His Every Desire Read Online Free PDF Page B

her either. He was going to be gone for three more days, and she was leaving now.
    For three years, her husband had kept her locked in a world of terror. She had tried to leave. Many times. But the bastard always found her. Somehow.
    He wouldn’t find her this time. Even if she and Joel didn’t last forever, Joel had given her something priceless.
    Strength.
    She wasn’t the weak, spineless woman that Vincent had tried to make her into. And she was no longer destitute either.
    Although she’d made a pile of money when she was modeling, in that life long before Vincent had seduced her into believing he loved her, all that money was gone. Well, not gone. She had no doubt that Vincent had doubled and even tripled it.
    But she hadn’t been able to get to it. The bastard gave her less than fifty dollars a week—enough for gas so she could drive to the gym, and of course, she was followed.
    She was penniless. She was married to a rich mobster, and she was penniless. Her car had barely enough gas to get her to town if she wanted to shop a little, but if she wanted clothes, she had to ask, and then the fucking housekeeper would go with her.
    Well, until Joel.
    Joel had taken her shopping. He’d taken her ice skating—he’d taken her for snow cones at the county fair in August. But that had been with his money.
    Now Tracy had money of her own. Mama—bless her—had left a very large amount of money to Tracy. In trust. Which meant Vincent couldn’t get it unless she let him.
    That had pretty much pissed him off. But he’d held his temper while she went through the heartbreaking process of burying her mom. Regardless of his treatment of her, there were limits to what Vincent could allow the public to see. He had an image to maintain, and sometimes it was the only thing that saved her. And he wouldn’t hit her when Joel was around. But that time was over—her safe time was gone. That was very clear.
    When he had come to her room today, he had told her, in very specific terms, what would happen to her if that money wasn’t transferred to him. Originally he had wanted it transferred when the banks reopened on Monday, but he had decided to give her a few extra days after he’d busted her eye.
    She hadn’t once mentioned Joel’s name, although part of her had screamed out for him as Vincent hit her, as he took her to the floor, tearing the clothes from her struggling body.
    She had hit him that time. And he’d responded by closing his hands around her neck. Even as he squeezed the air from her lungs, she had fought. Two of his bastards had ended up coming in, holding her down and laughing while he raped her.
    But they hadn’t taken turns.
    Vincent had offered them the chance, but as she curled away from them, touching the pearls at her neck as if they were some sort of talisman, they had looked at her with fear in her eyes. Fear of what Joel would do.
    She knew what she was supposed to do now, while Vincent was out partying. She was supposed to put ice on her face to keep it from swelling. That way, when she had to cover the nasty bruise for a few days, or a week, the swelling wasn’t so noticeable.
    But she didn’t want to. She was tired of trying to hide what he’d done to her. Hell, it didn’t work anyway. Vincent could play the respectable businessman all he wanted, but they all knew what he was.
    Scum.
    A thug.
    A mob boss.
    Everybody in the small seaside village of Rockfort, Maine knew what he had done to her. They turned a blind eye for the most part, but they knew. She even understood why, in some ways. Vincent Grainger was a dangerous man. People who crossed him often ended up dead.
    Tracy decided that having police reports done on your potential mate should just be a way of life. If she’d done that…God, if only somebody had told her. Would she have believed them?
    Damn it, she didn’t know.
    Tracy wanted to think so, wanted to think she would have been smart enough to see the truth. She wanted to think,