My Stepmom Tried To Sell My Sister To A Mob Boss — But He Demanded Me Instead.
Part 2
He said he was taking me as payment, and if my stepmother objected, he would paint the marble floors with her.
Brenda gasped in utter shock, her jaw dropping completely open.
Heather stared at us with wide, disbelieving eyes, momentarily forgetting her own massive humiliation.
Craig simply stood paralyzed by the table, entirely incapable of intervening as the city’s most feared man pulled me to my feet.
Dan didn’t wait for permission or any further pathetic negotiation.
He kept his warm hand firmly wrapped around my wrist and guided me straight out of the dead silent ballroom.
My legs trembled with every single step we took toward the exit doors.
I fully expected to be executed the moment we reached the dark alleyways outside.
Instead, his armed guards opened the heavy door of a heavily armored black sedan.
The long ride to his sprawling estate in the hills was suffocatingly silent.
I pressed myself against the cold glass of the window, staring blindly at the snow falling on the dark streets.
Dan sat on the opposite side of the premium leather seat, nursing a glass of amber liquid.
His dark eyes never left my pale reflection in the tinted window.
When we arrived at the massive, fortress-like mansion, my breath hitched painfully in my chest.
Armed men actively patrolled the high stone perimeter walls.
Dan led me up a grand sweeping staircase and pushed open a heavy oak door to a massive master bedroom.
A fire crackled warmly in the ornate stone fireplace.
“What are you going to do to me?” I forced the words past the tight lump in my throat.
I backed away cautiously until my shoulders hit the cold plaster of the wall.
“I don’t have anything of value to give you.”
Dan stepped closer, closing the heavy wooden door with a soft click.
He towered over me, but his expression lacked any trace of the brutal cruelty I saw at the gala.
Instead, he reached out slowly, his long fingers gently brushing the ruined, scarred skin of my neck.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable disgust I always received.
His touch was unbelievably gentle and entirely reverent.
“They think this makes you worthless,” he murmured softly.
His thumb carefully traced the jagged edge of the burn tissue.
“But they don’t know that I was the one who pulled you out of that roaring fire seventeen years ago.”
My eyes snapped open in sheer, unadulterated disbelief.
The air rushed out of my lungs in a shocked, jagged gasp.
He walked over to a crystal decanter, pouring a glass of dark bourbon with steady, deliberate hands.
Quietly, he rolled up the left sleeve of his expensive, tailored dress shirt.
Spanning from his wrist to his elbow was a thick, jagged burn scar perfectly matching the texture of my own.
He explained he had been a low-level enforcer cutting through our alleyway that tragic night.
Slowly, he witnessed my own father carrying empty gas cans out the back door moments before the house exploded.
When he finally told me the truth about how my mother really died, I realized my nightmare wasn’t just beginning—but was I brave enough to strike the match he was handing me?
