Tires screech, a black car cuts me off on the two-lane road in the middle of nowhere. My seatbelt locks when I slam on the brakes to avoid crashing. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes away is as far as I got from my doomed future.

The black car in front of me stops, and I squint to get a better look.

A tall man exits the back seat, and I grab the pepper spray from my purse.

My heart slams against my chest as I watch the shadowy figure draw closer. With nowhere to go, or anything to defend myself with, I clutch onto the spray in my hand.

The door is locked, thank God, and I breathe a tiny sigh of relief. Very tiny. The man gets closer, and believe me, if I could run him over, I would. But, there’s no room for it since another car is behind me.

Tap. Tap. Tap, on my window.

I look straight forward.

“Rhiannon,” I hear a man say, and it takes me a moment to recognize the voice calling my name.

And that’s when I turn toward the sound, glance up, and stare into the glacial blue eyes of a ghost.

It took me a lifetime to fall in love, and a moment to fall out. Right now, on my knees, in front of my former best friend, is when I fall out. I hate him.

Red trickles from his knuckle I slammed in the door, down his fingertip, forming a red teardrop that falls on the tip of his designer shoe. It splatters and spreads, oozing like paint across the glossy black leather. Such a shame his five hundred-dollar shoes are ruined.

I breathe through my nose, trying not to faint at the sight of the crimson red.

My scalp screams for mercy when he fists my hair tighter and yanks my head back. The handsome face I dreamt about for years is contorted into a mask of rage I don't recognize.

“You’re coming with me,” he demands.

“No.”

He bends down, until his blue eyes are an eyelash width from mine. “Rhi,” he whispers. “I won't show you any mercy.”

“I don't want your mercy, Xavier,” I whisper back.

His warm lips brush against my ear. “What if I take you back to Ian?”

My heart races at the mention of my forced fiancé. For two years, I've endured the impending nuptials, biding my time until I could escape, only to be thwarted by this.

Like vultures, his suited men watch in the darkened parking lot, waiting to see who comes out the victor.

“Let me go.”

“No.” He pulls me to standing. “Haven't you learned yet I mean what I say?”

“Like leaving me?” I taunt. A muscle ticks in his jaw.

He releases my hair and turns away. “Put her in the car,” he orders.

His henchmen get no resistance from me as they lead me to the black sedan.

I'll figure a way out of this. Just like when we were kids and played rescue the princess. Except, this time, Xavier isn’t smiling and laughing. And this time I'm not the princess of some imaginary land. I'm a different kind of a princess. Something I want no part of. A Mafia princess. And Xavier isn't my white knight coming to rescue me. He's willing to kill me to get what he wants.

* * *

“What are you doing in my room?” I wrap the plush, white towel tighter around me, trying to shield myself from the insanity of this situation.

“This house belongs to me. Why wouldn't I be here?” Xavier’s eyes flit over me.

“What's the matter, Rhiannon?” He crosses the distance between us. “Still shy around boys?”

“You’re so mean now.” I whisper, looking up at him. And I still can't believe I'm actually looking at him after all this time. When the car cut me off on the outskirts of the city, I figured it was one of my father’s men. That maybe Delilah had sold me out. Never did I expect to see Xavier step from the car. I've had zero time to process what's happening. Zero time to come to grips with the fact the boy who left is standing in this room a man with obvious wealth and a vendetta the size of Texas. Or hatred the size of Wyoming. Or both.

“You've changed since I saw you last,” he says, ignoring my question.

So, has he—the model perfect chiseled angles and masculine planes of his face are still beautiful, but it's his eyes. The warmth is gone. He’s colder now.

“Well, ten years makes a lot of difference,” I tell him. “I'm not a naive seventeen-year-old anymore.”

“I'll say,” he murmurs, his gaze lingering on my breasts. He crosses his suited arms. “I brought you more clothes.” He nods to the platform bed now filled with designer shopping bags alongside my suitcase.

“You can't keep me here in this cell.”

“Sure, I can,” he says. “It’s a nicer cell than your father keeps you in.”

I rummage through my suitcase, looking around for my phone and wallet. Oh God, all the cash I’d saved to start over with—gone.

“You won’t find it,” he says, knowing full well what I’m after.

“What do you want with me?” I ask.

“Everything you’ll need is in the bathroom drawers.”

“You know, no one ever seems to answer me. It's as if I never asked the question. Is this a mob thing?”

“Mob? Is that what you think I am?”

I can't look at him anymore; it makes my chest ache to see what he's become. I turn from his piercing blue gaze and continue rifling through the shopping bags filled with jeans, t-shirts, panties, bras. He’s right—everything I could possibly need, except my phone.

“Well, I don’t know,” I start. “You kidnap me, threaten me, and steal my things. Sounds very Mafia to me.”

“You have no idea who, or what I am.”

As if that answers anything.

“And,” he continues, “as soon as your father gives me what I need, you can go back to your life and marry your pretty little politician wannabe.”

Never. It took months and months of planning to get everything in place to escape a wedding to that asshole. “My father will never give you what you need. Looks like you did all this for nothing.”

The heat from his body sears my back, and the towel is yanked from around me. I spin to face him as he dangles it from his fingers.

“Xavier,” I yell, grabbing a handful of clothes to cover myself, “why did you do that?”

“Don't patronize me, Rhiannon,” he warns. “One way or another,” his heated gaze sets fire to my skin, “I'll get what I want.”

He drops the towel and slams the door on his way out.