Chapter 3

Vivienne

“Surely you don’t mean that?”

Cassian said nothing. I just stared at the cracked phone in my hand, unable to believe they had somehow gotten to him.

“This is some sick scare tactic,” I snapped. “Forced arranged marriage and kidnapping? In this day and age?”

The longer I glared at him, the stronger the urge grew to leap over the seat and beat the living hell out of him.

“You psychopath!” I screamed, his silence getting to me. “What did you do to him?!”

He didn’t answer, and instead his silver-gray eyes met mine briefly in the rearview mirror.

I lunged for his shoulders, causing the SUV to swerve hard then he slammed on the brakes so abruptly that my body pitched forward.

Cassian caught my wrist before my head could hit the divider. “Sit back,” he said coldly. “I don’t particularly appreciate you trying to get us killed.”

“Fuck you and what you think!”

He exhaled once… and even had the nerves to look like he was exhausted from having to deal with me before he pulled his phone from his pocket.

Without a word, he pulled out his phone and tapped the screen like he had expected me to behave like this before he turned it toward me.

A video began to play.

I immediately recognized Silas’s silver Honda.

My breath hitched as I watched two men dressed in black yank him out of the car before he could react. My boyfriend didn’t even have a chance to fight, it had taken only a punch to send him unconscious.

“No…” The word slipped out as the figure who turned to face the camera came into view.

My blood turned to ice.

Massimo.

Tears burned behind my eyes, but I refused to let either of them see me break or think of me as weak!

“What have you done?” I whispered.

Cassian’s jaw tightened.

“Nothing yet but what happens to your boyfriend depends entirely on how you behave.”

I stared at him in pure horror.

“If anything happens to Silas, I swear to God I will never forgive you or your father.”

For the first time since this nightmare began, Cassian smiled. It was the same smile I had grown up with… only now it carried a clear threat beneath it.

“Your forgiveness means absolutely nothing to me, Vivi.”

I hated that nickname and hated the way it rolled off his tongue after six years.

I folded into the seat, clutching Silas’s phone tightly against my chest.

“Now that’s a good girl,” I heard him murmur with a smirk. At that moment I have never hated anything to anyone more than I hated Cassian Vitale.

The ride continued in silence. At some point, exhaustion must have overtaken me because when I opened my eyes again, the scenery outside had changed.

My stomach sank as I took in the every familiar route.

The Vitale estate… the last I had been here was on the night I had told Cassian I was running away from home…

This was real. I had been sold off in exchange for my family's debts, people that cared very little about me.

The ironclad gates appeared first and my first thought was, how was I ever going to escape these walls?

Back to the place I had once called home, the walls had been climbable but one look at the towering barriers surrounding the Vitale estate told me everything I needed to know. There would be no easy escape from this hell.

My throat went dry.

As he drove deeper onto the property, memories I thought I had buried came rushing back. I remembered sneaking wine with Cassian on that balcony and alongside that innocent memory, a scowl found its way onto my face as every humiliating ritual I had gone through as my traitorous teenage body reacted whenever I was around Massimo Vitale found me.

At fourteen, I had been certain it wasn't merely a crush, but by sixteen, I had practically worshipped the ground that man walked on.

He had been older, handsome, with that commanding aura that made me fawn over him.

Back then, I used to imagine what his hands would feel like on my perky breast. Now, years later, I wasn't that small or naïve girl anymore.

My eyes met Cassian's in the rearview mirror, and he looked away almost immediately. I wondered if Cassian knew that half the reason I had wanted to spend time with him back then was to stay close to the man who made me blush whenever he called me piccola.

Even after I left home, I still had filthy dreams about Massimo… they had been so vivid that I’d wake up mortified and aching… with the lingering sensation that he had been around… that had been until I met Silas two years ago.

Thank God sixteen-year-old me had been invisible and awkward, because twenty-two-year-old me wanted to crawl into a hole and die remembering the lengths I had gone to just to be noticed.

As the gates closed behind us, I felt like I was now in a gilded cage.

“You don’t have to do this, Casey…” I found myself whispering as he parked.

He stilled at the nickname I had always used before he had to ruin it, “You don’t get to ask me for favors after all this. I’m the arsehole in your story, remember?”

Of course he was.

The moment he had betrayed my trust and had reported me for attempting to escape… did he even know that I had been bundled back home on that fateful day and forced to sleep with pigs and for the next few days, I was fed the same food as pigs until I had finally escaped.

Before I could reach for the handle, my door was opened from outside.

Two guards stood there, giving me little to no room to break into a run.

I glared at Cassian.

“I hate you.”

He stepped out, and as he adjusted his cuffs he replied without looking at me, “Get in line, principessa.”

As I was being escorted to a room, one that had clearly been prepared for my arrival, I yelled back at him, “I am not staying here.”

No answer.

I turned to see that the door had been shut behind me and, just before I could bang on it, the handle turned.

And he walked in.