Page 135 of Beat of Love
Sweat broke across his brow. His vision blurred with the black dots of rising panic.
And just like that, he hurtled back.
Back to that goddamned day Kamila Carvalho discovered who he really was — all because of a shirtless photo of Sullivan making the rounds in the press.
“Do you know what I do to people who double-cross me?” Kamila’s voice turned guttural and raw with rage.
His refusal to speak earned him six lashes from the knout. Barbed thongs ripped through his back, flaying skin from muscle, pain hollowing him out until even breathing was a battle.
Hanging naked, wrists bound high above, he sagged in the ropes.
And still, she circled. The devil in sleek disguise.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
Her red shoes peeked out from beneath tailored black pants, heels rapping across the cement floor.
The Devil Wears Prada.
Some half-broken part of his mind offered the memory — the movie poster, a red stiletto with a forked devil’s tail for a heel.
He clung to it. Escaped into it.
Charlie.
Her warm apartment in Baltimore.
The sound of her laugh, soft and close as they’d watched that movie together — his head on her lap, her fingers in his hair. A balm to his battered soul.
That had been the start of everything. The moment her light began to pierce his darkness.
But the devil didn’t let him linger in his memories.
Barbed wire threaded into the leather of the whip dug into the soft flesh below his chin as she hooked it under and forced his head up.
Her eyes sparkled. With hatred.
And enjoyment.
Kamila Carvalho got off on pain.
“Lost your sting, Senhor Escorpião?” she hissed. “Or should I say—Rafferty Lawson. Son of Jonathan and Branna Lawson.Twinbrother of Sullivan Lawson.”
His stomach churned.
Damn Sullivan.
One tabloid headline. One viral photo. That’s all it had taken to blow his cover wide open.
He gathered every drop of saliva left in his torn mouth and spat — blood and spit spraying her cheek and silky red shirt.
The stain spread. Slowly. Soaking into the fabric like a brand.
Rafferty wrenched his mind back into the cold, drab interrogation room. His defiance had left him unconscious. Left him broken and bloodied, his back a raw canvas after she’d unleashed her fury with that dreadful whip. Of all the monsters he’d faced in the seedy underbelly of society, none matched Kamila Carvalho’s unfiltered, sadistic cruelty.
And for a brief, fleeting handful of days, he’d believed she was dead.
A fucking illusion.
