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Interruption
Presley was wrapped up in Cruz’s arms at her suggestion of them making up when a knock on the door made. them both groan again.”
“Seriously. Our friends are not kind.” Cruz complained as he moved to look through the peephole and then
froze. He looked at Presley and put his finger to his lips shaking his head.
“What?” she mouthed at him.
He looked to the patio as if contemplating opening the curtains and going out of the room via the wall Algernon and her brother climbed earlier in the week. He grabbed his phone and sent a text to his security team, showing her, he asked them to come immediately. He took Presley by the hand and pulled her into the
bathroom when a second knock at the door was harder than the first.
He whispered, “it’s Liborio himself. He’s at the door. My security team is not on the floor, and I don’t even know if they’re in the building. Christ, I don’t usually travel with a huge team because I’m pretty low profile most of the time. I’m a single guy who doesn’t date and doesn’t end up in tabloids. Nobody cares what I do. I’m a workaholic and I don’t go out partying.” He took a breath, “I don’t know what to do. Do we make a run for it and go off the patio or wait for my team to get here and send him on his way?”
“We let him in and talk to him. He’s not going to take me against my will.”
“He’s a mobster. He can and absolutely will take you.”
“You’re crazy. We’re in a resort. There is no way he can kidnap me out of here.” She shook her head and evaded Cruz’s grasp and moved to open the door.
“Presley, no,” he gasped as she lunged and pulled the door open.
“Hi. Can I help you?”
“I knocked. Why didn’t you answer?” the man’s voice was deep and raspy as if he’d just smoked a pack of cigarettes chased with a quart of whiskey.
“We were in the bathroom getting ready to take a shower.” She motioned to Cruz who was standing behind
her. “Who are you?”
“Liborio Bartoli. Invite me in.”
“I’d rather not. I don’t know you.”
“Now.”
“If I don’t,” she tapped her chin, “are you like a vampire and you can’t cross the threshold.”
“Clever girl, right now your father is on his way to the resort’s medical center at your mother’s insistence because his nitro isn’t working as quickly as she would like. He’s still having chest pain. It would be a shame if I needed to bring him here to teach you manners instead of letting him get the medical attention he needs.”
“Don’t threaten her,” Cruz growled.
“Hawley, your father owes me a significant chunk of money and several favors. I suggest you be a good boy and mind your business. Before you get into your oversized empty head you can take me, know, despite your curtains being closed on a yacht a few hundred feet offshore, there is perched a sniper who is very well
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trained with a special scope which traces heat signatures. I don’t need to be able to punch you out in a barbaric fashion for you to be put down and I could simply call it me calling in the debt to your father.“”
“There is no need to be rude or threatening.” Presley didn’t know what else to say.
“You call me rude and yet you have not invited me in yet.”
“Not until you answer if you’re a vampire.”
“Jesus Christ,” the man pushed into the room angrily, “I am not a f*****g vampire. I simply like things done a certain way. You will learn this in time, Presley Brookmore.”
Suddenly the room was filled with six additional men, all clearly packing weapons and despite Cruz trying to get between Presley and Liborio, the men created a barrier of two lines of men, their military–style training
evident.
“Sit, Presley,” Liborio pointed to a chair. “Put him in the bathroom. Shoot him if he even tries to argue.”
“Dude, what is your problem?” Presley tried to duck around the men who kept her from even seeing Cruz. “Do not speak disrespectfully to me. You and I have business. We will talk. I have a proposal for you. You will listen to it. I don’t have any need to go over my business with this man. Once I leave you can tell him everything to your little heart’s content, but my business is with you, not him.”
“Your business is with my traitorous brother.” She snipped back angry when all six men pointed their weapons on Cruz and she noted a red dot on the side of his head. “Cruz, go in the bathroom, please.” Her eyes filled with tears as her fingers pointed to the red line coming through the darkening room. “Please.” Her heart was thudding dangerously. She let a romantic ideal of a mafia don make her think this man could be reasoned with. Never did she feel so wrong.
“No. Not until he gives me his word, he’s not forcibly taking you from this room.” Cruz tried to duck around the
men.
“You have my word.” Liborio stated before she could respond. “When she comes with me, it will be voluntary. I prefer to do my business based on choices and decisions, Cruz. You however are currently interfering in my business and when it comes to my business, I have no trouble removing barriers.”
“Cruz, please.” She was begging him. “Go. I promise I won’t agree to anything until we talk.”
He was shoved into the room and five of the six men went with him and barricaded the door.
“Sit Presley.”
“Your manners are lacking,” she sat down angrily and folded her arms over her chest. “You pretend to be refined by saying you do business deals through choices but you’re a bully.”
“Says you. Your brother owes me
debt.”
“I heard. I don’t care. You can kill him for all I care.”
“Ah,” he sat down in the chair opposite her and pouted his lips. “I don’t believe you mean it. I think your parents and Marsha would be quite devastated if I brought him home and fed him to the orcas off the bay.”
