Page 10 of Razor

He grips my chin hard and forces me to look at him. His voice cruel, domineering, savage.

“Open your eyes if you want to keep them.”

They open on command—his command and as I stare into the face from my nightmares, I accept it’s already game over.

Santiago De Sauro is the vilest man I have ever had the misfortune to meet. He is the reason I was hiding in the first place, and I should never have left the safety of the compound.

Of course he was going to find me. He makes a habit of nurturing grudges, and when I escaped his clutches, he would have been pissed, and now I’m about to pay the price for that.

“My beautiful Josephine. So pretty; always so pretty.”

His lips press against my locked ones, and I shake my head.

His finger jabs between my lips, forcing them open, and as his tongue enters my mouth, I want to throw up so badly.

His hand slides under my t-shirt, probing, cascading over my skin like molten wax. Burning, unwelcome, and leaving an imprint I doubt I’ll ever recover from.

He reaches my breast, pinching my nipple hard, all the time biting my lips, my tongue, while grasping my chin hard.

It’s a cruel assault on every sense I own; my body rebelling at his touch but resigned to the inevitable.

He always wanted me. To be his latest plaything. Somebody to torture on repeat under the guise of a relationship.

It’s why I ran the minute he laid out his ultimatum. I took the coward’s way out, and my father has paid the price for that. The guilt is lying heavily on my soul, and I will never forgive myself. Perhaps now is the time to accept my fate and set my father free from his chains.

He finally steps back, his gaze cruel and unrelenting.

“It was never going to work, Josephine. I was always going to find you, and you may as well stop trying to escape the inevitable.”

My mouth is dry and tastes of him, and the urge to vomit is overwhelming right now.

“Please, let me go. Give this up; no good will come of it.”

He steps back, a thoughtful expression replacing the cruel one. His eyes flash and he grabs a chair from the table nearby and positions it in front of me, sitting astride it, intimidating as fuck.

“Now why would I do that when tormenting you is way more fun?”

I don’t know why I bothered trying to appeal to his better nature because he doesn’t have one. He never did, and I can’t believe he’s been haunting my dreams for what appears to be my entire life.

We attended high school together. He was the creepy kid who slunk in the shadows. Perving on the girls and manipulating situations to his advantage.

He always had a thing for me. I shut him down numerous times, and if I thought when school ended I would never see him again, I was sorely mistaken.

Santiago entered his family’s business and quickly rose to the top of the tree when his father suffered a heart attack. Suddenly, the creepy kid from school became king of all he surveyed in thetown and had an army of malevolence to fight his battles. He was intent on retribution, and anyone who slighted him in the past suffered for it, and I am one of them.

He targeted my father’s chain of waffle houses, demanding protection money. When my father refused, he torched one of the restaurants and then another, causing my father to agree, albeit reluctantly.

But it wasn’t enough. He wanted me to pay and went to my father and told him the only way to settle his debt to him was to give him me.

My father was broken. I saw it in his eyes. Lose me or his empire. His livelihood.

It was an easy decision for him to make.

He contacted my brothers, who are serving in the military, for help. They arranged for a safe house that turned out to be paradise on earth. For me, anyway.

I became a member of the Twisted Reaper MC academy program. A broken angel to repair under their watchful eye.

I only have myself to blame for what is happening now. Why was I so stupid to call my father? It figures they would be tracking his phone. It’s why I’ve had no contact since I left.