Page 1 of Savage Proposal

Prologue

LORENZO

Six Years Ago…

“Sienna!” Anger sizzled beneath my skin, dancing and yanking all of my muscles tight. I tried rolling my neck to get rid of that pulling, but there was only one way I was getting any kind of release tonight: buried inside my wife. “Sienna!”

Where the fuck is she?

I stalked through the darkened house, up the main staircase to the second floor, trying to breathe through my rage all the while. Sienna usually waited up for me when I had meetings with my father. I didn’t usually begrudge her going to bed before me, but today, I needed her.

Our bedroom door was ajar, and I pushed it wide. “Sien—” The smell of copper and meat stopped me. The scent was thick; it coated my tongue and made me gag as I ran my hand over the wall for the light switch.

Fuck.

Everything was spattered in red: the floor, the walls. Our bed was soaked. In the middle of all that red was Sienna. She looked like a broken doll, limbs akimbo as if she’d been tossed and forgotten. Her skin was gray; her eyes were open, staring at nothing. I couldn’t pretend that she was sleeping or convince myself that she was somehow still alive. She was gone.

My throat threatened to close on itself. Shaking, I walked toward the bed. I didn’t want to see what had happened…but I couldn’t shut my eyes to it either. Closer to the bed, it became clear that someone had taken a knife to her. She’d been shredded. I reached out and brushed some of the hair away from her face; she’d always smiled when I did that. There was no sweet smile now. Instead, her skin was cool beneath my fingertips.

The pounding in my head grew loud. Vaguely, I heard a deep, guttural roar—raw and uncontrollable. I knew that it was me, but I couldn’t make it stop. Sienna was everything to me. She was that one-in-a-million love that people go to the movies to see. And now she was just…gone. The light in her was snuffed out, and what the fuck was I supposed to do now?

I sank to my knees beside the bed. The blood on the floor soaked into my pants; it was cool and thick, and bile rose in my throat.

Fuck.

I heard a creak behind me and I stilled. Then there was the sound of feet on the floorboards, and I turned. Francis, my second-in-command and cousin, stood in the doorway drenched in blood. Sienna’s blood. In his hand, there was a blade.

If he had been trying to protect her from someone else, he would be dead.Fucking traitor.I launched myself at him with a bellow, slamming into him full-force. The blade flashed in the bedroomlight, and I felt something like fire sinking into my side, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was making him hurt the way that I was hurting.

I wrapped my hands around his throat and squeezed, relishing the gasps and gurgles that came from his throat as he tried to breathe. I slammed his head into the floor over and over, squeezing harder until I felt something pop. Consciousness slid from his eyes. His lips were turning blue.

It wasn’t enough.

He went limp, and I reached for the hunting blade that he’d stuck into my side. Gritting my teeth, I pulled it out. The pain spread, and my back grew wet, but I wasn’t going to stop. I ripped into him again and again, slicing his flesh into ribbons and coating myself in his blood. He was dead, but I couldn’t stop. Iwouldn’tstop. Nothing could slake the bloodlust running through me.

It wasn’t until Francis’s viscera was all over the bedroom floor that I ran out of steam. The anger and pain were gone; instead, numbness started in my gut and worked its way through my body, filling me from the inside out. Even when I glanced at Sienna, still and broken on the bed, I felt nothing.

Good. Feeling nothing was better. I stood, calm now, and walked out of the room without looking back.

CHAPTER 1

Isabella

“I’ve got one patient left, and then I can go home,” my coworker, Tami, said with a stretch. We were standing together at the nursing station, each with a patient folder in our hands. My last patient had already checked out, and I had maybe ten minutes before I was supposed to clock out.

I could say nothing, but I knew Tami was meant to be off more than half an hour ago. I reached over and took the folder from her hands. “I got this one.”

“You don’t have to.”

I was already waving her away. “Go,” I said. “I’m sure John is waiting for you at home.”

Tami smiled, tired but grateful. “Thank you! I owe you one.”

One more won’t hurt, I told myself as Tami skipped toward our breakroom. I looked down at the chart in my hands and sighed. John Smith, room two. Average name, hopefully average issue, and then I could head home myself. I had a frozen pizza and an episode ofGreat British Bake Offcalling my name.

“Sorry for the long wait, Mr. Smith,” I said as I pushed open the door of the exam room. My eyes landed on the tall man leaning against the exam table, and I almost swallowed my tongue.Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, don’t let him catch me drooling.

When the man glanced my way, his eyes went wide. “Fucking hell,” he wheezed, as if he had just been sucker punched in the gut. He straightened up; he was even taller and broader than I originally thought. His eyes, light and piercing, all but burned into me, like he was trying to see directly into my soul.

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