She’d cried for days over Angelo’s death, her grandfather trying to console her. Never once had it occurred to her that any of those deaths were related. Not one time did she put it together that she had been the last person to see all four men. The deaths were weeks and months apart. Could her grandfather really have had those men killed? Murdered? His friends? Men who sat at their table with them frequently. Could he really be such a monster and she not know?

Marco worked for him. He’d been around as long as she could remember. She knew Marco would never act on his own. He was quiet, unassuming, but his eyes were watchful and often very cold. Not necessarily when he looked at her or her grandfather. Marco had headed the team of men rescuing her when she was kidnapped that first time when she was ten. He’d held her in his arms and rocked her back and forth once they found her, shielding her from the sight of the bodies of the dead men. He always watched over her grandfather, and cared nothing for the business, only for the protection of Antonio Arnotto.

Elijah clearly had been waiting for him ever since she’d driven up. He knew a hit man would be coming, and he probably knew who that man was. Her face turned scarlet. Her heart shifted in her chest and her stomach lurched alarmingly again. Elijah had deliberately had sex with her. He hadn’t been overcome with passion as she had been. Another sob escaped. She’d been a complete and utter fool. The worst I ever had. She knew she would never get his assessment of her abilities out of her mind until the day she died. He’d branded her in more ways than one. Don’t even know how to suck cock.

“Oh. My. God. What did I do?” she whispered. There was no taking it back. No way to change what happened. How did she live with it? With being the distraction that allowed her grandfather to have his friends murdered? With wild, dirty sex that she wasn’t any good at. With Elijah knowing what she was, a whore her grandfather sent out to distract his friends while he sent someone to murder them.

With shaky hands, she pulled on her jeans. She was sore and achy. Worse. That horrible, disgusting hunger was beginning to build again. She hated herself. She hated her grandfather. She hated her life, and most of all she hated Elijah. She wasn’t the person he made her out to be. He had to have known it was her first time. She couldn’t have been whoring herself out for her grandfather. And if her grandfather was guilty of being the man it had been rumored he was—what did that say about Elijah? He ran in the same circles.