Page 9 of Savage Proposal

“You leave her alone!” I snapped. “She’s got nothing to do with this. My father hasn’t spoken to her in more than ten years. He doesn’t know anything about her.”

“Seems like he does. Gave us the address to her dorm and everything.”

Anger snarled through me. “Fuck. You.”

“Brat,” he seethed. “I’m being kind to you, but if you don’t want my deal, I’ll take your sister in your place. I’ll tear your father’s fingernails off with a pair of pliers and break every one of his bones. I’ll play with both of them until they’re begging for death.”

My stomach rolled. I could taste bile in the back of my throat. “You can’t.”

“Not only can I,” Lorenzo said, “I will, and I’ll make you watch while I do it. Do you understand? I might leave you alive long enough to witness what I would do to your family, but in the end, all three of you would be dead, and no one would ever find your bodies.”

Tears dripped down my cheeks. What else was there for me to do? “Okay,” I said.

“What?”

I sucked in a breath. “I’ll do it,” I said. “Just leave my family alone.”

Lorenzo stepped back, and cool air rushed around me, making me shiver. “See how easy that was? There’s no reason for all this fuss, is there?”

I shook my head.

“Go put on something besides those damn scrubs. They’re covered in blood. Amalia is serious about serving dinner at seven, and I won’t allow you to upset her.”

He hadn’t given me a ton of room to go around him, so when I did, my body dragged against his. I was trembling all over as I stumbled on colt legs down the hallway to my room. I didn’t look in the direction of Lorenzo’s office as I passed its alcove: I didn’t want to see a body on the floor.

I reached my room with surprising ease and stumbled over to the ensuite. I looked at myself in the mirror and gagged: my face was smeared with blood. It was in my hair too. How could I let someone do this to me, and yet…

I squeezed my thighs together to stave off some of the ache between them.You’re just as much a psycho as him, I told my reflection. I shouldn’t want his hands anywhere near me. He had choked me, for God’s sake!

I turned the cold water on in the shower and stepped inside. The frigid water beat down on my skin, chilling me. I was shiveringagain, but at least the ache in my core was gone, driven away by the cold.

The toiletries had been changed out in the three days that I’d lived here. Once Amalia knew what scents I liked, she made sure to stock up. I took my time shampooing and conditioning my hair. When I was finished, I wrapped a towel around myself and my hair. When I stepped out of the bathroom, Lorenzo was sitting on my bed. I froze. “What are you doing here?”

“You violated my privacy,” he said with a shrug. “I thought I would return the favor.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to look more annoyed than I felt. “Can you get out? I need to get dressed for dinner.”

“What are you going to wear, exactly?” he asked. “Your scrubs again?”

I thought of the pile of fabric on the bathroom floor. I didn’t have much in the way of clothes since I wasn’t allowed to go back to my apartment, so I had been borrowing the few things from Amalia that fit, and she had rewashed my work scrubs. She was planning on taking me shopping for new things, but we needed to get the okay from Lorenzo first, and of course, he hadn’t bothered to give it yet. Thinking of my scrubs, all wet with blood, I didn’t relish the idea of putting bloody fabric back on, and everything else was in the washer. “I don’t know.”

Lorenzo stood and motioned me to come closer. I didn’t want to, but my body moved at his command. He opened the dresser; it had been stocked with clothes. “I’m not sure if the size will be exactly right,” he said, “but I think you can find something that will work.”

I pawed through the drawer. Most of the clothes were, in fact, my size. “Thank you,” I said. “Where did you get—?” I looked up, but Lorenzo was gone, and my door was shut.

CHAPTER 6

Isabella

Ihad been living at the Vitali estate for ten days, and I was going to lose my mind. Every little creak of the floorboards or wheeze of the air conditioning made me jump, and although Amalia was a source of comfort and perspective, she was constantly leaving the estate to run errands, and I wasn’t allowed to go with her. Ever since I’d agreed to Lorenzo’s ridiculous deal, he had me on lockdown…all in the name of protecting his future interests, of course.

But I was a social person; there was a reason I picked the medical field to get into. Being isolated was starting to wear on me.

Worse, though, were the times when I wasn’t alone. Lorenzo waseverywhere, seemingly around every corner. I couldn’t get away from him.

I was in the kitchen, poking at the coffeepot, when he came in wearing a pair of gray sweatpants slung low on his hips and hair that was messy from sleep. He moved around me without talking, opening the refrigerator and pulling out plates, and I got a chance to watch him while he was distracted.

“Do you like what you see or something?” he asked, voice gruff. He put bread into the toaster and pressed the plunger down.

---