| BOOK FOUR | THE LONDON CRIME KING | A DARK MAFIA ROMANCE NOVEL |
This book contains adult language and subject matter, including graphic violence, drugs and explicit sex that may be disturbing to some readers.
This series is NOT a typical romance...
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The Judge throned the wooden podium. His stern scowl swept from the eccentric media to the expressionless public, and lastly, the cold-faced jurors. He never acknowledged the defendant. It's as though the man in the dock was a complete nonentity.
Brad was quieter than usual. He's been like it all morning, contemplative, the world around us an afterthought.
I wondered what intrigued him, where he travelled. "What's bothering you?"
"Thinking," he said, which was most obvious. "Taking notes."
A pen rolled between his fingers.
What did the scribbles mean on his forearm?
Number eight.
I hovered. "Why did you draw on yourself?"
Brad smirked wolfishly.
Honestly, he is the worst kind of confident.
"Mind your business." He gave me a tight smile. "Focus."
Easier said than done.
"Your honour, I call the final witness." The robed barrister stood with a folder in hand. "Mrs Chloe Stone."
The air sucked out of me when the prosecution called upon the girl I once called sister. Her unforeseen attendance at court felt like the aftermath of being sucker-punched in the stomach.
Oxygen abandoned my body.
I tried to swallow, the tight lump in my throat increasing in size.
Her blonde hair drifted past at a funeral pace. With a crippling look of regret, she slid behind the elevated stand and splayed her trembling fingers onto the wooden countertop, the adjusted microphone raised for her height.
Tears hung to my lower lashes. I blinked to regain clear-sightedness and listened to the girl from my past affirm to the Judge.
My entire chest caved.
Alexa, breathe.
You must breathe.
Wheezing with dyspnoea, I keeled over, head buried on my thighs, and clutched the nape of my neck. Each hitched sob caught in the back of my throat. If I did not calm down, if I gave into hyperventilation, I risked the loss of consciousness. I cannot afford to faint. Not again.
The Judge banged the gavel. "Does Mrs Warren require medical assistance?"
"Angel?" Vincent's hand clutched my shoulder. "What do you need?"
It hurt to breathe.
"Alexa." Brad's on his knees in front of me. He cupped my hands and held them to my mouth. "Breathe," he whispered, and I drew in a strained breath. "Hold it."
A spell of dizziness accelerated shivers.
"Now, breathe out," he said in a low, commanding voice, and I did as instructed, blowing warm air into my cupped hands. "Repeat."
