Page 3 of Relentless Sinner

I try to back away but he tightens his grip on my face, holding me there so I can’t move.

“Let me go,” I cry out.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“No, why don’t you go and fuck yourself.”

He growls, looking more feral than a wild, ravenous animal.

Fury and fear lodge in my throat then scatter over my body, burning my nerves from the inside out.

His smile widens, becoming more hideous. He’s about to say something else but then a loud crack pierces the air and the smile leaves his face.

We hear the sound again. It’s distant but unmistakable. I’d know it in my sleep.Gunfire.

Scarred Neck tenses. There’s no trace of humor left on his face as his eyes dart toward the door.

There’s a distinct shift in the atmosphere, a sudden tension rippling through the air that feels so tangible I can almost touch it.

Another shot sounds, louder this time, closer. It echoes through the stone walls and reverberates around my soul.

For the first time since Scarred Neck took me I see fear in his eyes. The kind of fear that tells me that my father’s men might be here.

Hope sparks inside my heart. The same hope that filled me on that dreadful night when my mother was taken from me and my father rescued me.

God, could this truly be him?

Dare I hope? Dare I pray?

Scarred Neck releases me and stands, pulling his gun from his back pocket. Then he takes slow, deliberate steps towards the corner of the dungeon.

The gunfire becomes more rapid and insistent, followed by the cries of dying men. My heart pounds harder and so loud it’s no different from the sound of the war around us.

It nearly pops when the doors crash down the corridor. Footsteps thunder in next, sounding like an army.

Shots explode around me and I shrink back into the wall. A second later men rush into my cell.

Before Scarred Neck can think of shooting, bullets riddle his body. The gun slips from his hand, clattering to the floor just before he collapses, motionless.

I squeeze my eyes shut at the horrid sight but still hear the brief sound of him groaning before he’s no more.

The shooting stops and that cold silence returns. I open my eyes and stare at the men around me. It’s only then that I realize I don’t recognize them. Not one of them.

They also don’t look Italian. They’re Russian. Russian as inBratva. Russian Mafia.

The hope I previously felt dissolves into the ether and every nerve inside me lights up with fear.

Then I hear it—another set of footsteps. These are slow and heavy, in control, as if they belong to a man who knows he owns the world.

The men part to let him through, and then I see him.

He’s as tall and muscular as a giant, with wild, untamed, raven hair that falls past his shoulders in thick waves.

Dressed in full black with a long leather jacket molding to his muscles, he looks like he just stepped off a battlefield.

Every inch of him oozes danger yet there’s a certain beauty about him in the way his sharp, angular features are sculpted to his face and his piercing blue eyes slice into me.

He has the kind of male beauty that makes you forget to breathe.