.
    He’d broken her into tiny pieces.
    Her eyes slid to the scar, her breathing stopped and they stared at each other. The tension in the air shifted and morphed into something different, something a thousand times more dangerous.
    Without breaking eye contact, Silvio strolled towards her.
    He was frighteningly calm and Jessie wanted to warn him not to turn his back on the men, but she didn’t dare snap the tension that held them all immobile.
    As he reached her he lifted a hand and stroked her hair away from her face, the gesture oddly out of place in such a tense situation. His touch was both deliberate and possessive, as if he was making a statement about their relationship, and she didn’t understand that because they didn’t have a relationship any more.
    It had been smashed in that grimy room exactly three years earlier, over her brother’s lifeless body.
    Then his hand dropped. ‘ Andiamo . Let’s go. Get in the car,’ he commanded, and Jessie obeyed, not because she wanted to get in the car, but because she was as mesmerised by his aura of authority as the gang members. He dominated this godless, lawless environment with the sheer force of his presence and Jessie slid into the sumptuous warmth of the Ferrari, feeling as though she were stepping into another world. Moments later he joined her and she wasn’t sure whether the deep growl came from the engine or the depths of his throat. All she knew was that she’d been wrong about his mood.
    He wasn’t calm.
    He wasn’t calm at all.
    Forced into close proximity by the confines of the car she could tell that he was struggling with a raging anger and that knowledge unsettled her because in all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him like this. Never seen that icy control slide. Not once. Not even that night when their relationship had hit rock bottom.
    ‘Silvio—’
    ‘Don’t say a word.’ He cut her off before she could even begin her sentence, his voice strangely thickened, his knuckles white on the wheel. He didn’t glance in her direction. Instead he kept his eyes fixed on the road, speeding through the back streets of London as if he were competing for a Formula 1 title.
    Jessie was tempted to point out that there wasn’t a lot of point in rescuing her from one threat only to kill them both in a car wreck, but she kept her mouth shut.
    Why him?
    Why did it have to be him who had rescued her?
    Now that the immediate danger had passed, her thoughts were impossibly confused. The adrenaline rushing around her body had been diluted by another hormone and the only thingin her head was that kiss. Her body was still trembling from the pressure of his mouth against hers and the more she remembered of her wild, crazy response, the more appalled she was. Had he noticed her reaction? She shrank in her seat, hoping that he’d been too distracted to register just how enthusiastically she’d played her part.
    Disgust slithered over her bones