Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 110824 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110824 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
My obsession.
Now, she is the reason my heart beats.
I took one look at the golden-haired goddess with pain in her eyes and knew I had to have her.
I let myself become the man she needed.
I know she thinks I'm harmless—a friend offering to help a damsel in distress.
She has no idea how wrong she is.
I may look like safety to her, but it’s all a lie.
On the inside, I’m the man who will tear men apart piece by piece to keep them away from her.
I’m the man who will avenge every wrong she has ever endured.
Because she belongs to me.
If she knew the man I truly was, my sweet, innocent Angel would be terrified.
There’s so much blood on my hands that they will never be clean.
So, I do what I must to hide who I am.
I’ll do whatever it takes to protect her.
I will even teach her to stand proudly by my side and demand her own revenge.
The one thing I can’t do?
Is let her go.
Deadly Protector is book 4 of the Kingdom of Sin Series. It is a mafia romance that contains dark undertones and triggers. It can be read as a standalone.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
prologue
. . .
Angelia
Six Years Earlier
I can hear him breathing. I’m face down on my living room floor. My wrists are raw from pulling on the zip ties the man secured them with. My shoulders and forearms are filled with pain because they are twisted unnaturally. My legs are starting to go numb. I’m so dizzy. At first, I can’t figure out why, then I realize he must have kept beating me even after the attack. My face is swollen, and I can’t focus, my vision is very blurry and dimmed—almost like a gray haze.
Pain is shooting through me. Each of my hands are somehow tied to one of my ankles which has forced my legs to bend at the knee, making my thighs cramp. My lower extremities are securely tied, too. I’m not sure what with. The texture feels like a rough rope, but I can’t be sure. I just know that I can’t move. It’s impossible.
I’ve been in this position for hours. It feels like years, but I know it’s not. Still, after the man beat me and I blacked out, time stopped having meaning. I came home from the gym, only to have someone hit me from behind at the base of my skull. I don’t know what with, but I do know it was something extremely heavy. Whoever did it had been waiting for me just inside my front door. I tried to turn and see who hit me, but I went down almost immediately, losing consciousness. I did see a figure standing over me. He said something, but I couldn’t make it out. As the darkness closed in, I couldn’t find the strength to raise my head. All I could see were his shoes, black shiny, dress shoes. I succumbed to the pain and let the darkness claim me.
When I woke up, I was in this position. I began screaming only to have the man grip my hair, forcing my head back. I couldn’t see his face, just a distorted mishmash of images as his hot, putrid breath fanned against my face. My ears were ringing so loudly that I couldn’t hear his words. Then, all at once it broke through and I was terrified. His rough, hoarse voice purred. “If you want to scream, I’ll give you something to scream about.” With that, the blade of his knife roughly cut through my cheek in a sawing action. The weapon was so dull that it made each cut even more painful.
Blood oozes from my face and the pain is debilitatingly intense. I wonder for a second if I might black out again and I kind wanted to. I’m afraid of what might come next. Until this moment, I was sure my mother was the queen of evil. I clearly had no idea just how dark this world truly was.
The man hasn’t raped me, but he did touch me in ways that makes fear constantly course through my body. He shoves a gag into my mouth and I’m pretty sure it’s a pair of my underwear—which means the man has been going through my stuff. That would normally terrify me, but I’m more worried about what he’s going to do to me.
I’ve gone from praying for someone to rescue me, to praying for death. I’m helpless. I can’t scream for help. I can’t even see who is doing this to me. I can’t do anything but wait for everything to end. Wait for my end.
He had left me completely alone for at least a couple of hours. I don’t have a clock in front of me, but I’ve been counting in my mind and the numbers add up to around two or two and a half hours. I’ve discovered that counting somehow puts my brain on autopilot, making me numb to what is around me. It doesn’t completely save me, but it has kept me from getting completely lost in my terror.
I think I’m just waiting for him to kill me. He’s standing over me, doing nothing, but the sound of his breathing is really beginning to get to me. I’ve tried not to show him that I can hear him. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing all of the effects of the horror he’s inflicting on me.
“When are we killing her?” I hear another male voice question.
I can’t breathe. It hits me all at once. I’m going to die. My surprise makes me mad. I’m being weak. I was just praying for death. Why do I give my captor—or captors—the satisfaction of seeing how it affects me now? No matter how much I try to rein myself in, I can’t. The devastation I feel is too indescribable. My eyes sting with the force of my tears. It’s painful because my eyes are so swollen. There’s also pain as they run down my face and into the jagged knife cuts. The salty evidence of my pain burns, amplifying the pain I’m already feeling.