Bought: Destitute yet Defiant

He was frighteningly calm and Jessie wanted to warn him not to turn his back on the men, but she didn’t dare snap the tension that held them all immobile.

As he reached her he lifted a hand and stroked her hair away from her face, the gesture oddly out of place in such a tense situation. His touch was both deliberate and possessive, as if he was making a statement about their relationship, and she didn’t understand that because they didn’t have a relationship any more.

It had been smashed in that grimy room exactly three years earlier, over her brother’s lifeless body.

Then his hand dropped. ‘Andiamo. Let’s go. Get in the car,’ he commanded, and Jessie obeyed, not because she wanted to get in the car, but because she was as mesmerised by his aura of authority as the gang members. He dominated this godless, lawless environment with the sheer force of his presence and Jessie slid into the sumptuous warmth of the Ferrari, feeling as though she were stepping into another world. Moments later he joined her and she wasn’t sure whether the deep growl came from the engine or the depths of his throat. All she knew was that she’d been wrong about his mood.

He wasn’t calm.

He wasn’t calm at all.

Forced into close proximity by the confines of the car she could tell that he was struggling with a raging anger and that knowledge unsettled her because in all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him like this. Never seen that icy control slide. Not once. Not even that night when their relationship had hit rock bottom.

‘Silvio—’

‘Don’t say a word.’ He cut her off before she could even begin her sentence, his voice strangely thickened, his knuckles white on the wheel. He didn’t glance in her direction. Instead he kept his eyes fixed on the road, speeding through the back streets of London as if he were competing for a Formula 1 title.

Jessie was tempted to point out that there wasn’t a lot of point in rescuing her from one threat only to kill them both in a car wreck, but she kept her mouth shut.

Why him?

Why did it have to be him who had rescued her?

Now that the immediate danger had passed, her thoughts were impossibly confused. The adrenaline rushing around her body had been diluted by another hormone and the only thing in her head was that kiss. Her body was still trembling from the pressure of his mouth against hers and the more she remembered of her wild, crazy response, the more appalled she was. Had he noticed her reaction? She shrank in her seat, hoping that he’d been too distracted to register just how enthusiastically she’d played her part.

Disgust slithered over her bones and settled in the core of her like a cold, hard stone.

Had she no shame?

How was it possible to respond like that to someone you’d spent three years hating? Her brain was like a slide show—one minute she was remembering the breath-stealing moment when his dark head had lowered to hers, the next she was seeing her brother’s face.

Shocked, confused and ripped apart with self-loathing, Jessie realised that the one thing she wasn’t thinking of was the six men who had just tried to kill her.

And that didn’t make sense, did it?

Her gaze slid to Silvio.

He was just one man.

Why did she feel safe?

She swallowed a hysterical laugh, wondering why she needed to ask herself that question.

The visible markers of success hadn’t changed who he was. The expensive watch on his wrist, the car he was driving—none of those things had shaped the man. Underneath the exterior of smooth sophistication that enabled him to blend with the upper echelons of society, Silvio was solid steel. Hard, tough and the very essence of what it meant to be a man.

She felt safe because she was safe. Physically. Any woman would be safe with him, although perhaps only she really understood who he really was.

Just looking at him made her feel guilty and Jessie tore her eyes away from him and looked behind her. Not that she thought for one moment anyone would be following the Ferrari. It would be like sending a donkey in pursuit of a racehorse.

‘They called you “the Sicilian”.’ Unable to help herself, she cast another look at his profile. Looking at him was an irresistible compulsion. ‘It’s so long since you had anything to do with that life but your reputation still frightens them. They knew you.’ She stared in fascination, wondering why she wasn’t more afraid of him herself.

Was it because she couldn’t see the scar?

From this angle the damaged skin was invisible, his features almost impossibly perfect.

Perfect, but cold.

Up until tonight she would have said he didn’t feel—but it was evident that he was feeling something.

Jessie wondered why he was so angry. ‘Why did you come here tonight?’

‘I heard a rumour about a pack of trouble and a girl with a golden voice.’ He shifted gears viciously, coaxed the car round a tight corner and accelerated away so fast that Jessie’s head thumped gently against the head rest.

‘I wasn’t looking for trouble.’

His eyes were fixed straight ahead of him. ‘How much did he owe them?’

Jessie gave a twisted smile, not at all surprised that he knew the truth.

She didn’t waste time pretending he’d misunderstood. Neither did she ask him how he knew. He knew everything. This man had contacts at every strata of society—a network that would have made both social climbers and the police force weep with envy.

‘Forty thousand,’ she said flatly, wishing the sum didn’t sound so terrifying. ‘It was twice that, but I’ve paid back half. I’m late with a payment. That’s why they came after me tonight.’ She gave him no details. Didn’t elaborate. But he knew. He was a man who’d known hunger, violence and deprivation and, in the fleeting second before he controlled his reaction, she saw the murderous flash of anger in his eyes.

‘You paid them?’ The question hissed through his lips and Jessie was reminded that this man was twice as dangerous as the men he’d rescued her from.

‘I didn’t exactly have a choice.’

He changed gears with a savage movement of his hand. ‘But you could have gone to the police.’

The dark streets flashed past and Jessie wondered if he even realised he’d just driven straight through a red light. ‘That would have made things worse.’

‘For whom? Law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be afraid of the police, Jessie. Or were you afraid you’d be arrested?’ The contempt in his tone baffled her until she saw his gaze flick briefly to her exposed thighs—saw the raw fury—and suddenly understood his meaning.

He thought she—

That was why he was so angry?

Jessie was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t respond. ‘What sort of job do you think I’m doing?’

‘Presumably the same job as the rest of the girls in that club.’

He thought she was a prostitute.

She leaned her head back against the seat and started to laugh. It was that or cry and there was no way she was ever crying in front of this man. All her tears had been shed in private.

‘You think it’s funny?’ His tone savage, he drove the car harder still and Jessie wondered why it bothered her so much that he thought that of her.

‘I use what God gave me. What’s wrong with that?’ It was a stupid thing to say. Flippant, provocative—like dangling a piece of raw meat in front of a hungry wolf—and the moment the words left her mouth she wanted to suck them back in. But it was too late for that. Too late to wish that everything was different between them.