Free Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance by Natasha Tanner, Molly Thorne Page A

sheet and cover had fallen by the bedside, leaving me exposed. I shivered as I covered myself again.
    I knew what the dream meant. I would never truly have him. The words of my favourite poet, Marina Tsvetaeva, ricocheted inside my head as I fell down in the multicolored sand:
However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest.
    Ace Hart was a wolf, and his head would always be turned to the forest. Gorgeous women grew all around him like trees in fertile soil. There was no way for me to avoid it. It was in his nature.
    I was a creature from a different world. And all I could do was cry.
     
    * * *
     
    ACE
    It had been years since I last dreamt of Rhonda. Always nightmares. This time was not the exception.
    It was just her face at first, in a close-up, looking at me calmly in the eye. She wasn’t talking or moving, just staring, as if there was nothing to say or do. I don’t remember having ever seen such a peaceful expression in her when she was alive. She was always sparkly, passionate in the good and the bad, often irate. Not in the dream. She looked like a Madonna, full of inner peace and serenity.
    Then, the bullet.
    The bullet entered the scene from the right, drawing a slow, straight trajectory toward her left eye. She didn’t notice it —no time for that, no time for anything, although for me, the scene was unbearably slow, a split second extended over what felt like a month.
    And then suddenly the face was
Van’s
face, exploding in slow motion as the bullet entered her eye and burst into her skull, blood and flesh flying away in all directions. Time caught up to speed as the world became a red mask of death, and I fell backwards, trying to scream, but unable to do so.
    My heart raced as I felt my body falling down fast, faster, faster, into a dark hollow full of smoke and torn cards. I dove into a pool of dark viscous water. It was freezing cold, and even with my eyes open I could see nothing. I tried to swim but I felt weak; my body in the dream had barely any muscles, and I was pushed around and down by the current, feeling how the liquid filled my lungs as I tried to breathe.
    The water screamed. It screamed with Van’s voice.
    That voice was still ringing in my ears,
raping
my ears, when I woke up. It was the voice of danger.
    I could never have her. The danger was there, it was black and cold and shrieked in horror everywhere. Being with her meant killing her. It had happened with Rhonda and it would happen with Van.
    The air was hot in my room, but I felt a chill biting at my bones.

15. MIRROR, MIRROR
    VAN
    Present day
    I haven’t left the city. Not for now, at least.
    I don’t know if I feel safer now or less safe than before. Ace is no longer here to protect me, but was he actually protecting me? I’ve given this idea many twists and turns in the last few days. Or, rather, in my last few sleepless nights.
    I know what a rich jerk is capable to do. What if the incident in Brooklyn was all a simulation? What if he hired a few guys to give me a scare, so that I would fall right into his arms as my savior? He didn’t even wait a day to kick me out. He already had what he wanted: one more girl for his never-ending tally.
    At times, I feel bad for thinking that way, and I remember how mad he got when Vassily started hitting on me in our meeting. That day I thought he actually felt something for me, something else besides physical attraction —but aren’t these guys incapable of such a thing? Was it not something more like defending his prey from the other predator? Men are assholes, and this is the worst kind of man, the most assholish of them all.
    I’m confused. But I’ve never been the kind of woman who lies to herself. It’s not so much that I’m confused as that I’m hurt. Yes, hurt, because I love that asshole. There’s not much to be confused about. He acted just like I thought he would act from the first time I saw him. It’s his nature, the wolf with its head turned to the