Dead By Nightfall Read Online Free PDF Page B

Maleah’s hazel-gold eyes.
    He grasped her shoulders and shook her gently. “We have things to do. Go wash your face, pour yourself a stiff drink, and pull yourself together.”
    She offered him a fragile smile. “I’m okay.” When he gave her a skeptical once-over, she told him, “Really. I’m fine. Let’s get to work. Just tell me what I need to do first.”
     
    Rafe Byrne had used numerous aliases over the years; Leonardo Kasan was one of many. Since he had walked out of the London hospital over sixteen years ago with a face even he hadn’t recognized, he had never once used his real name. He had been born Raphael Byrne, his lineage an equal mix of Irish and Italian, but that name meant nothing to him now. As a boy, he had dreamed of becoming either a priest like his uncle Stephano or an artist like his grandfather Byrne. Those dreams, along with every other worthwhile thing in his life, had been brutally and irrevocably stolen from him. First by Malcolm York. And then by York’s special guests who had visited Amara for sport and pleasure, hunting young men in their prime by day and amusing themselves sexually in the evenings, each in his own way.
    To say that he had hated York was a vast understatement. Malevolent to his very soul, York had taken a sweet and innocent boy with a kind heart and gentle spirit and turned him into a savage animal. On the island of Amara, Rafe had joined the other “perfect” specimens in York’s dungeonlike prison, men and boys such as he who had once been normal human beings. He had been thrown into a world he had never known existed, into a dog-eat-dog world where one motto ruled supreme: Kill or be killed.
    If not for a man named Griffin Powell, Rafe would not have survived even the first month on Amara. He owed Griff his life. But there were times, those lonely, soul-searching moments when a man cannot hide from himself, that Rafe wished Griff had never intervened. For three years on Amara, the angelic boy who dreamed of devoting his life to God had endured every aspect of hell here on Earth. And for the past sixteen years he had existed for one purpose. He had become a brutal, merciless fallen angel, a weapon of vengeance and punishment. He killed in the name of justice and had never asked forgiveness from the God who had forsaken him.
    “Leo, please let’s go with the others.” Cassie Wilder tugged on his sleeve, her touch jerking him abruptly from his memories. “Harlan knows the most decadent places in London where all sorts of wicked things go on.”
    “If that’s what you would like to do.” Rafe slid his hand down her back to rest in the curve of her spine, playing his role as her attentive date. “Is the entire dinner party going?”
    “I don’t think so. Just a few of us.”
    The group mingled in the private room, several saying their good-byes with air kisses and insipid mock hugs, while others lingered, apparently eager to follow Harlan Benecroft to whatever den of iniquity he planned to visit.
    “You two simply must join us.” Harlan came over and draped his hefty arm around Cassie’s shoulders. “I know this delicious, exclusive club where the entertainment is marvelously titillating.”
    “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Cassie assured him as she snuggled against Rafe. “Leo is such a darling about doing whatever I want to do.”
    “A man must never give a woman everything she wants.” Yves Bouchard joined the conversation, a wide smile on his aging pretty boy face. “You must remember that a woman wants a man to be a man and never a doormat.”
    Rafe forced a phony, amused laugh. “I am always prepared to learn from an older and wiser man.”
    Bouchard searched Rafe’s face for any sign of sarcasm and apparently seeing none, he laughed as he slapped Rafe on the back. “I believe I’m going to like you, Kasan.”
    “The limousine is waiting,” Harlan said. “Come, children, the night is young and full of promise.”
    Rafe kept