I wear his name like a scar.
Alessandro Rossi stole everything from me; my freedom, my future, the lie I told my father to keep him alive. He thinks I'm a tool to be used, a bride to be displayed, a Fraga to be broken. He thinks the ring on my finge...
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5 hours ago.
I woke up to pain.
A splitting, blinding agony that pulsed through my skull with every heartbeat. My eyes opened slowly, the world swimming in and out of focus, nothing but blurry shapes and dim light.
The memories came back in jagged pieces. Black SUVs cutting me off. The screech of tires. Hands grabbing me, dragging me out of the car. A bag over my head. The sharp sting of something hitting my temple, and then nothing.
Now I was here.
My arms were chained behind me, cuffed to a rusted metal pole in the corner of a storage room that smelled like mildew and stale cigarettes. The floor was cold and damp beneath me. My head throbbed with every breath, and my wrists were raw from where the metal had already started to dig in.
I didn't know how long I'd been here. Hours? A day? Longer? Time had blurred into a smear of darkness and silence and fear.
Panic pressed against my ribs, but I shoved it down. I couldn't fall apart. Fear wouldn't help me.
I pulled at the cuffs, testing them, and the metal bit deeper into my skin. I tried twisting my wrists, tried sliding my hands free, but there was no give. The chain held firm.
I was trapped.
"Anyone there?" My voice came out cracked and thin, swallowed by the silence.
No answer.
Then the door swung open, and a man stepped inside. He was big, broad-shouldered, with a face like chiseled stone and eyes that held nothing. He shoved a tray toward me without a word.
"Eat."
"How?" I yanked at the chain, letting it rattle. "My hands are behind my back."
He grunted, pulled out a key, and unlocked one of the cuffs. Then he shoved a fork into my palm and stepped back.
"Fifteen minutes."
I looked at the food. I wasn't hungry. The fear had eaten everything else.
The door slammed behind him, and I was alone again.
I tried the fork against the lock. Nothing. I tried bending the prongs, using them to pick at the mechanism like they did in the movies. Nothing. I pulled and twisted and clawed at the chain until my wrist was aching and scraped raw, but it didn't give. Every failed attempt wound my nerves tighter until I wanted to scream.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Too soon. My pulse spiked. It couldn't have been fifteen minutes.
This wasn't the same guard.
The door opened, and a man stepped inside. Dressed in a sharp black suit, no tie, his hair slicked back with obsessive precision, his eyes cold and blue and completely empty. He looked at me the way a snake looks at a mouse.
