Chapter 2 Chapter One

Ara

My whole life was falling apart for the second time since I found my fiancé balls deep inside my best friend.

And all I could do was watch helplessly as it fell to my feet, breaking into a million shards I couldn't fix back together.

My stepfather, Neil, stood in the center of the room, cradling a bottle of whiskey to his chest and swaying like a signpost in a hurricane.

He had lost a bet at a popular gambling house and was sending one of my sisters to work there until she paid off his debts.

I stepped in front of my younger sisters, shielding them from the monster our mother had left us with.

I glared daggers at him. “You will do no such thing. You can't send them off to that slaughterhouse because of your bad gambling habits." I told him, seething with rage and fury.

How dare he suggest something like that? My twin sisters were barely sixteen. They were still in highschool for goodness sake!

Millie and Mollie grabbed my elbows when our stepfather stepped forward and came to stand in front of my face.

His breath reeked of everything stale, alcohol, cigarette and other things I didn't dare think about.

“How dare you speak to me that way, slut? Infact, I change my mind. The two will go work at the gambling house. They'll pay off the debts quickly.” He laughed, taking a long swig from the bottle in his arms.

I tightened my arms around my sisters and took a few steps backwards to put some distance between us and our stepfather.

Ever since our mother's death, we'd been forced to live with him because they'd built a restaurant together.

We lived upstairs, while the restaurant itself was downstairs. The restaurant was the only legacy my mother left, and I promised her on her sickbed that I would keep the restaurant alive.

My stepfather had incurred lots of debts from different gambling houses. He was a con artist who duped rich men and widows of their money.

I couldn't let him take the only people I had left from me.

“You have no right to do that. You've been nothing but a financial burden ever since mother's death. You never loved her, you were only there for the money. And now -”

His hand sliced through the air and my face twisted to the side from the force of his palm against my cheek.

“You slutty little thing, how dare you speak to me that way?" He roared, reaching behind to drag Millie and Mollie from where they were hiding behind me.

Just as I was about to grab the collar of Mollie's shirt, we heard the loud screeching of tyres followed by loud gunshots coming from outside.

Our stepfather immediately let go of my sisters, and began to move backwards, his eyes moving frantically from one corner of our tiny sitting room.

The entrance door downstairs burst open, like heavily built men had rammed all their weight into it.

What was happening?

The unmistakable sound of boots pounding on the weak floors of our restaurant caused my heart to stutter right before it began to gallop like a racehorse.

I grabbed my sisters’ hands and started to lead them deeper into the house.

It was then I realized our stepfather was trying to run away.

If Neil was running away….

That meant one thing….

Some of the people he owed were here. In the past, creditors would storm our small restaurant and threaten to break things or even hurt one of us if Neil failed to pay up.

It had happened several times in the past, and right now, it felt like it was about to happen al over again.

I pushed my sisters into the bedroom the three of us all shared.

I shoved them towards the gigantic wardrobe we'd dragged from our mother's room a few months after her funeral.

“Hide inside, quick. Don't make a sound, and don't come out until I say so. I'll look for Neil and see what the intruders want." My voice cracked at the end and I swallowed, trying to sound confident for the sake of my twin sisters.

“But they are with guns," Millie whispered, reaching out to stop me from leaving.

"I'll be fine. I just need you two to stay put. I promise, I'll be back. Stay inside the wardrobe, and don't come out no matter what happens. Not even if -”

We heard footsteps approaching, loud, threatening and deafening. Whoever these people were, they sure didn't come for a nice chat.

I quickly pushed my sisters into the wardrobe and left the bedroom, shutting it behind me and running to the sitting room.

Rough hands grabbed me, stealing the air from my lungs as I tried to jerk away. I was lifted off the floor like a sack of oats and heaved over a hard shoulder of steel.

I screamed for help, kicked, pummeled and bit at whoever had just thrown me over his shoulder but he didn't slow down one bit as he descended the stairs that led to our dingy restaurant.

As soon as he reached the foot of the stairs, he roughly deposited me on the floor like one would do to a sack of animal feed.

I bit down on the scream that threatened to tear out of my lungs and focused on the Viking sized men standing at strategic positions in the restaurant.

I counted ten, plus the one standing over my sprawled body on the floor.

Where was Neil? My best guess was that he had escaped.

I immediately sat up when the door of our restaurant pushed open, and in walked the object of my fantasies.

The reason I stayed awake every night, torturing myself with the memory of his head between my thighs, feasting on me like I was dessert and he'd been waiting for hours to devour me.

The man who had pleasured me in the VIP suite of Grind and Ride when I'd staggered into it like the hopeless drunk I'd been that night.

How…. What…. What was going on?

Two men flanked him on each side as he approached me in majestic strides that carried him to where I lay on the floor like a church rat on the dirty floor of my mother's restaurant.

Looking at his face felt like I was doing something forbidden.

His chiseled jaw, his slightly crooked nose, his fierce green gaze and his perfectly sculpted cheekbones made me feel like I was studying the most perfect work of art.

And those full sensous lips hiding the very wicked tongue that had sent me spiraling off the edge with the hottest orgasm of my life.

There was no mercy or softness in his eyes, and the fire burning in them threatened to scorch me right where I sat like a fool on the floor.

There was something else about him, something popular, like what I'd seen online and in the press.

He looked so out of place in our dreary looking restaurant. He looked like royalty. He walked like it, moved like it.

I didn't understand, what was he doing here?

He stopped a few feet away from me and looked down his nose at me, like I was a housefly he was going to crush with his outrageously expensive shoes.

He patted the lapels of his suit and looked around our surroundings with disdain.

“She was all you found?" He asked his men in the most boring baritone I'd ever heard.

He sounded so different, so cold, nothing like the voice that had whispered dirty things in my ears that night.

“I'm sorry, boss, but she's all I found. I think the bastard ran away.” The man who'd grabbed me and hoisted me over his shoulder replied, bowing his head slightly in apology.

Shit. Was the guy from the VIP suite their boss? It couldn't be that Neil owed him or had duped him, right?

I cleared my throat, just so he could finally look at me and remember me.

What we'd shared that night in the VIP suite five months ago was hardly a one nightstand. I'd been foolish and naive and heartbroken and drunk.

Perhaps I was mistaking him for the guy in the VIP suite. That was possible.

Finally, he looked me in the eye, and I felt the organs inside my body go utterly still.

“I'm guessing you're related to Neil. Well, since he has decided to run like the coward he is after duping me of thirty million dollars, you're leaving with me. As the collateral. And you won't see the light of day until he returns with my money.” The lack of warmth in his eyes bled into his voice, and I shrank back, shaking my head in disbelief.

Suddenly it all made sense. Why he looked more intimidating and different from that night—even though I hadn't been able to see much of his face.

Thayne Slade, number five out of America's twenty richest men under thirty on Forbes list was in our restaurant.

And I'd let him eat me out in the VIP suite of one of his clubs.

And my stepfather had duped him of thirty fucking million dollars.