Page 8 of Cast Stones
He’s the memory I’ve been running from for ten years—encapsulated in this brutally handsome form, wearing an orange jumpsuit that barely contains the huge breadth of his shoulders.
His black eyes meet mine, gleaming with amusement and something else I can't bring myself to recognize as I stumble further into the room.
The boy I knew became a man.
The boy I knew became a monster.
Who am I fooling?Luca Esposito was already a monster when he stole me from the streets and shattered me into a million pieces.
“Madeline,” he says coolly. “Or should I address you as Madigan these days?”
God, that voice. It shudders through my body like an earthquake—rough and sinful, and spliced with the same forcefulness that waged war on my innocence without my permission.
Shards of my past start raining down on me like broken glass.
Log cabin. Pain. Hate.Love.
“Do you feel me, cara mia? Do you feel me so deep inside your heart you’ll have to shatter it to truly understand it?”
I reach for the back of the chair to stop myself from falling.
“Y-you died,” I whisper, so quietly only we can hear.
“And now I live.” A touch of a smirk now graces those beautiful lips, but this man is a master of deception. An emotional chameleon. His expressions are carefully choreographed, all designed to lull you into a false sense of security.
That’s what makes him so dangerous.
“Don’t you think you owe me,cara mia?” he continues smoothly. “After everything I did?”
This can’t be happening.
Twelve years ago, Luca led me in and out of hell, and now I’m right back there again.
They say fear is the ultimate deceiver, but she’s a wicked cheat too.
She tempts lies from the honest.
She turns sinners into saints.
And in a heartbeat, she’s turned me, a public defender, into as much of a criminal as the killer who demanded my presence.
My past comes rushing up again so fast, it steals my breath away.
In that moment, I know who the buried bodies are—the ones he claims to have knowledge of. I also know that within a couple of months, Luca Esposito will be walking out of here a free man.
I know this because I’ll be the one breaking his chains for him.
Chapter Four
Ten years.
For ten years I’ve thought about nothing else but this moment. Finding her wasn’t easy. My clever girl changed her name. Madeline Benning became Madigan Bailey.
It wasn’t the only thing she switched up.
“You changed your hair.”Changedis putting it mildly. The long blonde hair that used to kiss her waist is now a coppery red that dusts her shoulders. Not only that, but the layers cut into the sides are causing a large chunk of it to fall flat over one eye.
I don’t like it.
