I didn't exactly choose to be stolen at four years old.
But the French underworld isn't big on consent.
One minute I was Donatella Acardi, Mafia royalty. The next? Just another stolen kid bleeding in someone else's basement.
That's where I met Ami...
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Donatella POV:
It was 3:04 a.m.
Exactly.
I knew because I’d checked the digital clock on the nightstand at least six times in the past three minutes.
Amir was dead asleep, sprawled across the bed with one arm across his eyes and the other over the side like he’d been tranquilized mid-battle. Which—fair—he basically had. The man hacked into Leonardo’s multi-million-dollar security system earlier with three lines of code, a half-eaten protein bar, and a deep sigh. He earned his coma.
I, however, was *not* asleep.
Not even *close*.
No, I was sitting up in bed like some kind of sweaty Victorian widow at sea, staring at the ceiling with all the regret of a thousand lives I hadn’t lived.
Because I wanted him.
And not in the *cute* way. Not in the “Oh my god, I just want to cuddle and tell him I love his brain” way. No. I wanted him in the *I might accidentally start chewing on the bedsheets if I don't do something soon* way.
I launched myself out of bed like it was on fire and started pacing the room.
Like an idiot.
A barefoot idiot with blood still drying under her fingernails from last night’s mirror punching fiasco.
I passed the dresser. The mirror. The window. The chair with the stack of folded black clothes we were supposed to wear tomorrow. Walked into the bathroom. Stared at my reflection. Left the bathroom. Circled back into the bathroom again like I forgot something.
I didn’t forget anything.
I was just running from my own hormones like a little *bitch.*
“God,” I muttered, running both hands through my hair and gripping the roots. “What is *wrong* with me?”
I had been around this man for *years.* We had shared cold, bloodstained floors in abandoned warehouses. We had changed clothes in the same room. He had literally watched me use a toothbrush as a weapon once. And I had never—*ever*—acted like some desperate teenage girl trying to survive the world’s worst case of sexual tension.
Until now.
Until that *stupid* moment in the bathroom where he grabbed my wrist and cleaned up my hand and looked at me like I wasn’t a nuclear warhead wrapped in trauma and trust issues.
And now here I was. Suffering. Pacing.
I came back out and glared at him.
Still asleep.
Breathing like an angel. Chest rising and falling. Jaw relaxed. One leg twisted in the sheets like he didn’t know people were out here in *crisis.*
“You couldn’t have just been ugly?” I muttered to no one. “Or at least mildly unpleasant?”
