Twisted

by Knight, Natasha

  I kiss her cheek. “I love you, you know that?” I whisper.

  She glances up at me. “Never stop telling me that.”

  Irina comes to take the babies, and I take my wife in my arms.

  Epilogue 2

  Gregory

  The Gift

  “You’re not really supposed to see me before the wedding. It’s bad luck,” Amelia says once everyone’s gone outside to strap the car seats in and we’re alone in the house.

  “I think you and I are overdue for good luck,” I say, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “You look beautiful.” I pull her to me, liking the plunging back of the dress which is both demure and sensual all at once.

  She blushes, glances away. “Thank you. And so do you.”

  “The tux is uncomfortable.”

  “Get over it.”

  I lean in to kiss her lightly on the lips. “I can’t wait to get you out of that dress.”

  “Does your brain ever not go somewhere dirty?”

  “Rarely.”

  The door opens and Sebastian peeks his head in. “You two ready?”

  Amelia opens her mouth to respond, but I stop her. “We’ll follow. You go ahead.”

  Sebastian takes a moment to study us, nods and disappears.

  “We’re going to be late,” Amelia says.

  “We’re the main event. They’ll wait.”

  I pull her into the living room, reach into the presents piled up for the girls and pick out the one I want. I hold it out to her.

  “We’re doing gifts after,” she says, looking at it.

  “Just one. This one’s just for us, anyway.”

  She reaches out, takes it, gives me a strange look when she realizes it’s just a rolled-up sheet of paper.

  “What is it?”

  “Open it.”

  She pulls on the ribbon to unwrap it slowly, peels away the decorative paper to unroll what’s inside. She studies it, furrows her eyebrows and looks up at me.

  “What is this?” she asks.

  “Well,” I say, turning the sheet so we’re both looking at it. “This represents me—”

  “But it’s a partial skull.”

  “My dark side.” I wink. “And this, this is you in case you weren’t sure.” But she should be because the eyes, they’re perfect. And the way she’s holding my face and kissing me, well, she should know. “The bird—”

  “It’s the same one I always see.”

  “A new beginning. Literally erasing the past.”

  “A tattoo?”

  I nod. “Here,” I touch the spot where the unfinished whipping post scene is at my back.

  Tears fill her eyes and she looks from the sheet back to me, and when I pull her into my arms, I wipe away the teardrop that slips.

  “Your makeup,” I say, although I don’t care if she has streaks of black running down her face. She’d still be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.

  “I love you so much, you know that?”

  “I hope so, considering you’re about to marry me.” I say, trying to make light of it. I squeeze her closer. I swear I won’t ever be close enough. Not with her. “I love you, Amelia. I can’t imagine ever being without you. And I don’t ever want you to look at me, at any part of me, and think you’re not everything.”

  She lays her head on my shoulder, touches my cheek.

  “Because you are. You are my everything.”

  The End.

  Thank You

  Thank you for reading Twisted! I hope you enjoyed Gregory and Amelia’s story. If you’d consider leaving a review at the store where you purchased this book, I would be so very grateful.

  If you loved the Twisted and want more, get to know the Benedetti Mafia World starting with the brothers: Salvatore, Dominic and Sergio, three Dark Mafia Romances.

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  Excerpt from Salvatore: a Dark Mafia Romance

  Prologue

  Salvatore

  I signed the contract before me, pressing so hard that the track of my signature left a groove on the sheet of paper. I set the pen down and slid the pages across the table to her.

  Lucia.

  I could barely meet her gaze as she raised big, innocent, frightened eyes to mine.

  She looked at it, at the collected, official documents that would bind her to me. That would make her mine. I wasn’t sure if she was reading or simply staring, trying to make sense of what had just happened. What had been decided for her. For both of us.

  She turned reddened eyes to her father. I didn’t miss the questions I saw inside them. The plea. The disbelief.

  But DeMarco kept his eyes lowered, his head bent in defeat. He couldn’t look at his daughter, not after what he’d been made to watch.

  I understood that, and I hated my own father more for making him do it.

  Lucia sucked in a ragged breath. Could everyone hear it or just me? I saw the rapid pulse beating in her neck. Her hand trembled when she picked up the pen. She met my gaze once more. One final plea? I watched her struggle against the tears that threatened to spill on her already stained cheeks.

  I didn’t know what I felt upon seeing them. Hell, I didn’t know what I felt about anything at all anymore.

  “Sign.”

  My father’s command made her turn. I watched their gazes collide.

  “We don’t have all day.”

  To call him domineering was an understatement. He was someone who made grown men tremble.

  But she didn’t shy away.

  “Sign, Lucia,” her father said quietly.

  She didn’t look at anyone after that. Instead, she put pen to paper and signed her name—Lucia Annalisa DeMarco—on the dotted line adjacent to mine. My family’s attorney applied the seal to the sheets as soon as she finished, quickly taking them and leaving the room.

  I guess it was all official, then. Decided. Done.

  My father stood, gave me his signature look of displeasure, and walked out of the room. Two of his men followed.

