Page 8 of Savage Proposal

Normally, I would because driveling like this made my skin crawl, but I had a better use of my time today. I opened the top drawer of my desk and found the pair of brass knuckles I kept there. I slid my fingers into the holes. I walked around to where Elio was holding onto the younger man. “I’m going to give you the opportunity to think about why my product keeps disappearing,” I said, almost kindly.

But Dante wasn’t hearing me. He just kept shaking his head and begging. With a sigh, I twisted my fingers into his shirt and held him steady as I raised my fist. I brought the brass knuckles down on his face, shattering his nose. It seemed to sink into his face, and he let out a wet scream and spat blood on my shoes.Fucker.

“Any thoughts now?”

The answer came as screams, so I hit him again, cracking his eye socket this time. Then, I did it again and broke a few of his teeth. “I don’t think?—”

There was a loud gasp from the hallway that climbed into a scream. I looked up, and Isabella was standing in the open doorway, eyes wide and trained on the man bleeding on my carpet. “Porca puttana.”

I took off the brass knuckles and tossed them to Elio. “Deal with this while deal with that.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

CHAPTER 5

Isabella

Isaw Lorenzo coming, and I ran, shoes slapping against the wooden floors of the hallway. I wasn’t staying here. There was no way on this Earth that I?—

A hand grabbed me, and I shrieked, trying to shake it off. But I ended up shoved against the nearest wall instead. Lorenzo had me pinned with a hand against my throat, and I gagged and struggled when I realized that he was smearing blood against my skin and into my clothes. I trembled in his grasp, but it had little to do with the way he was choking off my air. The tacky feeling of blood on my skin made me want to scratch and itch at it until I tore myself to ribbons.

I needed to get away from him.Now. Before I lost my goddamn mind.

“What the fuck were you doing?” he demanded, leaning in so that I could feel his breath on my face.

“Amalia said?—”

He squeezed down, and I gasped, unable to get any more air in. “What did Amalia say, Isabella?” he asked and eased his hold on my throat.

I coughed even as I fought to breathe through it. “I could—” Another painful breath in. “Walk around.” When he dropped his hand entirely, though he didn’t shift back at all, I said, “If you want privacy, you should close your door.”

I saw light ignite in his eyes, and I thought that he might hit me…but he was smiling instead. It was even more unsettling to see him like that. Anger I knew what to do with, what to expect. His smile, though? It was a killer smile, probably literally speaking. A little dimple formed on his cheek, and it made him even more attractive.

I didn’t know how to feel. The heat of his body on mine, his breath on my face, made things low in my belly tighten. There was no denying that Lorenzo was attractive. But fear was just as strongly running through my body, and the fear and arousal were mixing into something intoxicating that made my head feel stuffed with cotton. I didn’t like it.

“You’re a brat,” Lorenzo said. He reached out again with his blood-spattered hand, and brushed some of my hair across my forehead. My skin itched from the cooling blood that he smeared on me. My stomach twisted sickeningly; there was a very real danger that I was going to throw up all over his shoes. I hadn’t had a panic attack in months, but I could feel it tickling at the edges of my mind the longer I stood here. If only I could find a way around him; I could feint to one side and escape out the other, and then I could run back to my room and lock the door.

It’s his house, idiota; I’m sure he has keys to every room.

So, my solution wasn’t a solution at all. I stood there, pressing myself back into the wall as far as I could. The lip of the judge’s panels dug painfully into my spine. “You’re a psycho,” I countered, cursing myself all the while for the inability to shut the hell up.

Lorenzo was still smiling, and it wasn’tfairthat he looked that good. While I was screaming at myself to run, to find a way to escape, my body didn’t seem to be getting the memo. I had never wanted someone that I was equally as afraid of before. “I can do whatever I want in my own home,” he said, ducking in even closer to me. I whimpered as his lips skimmed my clean cheek. His other hand touched my waist, inched the hem of my scrub top up ever-so-slightly. My pulse was hammering in my head; my skin was on fire. A scream was building in my throat. “I have a deal for you, Ms. Rossi, a way to shorten your time working for me.”

A little gasp caught in my throat. Considering the amount of money that my father owed Lorenzo, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be free of him. “What kind of deal?” I asked. As much as I wanted to go back to school, back to my life, I wasn’t a fool. As far as I was concerned, Lorenzo Vitali was the devil and making deals with him was the equivalent of selling my soul.

“Become my surrogate.”

The world seemed to slow down. I shook my head.Clearly, I hadn’t heard him correctly. “What?” Of all the things Lorenzo might have asked for, ababywasn’t one that I would have guessed.

“Become my surrogate,” he repeated. “I’ll eradicate your debt upon delivery, so to speak.”

I was already shaking my head before he stopped speaking. “I can’t,” I said. “I could never just hand over a baby like that.”Especially to a monster like you, I added in my head.

Lorenzo hummed. “That’s a shame,” he said. His hand was on my throat again in an instant, although this time he was more holding than cutting off my airway. “I guess I could always ask your younger sister. Gemma, right?”

Ice water flooded my veins. “How do you know about Gemma?”

His eyes were cold as he looked down his nose at me. “Your father had a lot to brag about.”

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