Prologue
Dante
“Bloody hell”.
I don’t know what got into me to buy this disaster. Because God knows this tiny girl has caused me more damage in a week than I had to endure in a whole year.
Firstly, 50 million dollars I lost in a blink of an eye. Because no one in my fucking family was as good a hacker as this one here sitting on my lap with a broken shoulder, frightened like a kitten, and all rattled up because of the dangerous events of the night.
It was a fucking regular night in my club, and I was still fuming over the loss of my fucking millions, which was supposed to be used on my fucking mafia business, but slipped through our fingers because our accounts were hacked, and by whom?
Her
I couldn’t believe it at first because it was not an everyday incident where a minor with no prior link to any mafia or crime organization, for that matter, was randomly hacking into our secured accounts. I was so furious. I was hellbent on tracking her down and making her pay for the crime.
But after thoroughly checking her disturbing background, I had to stop myself. She wasn’t a random hacker. She was just doing a favor to a friend who happened to be a member of the Mexican mafia, and she was totally oblivious to that fact. Fucker had used her ability for mere thousand dollars.
She was just surviving the abuse of her drunkard foster father, so I decided to let it slide this one time. But seeing tonight with her bastard father, I saw red. Something shifted inside me like molten lava.
From the shadowed part of the club I was sitting in, I spotted her. Barely recognizable in dim light and the sheer little dress and makeup she was putting on, eyes darting around nervously, shaking from fear.
My jaw clenched with rage as I knew what was happening there. The girl was being sold for a quick score, probably by a creep. And the worst of it all, she was ignorant of what was waiting for her.
I had never imagined crossing paths with her after deciding to spare her life for once. You know I wasn’t a fucking saint for God’s sake. I hadn’t planned on seeing her again, but she was now here in a club, where there were men of the worst kind. And if I didn’t do something, she would be sold to creeps, used, and discarded. The thought didn’t sit well with me.
I inhaled sharply, running several scenarios through my head. I could walk away from all of this, after all, it wasn’t my problem to begin with. Let her fate decide what’s going to happen to her or let her foster father sell her out for his quick cash.
But then my heart clenched in my chest with some unfamiliar feeling as a scene of her lying in a ditch crossed my mind, all beaten up and bloodied.
m***********s.
My eyes narrowed as I watched her father drag her to the back, where those deals happened, which don’t belong in the open. Dark fury surged through my veins. I had the power and connections, and if someone thought they would get away with this under my radar, they were bloody mistaken.
“Dante?” My most trusted enforcer noticed the sudden change in my demeanor, “What’s going on with you, man?”
“I’ve got to handle something.” I was already walking towards the back area. “Get a car ready, will you?”
“On it, boss.” He gulped his drink in one go and turned toward the entrance. I looked toward her and found a disgusting creep’s eyes locked on her, his slimy grin getting wider as he listened to her father’s demand.
Getting near, I relished in the silence that was caused by my presence. The bastards knew me well enough not to cross my path. They were trembling like f*****g shits. When I reached the table they were sitting on, the fuckers ran out, their tails tucked behind their legs.
“Touch her again, and I will rip your hand out.”
The one whose hand lingered on her thigh fled away like a coward.
“You want the bitch, the price is doubled now.” My hand tightened on my gun, how I wanted to murder that scum right there at the moment. But one look at her tear-stricken face, and I had to double my effort to not cause her more distress. And the reason for it is a fucking mystery to me.
I simply threw some wads of bills on the table, and the bastard didn’t hesitate for a moment before clutching them and exiting the club without glancing.
She looked terrified, so I asked my men to escort her home and get her cleaned up, as she’d become a mess of running makeup and all that shit.
I don’t know why I had saved her, why the hell I cared. But I wasn’t the kind of man who leaves someone behind to the wolves, and I certainly wasn’t someone to show his back when I had the power to change the scenario of someone’s fate.
But earlier during a meeting when I got a call from Leo, but heard her trembling voice asking for help and then some screaming, I don’t know what got into me.
I growled with rage. How dare someone attack my possession? My men were already rushing for Marco and Leo’s backup. My hitmen were scrambling out in their vehicles.
It was a mess. It was a strange, totally foreign feeling that made me madly possessive to save her, to get her out of harm’s way. It wasn’t in me to sit there and wait for my men to save the day.
I needed to see her alive and breathing, and when Leo picked her and threw her into my car, gunshots raining down and all, my fists clenched. I showed a great deal of resistance to not killing my own loyal enforcer for mishandling my girl. Fucker.
My pulse, which was running like a mad dog, seemed to calm down by holding her in my arms. I don’t f*****g know why my heart seemed to calm down by the mere presence of this little disaster, which was clinging to me like I was her lifeline, fucking hell. What the hell did I get myself into?
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