“They wouldn’t eat him. He’s too full of s**t. You’re better off finding a pig farmer.”
His
eyes narrowed on her and she studied him right back. His hair was neatly cropped. A thick scar curved around his temple as if he’d been smashed over the head with a broken bottle. Her imagination was going
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+ Forty
with a scorned lover beating him with it. His eyes were dark, nearly black and reminded her of a shark and not the whales known in her hometown to habitat the bay. He was not as tall as Cruz by a long shot, but he was lithe and lean, and his legs were long.
“Are you done gawking or can we continue?”
Her eyes roved back up to his face and she shrugged, “I bet you were hot when you were younger. You’re what fifty, fifty–five? My father’s age.”
“Thirty–nine. I need an heir. Your brother provided me an opportunity.”
“You want to impregnate him? Go for it. He’s a giant p***y so it should work for you.”
He tapped his fingers on the tabletop frustratedly on the tabletop, “as pretty as your brother is, drag queens aren’t my style.” At her surprised expression he gave a sinister laugh, “you didn’t know? Tell your friend Sloane she missed identifying him in a couple of photos in Thailand. He let them dress him up. Quite beautiful if you’re into such things. I’m not. I don’t care who other people f**k. What I do care about is who will be in my bed. I am hopeful it will be you.”
“No thanks. Not interested. My plans are to push out big–headed red–haired babies who look like Cruz.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“Yes.”
“Presley.” He let his hands rest loosely clasped on his thighs drawing her eyes to his crotch and he smirked.” Your best friend Halima has an older brother who is part of a motorcycle gang. I can put him in prison for life. Your other best friend Sloane dug a little too deep and the guy she ordered to coffee a few weekends back is really a CSIS agent. I can make it very easy for him to find the evidence he’s looking for. She sold some information to an official in a country Canada is not aligned with and it makes her at risk of serving a long
time in jail.”
Presley glared at him, her face burning as she struggled to control her anger.
“Your brother I have no trouble getting rid of. Your mother however, Odin’s little accusation of her beating him, “he clicked his tongue, “it would be sad if it hit the press. I mean with the way you spread how you’re into being beaten during s*x, it’s not a stretch your own mother might have had an inappropriate relationship with her deceased stepson who we can make it look like a suicide and all his troubles were due to her hurting him.
“You’re disgusting.”
“Your father’s company isn’t doing great, especially since he pissed off Hawley. It wouldn’t take much in addition to your mother’s scandal for him to go under. Between the death of his son who he failed, his wife being accused of inappropriate conduct and his daughter who is so volatile she accosted a man in a public setting, admitted to having an abortion and enjoying kink play, it won’t take much to destroy your father. I wonder how his heart will handle it all.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You have something I want.”
“What?”
“Eggs and a womb.”
< Interruption
“I don’t want to have your baby.”
“Multiple.”
“Excuse me?”
“Two. I need two children. You can opt to carry them one at a time or as twins.”
“I don’t understand. Why me?”
“Because when I investigated your slug of a brother, I discovered you. Presley Brookmore. Twenty–five. New York Times bestselling author. Four lovers in your life, well,” he looked to the door, “five now though I don’t understand the attraction at all. He’s a neanderthal, literally born in the wrong millennium.” He caught himself and shrugged, “no sexually transmitted diseases. At your last pap smear we also took your DNA and tested it for a slew of medical conditions, especially in light of your father’s weak heart which you did not appear to inherit. Most importantly, Presley, you are a resilient woman. You endured a life by all accounts should have left you broken and bruised. How the hell you’re f*****g a man who literally tortured the hell out of you on behalf of your toad of a brother is beyond me. As part of your self–flagellation routine, do you force yourself to eat things you’re allergic to, wear your panties so tight you can’t breathe or maybe bathe in fire ants for kicks?” He smirked, “personally I hate when my underwear is too tight. Nobody likes a wedgy.”
“I hate you.”
“You don’t know me. I need your womb. You can choose to use a lab to carry my children, or we f**k the old–fashioned way but either way, you have a choice to make.”
“This is extortion.”
He gave a laugh, “did you think I didn’t know this? Yes, it is extortion. I will kill your brother and ruin the lives of everyone you love if you choose not to fulfil the agreement your brother signed off on. Once the children are born, you can return to the life you want to live.”
“You want me to simply hand them over after I birth them.”
“Unless you wish to marry me. I should let you know, I’m an all or nothing guy. It would be until death do us part. If you choose not to marry me, you will have the kiddos and then never see them or me again.”
“Cruz will refund the money my brother stole from you.”
“Except,” he laughed in her face, “I don’t want money back. Presley, I have more money than your current lover and he thinks he’s the s**t because he finally became a billionaire. Money is nothing to me. I trade 1S. You have nothing to offer me other than what I’ve asked for. I don’t negotiate.”
“Do you realize the toll such a thing would take on my body?”
“You will be compensated. In addition to your family being spared, you will be given a lump sum payment. I get the kids. You get cash.”
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