Free Marked For Love (Mob Romance) by Cristina Grenier Page A

your name?”
    His head darted to fix her with a wary gaze and Grace swallowed a sigh of exasperation. Alright, she got it, she was a prisoner. A hostage. She didn’t expect the man to give her his entire title and zip code. All she wanted was to stop referring to him by amorphous nicknames in her mind.
    He, and the two other men he worked with.
    “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to be stuck coming up with nicknames for all three of you. Trust me, you don’t want that.”
    He scowled, pouring himself another drought before crossing the width of the jet to drop onto the sofa a good foot away from where she rested. Reaching down, he cupped her hands around a second glass before pouring a small measure of champagne into it. “My name is Vicente.”
    Just as Italian as his looks. “The bottled blonde is Gio,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the nervously sleeping man behind him. “And that’s Matteo.” His eyes narrowed. “And that’s all you’ll know of us.”
    Grace nodded obediently, deciding not to push her luck at that particular juncture. However, she knew that if she would get their names from them, there was a possibility they might be willing to share more information…
    “Drink.” She was startled from her thoughts by Vicente’s abrupt order and she glanced down at the champagne in her cup. “It will help you to sleep,” he added, sipping from his own drink as he watched her expectantly.
    Grace forced herself to stare at the glass for the next ten seconds, but try as she might she couldn’t bring herself to lift the thing to her goddamned lips. She didn’t want to sleep. She finally knew Vicente’s name, and he was talking to her almost as if she was a decent human being. Why the hell would she want to sleep away time she could be talking with him?
    Finally, she placed the glass on low table beside the sofa. “I don’t want to sleep.” She pronounced. “I want to stay awake. I don’t know how many waking hours I have left.”
    “Right.” Vicente set his glass next to hers. “Because you believe your father would let you die before he would pay your ransom.” He sounded almost mocking, raising her ire to the point where she risked glaring at him.
    “That’s exactly what I believe. And if you knew anything about my father, you would too.”
    “I know nothing of your father. But I do know my business.” Vicente fixed her with his sharp, gray stare. “And I’ve never seen someone refuse to pay. Not once they realize the gravity of the situation.”
    “And what is the gravity of the situation?” She managed in soft, bemused murmur. “I’ve been kidnapped, I’m on a plane out of the country, and I’m having a conversation with a man who would just as soon kill me as look at me; you’re telling me it gets worse?”
    “It can.” The man’s tone was surprisingly neutral, considering he was expounding upon the difficulties she now found herself in. “But I’m sure that’s not what you want.”
    He was a mind reader.
    Slowly, Grace took him in from head to toe. Today he wore a crisply starched gray shirt that matched his eyes along with a pinstriped vest and pants that molded two long, muscular legs. His hair hung loose, framing his face, and he’d obviously cleaned up his stubble, framing it so that it accentuated all the right angles of his face. If there was one thing she’d noticed, it was that he and his companions were always impeccably dressed. Was that an Italian thing, she wondered, or just a straight up mob thing?
    Because, by this point, she was pretty sure that was who Vicente and his pals were: part of some ring of the Italian mob.
    Which didn’t bode well for her. “Will I be,” she paused, forcing herself to forge on despite her apprehensions, “will I be staying in Rome?”
    “For a time, yes.” Vicente’s eyes moved over her slowly, analytically, as if he were trying to ascertain by her facial expressions exactly where the current line of