Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 125243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
The torrent is too powerful to come from a cup or a bucket. It’s a skin-shredding blast that plasters me to the couch and scrubs my skin of every scent it’s ever captured.
I jolt upright with a strangled curse as another deluge knocks the air from my lungs. It’s so strong that it peels my shirt off my body this time.
When the water switches off, I blink through the droplets clinging to my lashes and finally make out the source. Giovanni stands at the entrance of the man cave, grasping a fire hydrant hose.
A fucking fire hydrant hose.
I can barely hear anything since my ears are waterlogged, but one voice stands out
“Told you he’d be alone. He didn’t even look at another woman all night, and he had the eye of every prime pick in the club.”
Nico’s confession is quickly chased by the fire hydrant turning back on. The torrent of water threatens to shred my skin from my bones and rattles through my core.
“What the—” I shield my face as the water punches into me like a thousand needles. “Stop! You should be happy I’m not sticking my dick in your staff, you fucking asshat.”
“True,” Nico shouts over the roar. “But keep going. He owes me a shit ton more staff than a new waitress. I lost ten bartenders last year alone because they thought they could ‘tame’ him.” He air-quotes his second-last word.
Giovanni grins like a psychopath as he tightens his grip on the hose. The pressure increases, and my body becomes one with the couch.
“Are you insane?” I yell, but the words drown in the torrent. “I’m your fucking brother. You’re not meant to waterboard me.”
I won’t lie. I stiffen imagining them punishing me a little longer. I’ve not been myself the past few days, so it’s nice to get back to a snippet of normalcy.
Finally, either the hydrant runs out of water or Giovanni grows a conscience. The blast of water stops infiltrating every hole I own, and the nozzle disperses its excess droplets on the floor.
While wringing out my soaking-wet clothes, I glare at my brothers, silently warning of the retaliation they’ll face for the provocation.
Nico is unfazed.
Actually, they all are.
They smile like smug pricks, mocking me as if my bite isn’t as stern as my bark.
I’ll show them.
Nico crosses his arms over his chest before he stills my immediate request for vengeance with a handful of stern words. “Serves you right for dumping her on the freeway halfway home. She quit this morning, stating she couldn’t work under these conditions. Whatever the fuck that means.”
It takes me a second—a long, waterlogged second—to understand what he’s talking about. My brain is so sludge I’m reasonably sure I am drowning on dry land.
He’s referencing the blonde I left the nightclub with last night, the woman I didn’t want to touch or even look at.
Her hair color alone pissed me off. It wasn’t the shade I wanted to imagine while getting my dick sucked. I grabbed her wrist solely because she was the closest woman in the vicinity. She moved wrong, talked wrong, and breathed wrong.
Before her hands could get close to my belt, I hated my own revenge plot so much that I couldn’t stomach pretending it was brilliant. Which meant I either told her to get out halfway to the compound… or ended her whining “I thought we were going to fuck” voice a much more violent way.
I rub my face, groaning. “She’s alive, isn’t she?”
“Barely,” Nico snaps. “Because although I’m not as psychotic as you, I don’t take the threat of being sued for sexual harassment lightly.” He drags a hand over his cropped beard. “Anyway, this isn’t about me and the mess you’re forcing me to clean up. Again. It’s about you.”
“What about me?”
Giovanni shuts off the hydrant, and the sudden silence is deafening. Water drips off me in sheets, pooling on the marble floor. I’m soaked through, freezing and furious, but also curious.
My family only conducts pop-up meetings in emergencies. The new rules Giovanni and Dante brought in won’t take kindly to me leaving a woman defenseless in the middle of nowhere, but punishment by a water hydrant seems a little overkill.
“The point,” Giovanni says, tossing the hose aside, “is that you’re an hour from losing her forever if you don’t do something.”
My stomach twists, but I refuse to follow the script. What one-man show does?
Giovanni hits me with a look I can’t ignore, and it steamrolls the truth into me.
I don’t want this to be a solo act anymore, and the woman I want to turn this into a duo with is marrying someone else today.
Too snowed under to make sense of my confusion alone, I mutter, “What’s the use? She doesn’t want me. She’s not mine.”
Those last three words hurt. They fucking kill. Saying Azra isn’t mine is the equivalent of ripping out my own ribs.