Free The Pirate Prince by Gaelen Foley

knew nothing about—he’d never taken any of it seriously.
    She had set him up. This abduction was a hoax. She wasn’t in the slightest danger—she was merely playing along with the rebels to bend her father and the Council to her will. And she had been using him, toying with him all along.
    Even more furious than before, Domenic stalked to Monteverdi’s dark-paneled office, went straight to the liquor cabinet, and fumbled with his left hand as he attempted to pour himself a whiskey.
    “Damn it.” He went back to the doorway and bellowed down the hall for a servant to do it, and to light a few of the candles as well.
    When the room was brightened and the servant handed him a tumbler of whiskey, he glanced in the mirror over the mantel and stared at himself with his one working eye, barely recognizing his own handsome face, now a mangled, prune-colored mess.
    No wonder everyone had been gawking at him.
    Instantly, he promised himself revenge on that rebel dog—no swift, simple hanging but a slow, lingering torture. And as for Allegra, who had dared try to make a fool of him, she would be sorry. Very, very sorry. He would have vengeance on her, too, but somehow he would have to get around her father.
    He knew Monteverdi would never bring Allegra up on charges, the same way he had never brought his wife up on charges when she had found out the truth about the Fiori murders. Oh, coming up under the close tutelage of certain Councilmen, Domenic had eventually been made privy to the whole secret story of what happened to Lady Cristiana Monteverdi. Allegra’s mother had been eliminated before she had been able to take her story to Rome, as she had been secretly planning, but since her death had been made to look like a suicide, her husband was never the wiser. The governor had been too besotted with her to keep her in check.
    Likewise, he thought, Monteverdi would use all his power to protect his little girl, even if she was a rebel turncoat.
    Perhaps she should be spared, Domenic thought, an evil twist coming over his half-swollen mouth. When he looked down at his wrist, puffed up to twice its normal circumference, he decided there and then, if his right hand had to be amputated because of this break, he was going to uphold their betrothal. Then, as her husband, he could take his vengeance on her every night for the rest of her life.
     
    The rebel never took her to his faction. Instead, he took her back to Little Genoa.
    The city was dark and deserted now except for pockets of guards who roamed the streets or gathered in the empty square. There was a mood of tension in their sharp calls, the piercing toots of the sergeant’s whistle, the sound of marching boots and pawing horses.
    Everyone’s looking for him and me , she marveled as her captor led her along the shadows of the old Roman wall toward the gate towers—into the very lions’ den, it seemed.
    On the one hand, she felt guilty for cooperating with her captor so willingly, as if she had turned against her father and joined the rebel side herself. But what choice did she have? She could not fight a man a foot taller than she and twice her weight, in pure, solid muscle.
    Her stomach felt strange, kind of quivery and sick, when she thought about what they’d do to Humberto when they caught him, especially when they saw her ripped dress—ripped by Domenic—but they would think he had done it. The soldiers would take retribution on his whole village and no doubt do to the peasant girls there what they would assume he had done to her. Then the men of the village would blow up a garrison or set up an ambush of the soldiers and do horrible things to the men they caught. Retribution upon retribution upon retribution, vendetta piled on vendetta, back and forth ceaselessly, she thought wearily.
    Considering the fact that Ascencion was a Catholic country whose Savior had told men to turn the other cheek, Allegra could never fathom why the medieval custom of vendetta