Page 44 of Wretched Choices

Anger fills my chest and all of my frustration builds up. My blood boils. I grab my knife, slicing his neck from one side to the other, spraying his blood all over my face.

Filled with frenzied emotions, I leave the room.

My men will know what to do next. I take the elevator back to my suite, my brain spiraling with emotions and disbelief.

Am I like my father? The one person I most despised and did everything I could for the last five years not to be like him.

The sentence ‘they were wrong’ makes me realize I have rats who think I’m not like my father like they wanted me to be. This could be a legit reason for them to betray me and my authority.

I need to find out who is a rat. Who is feeding Sabatini with information, the sooner, the better.

The elevator door opens and I enter my suite, going directly for the liquor cabinet. I pour myself a generous amount of whiskey and drink half of it in one go.

A gasp sounds from the entrance of the living room. I turn to a clearly shocked Isabella, her wide eyes and gaping mouth staring at me. She should know better. This is the life we were born into. One I took over, and the one she tried so hard to run away from. This is what she should expect from me if I’m like my father.

I walk toward her, expecting her to be afraid of me like this, all covered with blood, but she just stands there, looking at me. I stop in front of her.

She snaps out of her trance and takes a step back, her back hitting the door frame. She gasps when I take a step toward her and grab her throat, smearing the blood on my hands over it. Her hand covers mine, trying to free herself. She should be afraid of me. Of the monster inside me. The monster that wants to come out and play.

I squeeze. Her eyes widen as she fights against me. “Are you afraid, Bella?” I caress her face with my free hand, leaving traces of blood. “Is this why you ran away? From a future filled with blood and death?” I ease my hand on her throat. “Are the monsters you ran away from like me?” I lean into her, my face just inches from hers. Her eyes are wet, tears suppressed. “You should have stayed away from me.” I put my lips near her ear, my voice low. “But you are here now and one of my biggest assets. There is no way out of this life for you anymore. You are bound to stay with the monsters hunting you. And I’m one of those monsters.”

She slaps me. “Let go of me.”

I laugh darkly. “How about I introduce you to the real me, Bella?” My hand finds its way under her dress, leaving tracesof blood on her thighs until I reach her pussy. I grab violently, making her gasp.

“And who is that, Salvatore? Who is the real you?”

Her body shudders and I pull her panties to the side and push two fingers inside her. I can hear her gasping and saying things I don’t understand. All I can think about is my fingers inside her pussy, satisfying the demon inside me.

All of a sudden, I’m pulled away from her, my hand behind my back in a firm hold.

“Go,” Gabriel says from behind me. She hurries away from me into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Gabriel drags me to the bathroom, opens the shower, and pushes me under the cold spray. I watch as the water washes away the blood and wakes me from my daze, bringing me back to reality.

I raise my head, my eyes clashing with Gabriel’s. He shakes his head and my eyes widen. Flashes of what I did moments ago hit me hard.

What have I done?

eighteen

Isabella

My heels click on the granite floor as I walk back into the suite. A feeling of uneasiness followed me since the moment I woke up. Lisa’s rambling in the office only distracted me even more.

I come to a halt the moment I see a naked, sculptured body with only a towel covering his lower half. Water drips from his hair, trailing down his defined back. The angry red scar from the gunshot is on display. His firm backside is picture-perfect under that towel. He turns slowly toward me, his face changing from annoyed to emotionless. My eyes assess his muscular front, with a small amount of hair on his chest. A tattoo of a bullet with a ribbon around it that says: loyalty, honor, and respect covers theleft side of his ribs just below his heart. A trail of hair runs from his belly button down to his groin. He is standing in the living room with a drink in his hand.

Two weeks have passed since I last saw Salvatore. During the day, I have been avoiding him, using my job as an excuse, staying there until late at night.

He never asked where I was or why I was late. Not that he graced me with his presence. I was away during the day, and he was away during the night. He never slept in our suite. My new shadows, Valentino and Bastian, are the ones who are in contact with him. They never leave my side.

I snap my eyes back to his face. I’m not looking at his body. What happened in his car will not happen again. Especially not after what happened later that night when he showed me who he really is. After I took care of him, he left and came back a different person, someone I hadn’t met in the few weeks before we got married. What he did was not right, but surprisingly, it didn’t scare me away. On the contrary, it made me want to solve the puzzle of Salvatore Catalano. One I never stopped trying to solve, even though I told him I would stop my research on him. I was conflicted about my feelings and decisions. If I thought I’d connected with him somehow, I was wrong.

But I chose. I chose the monster I didn’t know; the one I made a deal with instead of the one I knew.

I did lots of thinking in the past two weeks; I questioned every decision I made. I even played with the thought of getting on a plane and ending this arrangement.

I couldn’t.

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