  “Do you need a minute?” I asked her. Did she want to say good-bye to her father?

  “No.”

  She refused to look at him or at me. Instead, she pushed her chair back and stood, the now-wrinkled white skirt falling over her thighs. She fisted her hands at her sides.

  “I’m ready.”

  I rose and gestured to one of the waiting men. She walked ahead of him as if he walked her to her execution. I glanced at her father, then at the cold examining table with the leather restraints now hanging open, useless, their victim released. The image of what had happened there just moments earlier shamed me.

  But it could have been so much worse for her.

  It could have gone the way my father wanted. His cruelty knew no bounds.

  She had me to thank for saving her from that.

  So why did I still feel like a monster? A beast? A pathetic, spineless puppet?

  I owned Lucia DeMarco, but the thought only made me sick. She was the token, the living, breathing trophy of my family’s triumph over hers.

  I walked out of the room and rode the elevator down to the lobby, emptying my eyes of emotion. That was one thing I did well.

  I walked out onto the stifling, noisy Manhattan sidewalk and climbed into the backseat of my waiting car. The driver knew where to take me, and twenty minutes later, I walked into the whorehouse, to a room in the back, the image of Lucia lying on that examining table, bound, struggling, her face turned away as the doctor probed her before declaring her intact, burned into my memory forever.

  I’d stood beside her. I hadn’t looked. Did that absolve me
? Surely that meant something?

  But why was my cock hard, then?

  She’d cried quietly. I’d watched her tears slip off her face and fall to the floor and willed myself to be anywhere but there. Willed myself not to hear the sounds, my father’s degrading words, her quiet breaths as she struggled to remain silent.

  All while I’d stood by.

  I was a coward. A monster. Because when I did finally meet those burning amber eyes, when I dared shift my gaze to hers, our eyes had locked, and I saw the quiet plea inside them. A silent cry for help.

  In desperation, she’d sought my help.

  And I’d looked away.

  Her father’s face had gone white when he’d realized the full cost he’d agreed to; the payment of the debt he’d set upon her shoulders.

  Her life for his. For all of theirs.

  Fucking selfish bastard didn’t deserve to live. He should have died to protect her. He should never—ever—have allowed this to happen.

  I sucked in a breath, heavy and wet, drowning me.

  I poured myself a drink, slammed it back, and repeated. Whiskey was good. Whiskey dulled the scene replaying in my head. But it did nothing to wipe out the image of her eyes on mine. Her terrified, desperate eyes.

  I threw the glass, smashing it in the corner. One of the whores came to me, knelt between my spread legs, and took my cock out of my pants. Her lips moved, saying something I didn’t hear over the war raging inside my head, and fucked up as fucked up can be, she took my already hard cock into her mouth.

  I gripped a handful of the bitch’s hair and closed my eyes, letting her do her work, taking me deep into her throat. But I didn’t want gentle, not now. I needed more. I stood, squeezed my eyes shut against the image of Lucia on that table, and fucked the whore’s face until she choked and tears streamed down her cheeks. Until I finally came, emptying down her throat, the sexual release, like the whiskey, gave me nothing. There wasn’t enough sex or alcohol in the world to burn that particular image of Lucia out of my mind, but maybe I deserved it. Deserved the guilt. I should man up and own it. I allowed it all to happen, after all. I stood by and did nothing.

  And now, she was mine, and I was hers.

  Her very own monster.

  * * *

  Salvatore: a Dark Mafia Romance is available in all stores.

  Also By Natasha Knight

  Dark Legacy

  Taken (Dark Legacy Duet, Book 1)

  Torn (Dark Legacy Duet, Book 2)

  Twisted (Standalone Spinoff, Dark Legacy)

  Benedetti Mafia World

  Salvatore: a Dark Mafia Romance

  Dominic: a Dark Mafia Romance

  Sergio: a Dark Mafia Romance

  The Benedetti Brothers Duet

  Captive Beauty

  Giovanni

  The Amado Brothers

  Dishonorable

  Disgraced

  Unhinged

  Standalone Dark Romance

  Deviant

  Beautiful Liar

  Retribution

  Theirs To Take

  Captive, Mine

  Alpha

  Given to the Savage

  Taken by the Beast

  Claimed by the Beast

  Captive’s Desire

  Protective Custody

  Amy’s Strict Doctor

  Taming Emma

  Taming Megan

  Taming Naia

  Reclaiming Sophie

  The Firefighter’s Girl

  Dangerous Defiance

  Her Rogue Knight

  Taught To Kneel

  Tamed: the Roark Brothers Trilogy

  Acknowledgments

  Cover Design by Letitia Hasser, RBA Designs

  Cover Photography by Wander Aguiar

  Cover Model Travis S.

  Editing by Casey McKay

  About the Author

  USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance, Natasha Knight specializes in dark, tortured heroes. Happily-Ever-Afters are guaranteed, but she likes to put her characters through hell to get them there. She’s evil like that.

  Want more?

  www.natasha-knight.com

  natasha-knight@outlook.com