Ranger's Rescue (The Rescue Rangers Book 1) by Caitlyn Lynch

Author:Caitlyn Lynch [Lynch, Caitlyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shenanigans Press
Published: 2020-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Ariana had no way to know the time, but she assumed it was seven o’clock, or just before, when her door was unlocked again. She’d pulled the chair and shoes away to let the door open freely and was sitting by the window with her hands folded demurely in her lap.

It wasn’t Emilia who opened the door; it was one of Gustav’s sicarios, a thin man with a bushy mustache and the cold eyes of a snake. Another man stood behind him, round-faced and leering as he gazed at Ariana’s cleavage. She ignored both of them, rising to her feet and walking past them with her head held high, serene and silent. Behind her, one of them murmured something she didn’t quite catch, but the dirty laugh which followed it made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

Willing herself to keep her pace steady, Ariana descended the stairs. She had no intention of allowing a pair of thugs to intimidate her, not when the real threat awaited her in the dining room, smiling warmly and offering her a choice of non-alcoholic beverages.

“Water will be fine, thank you,” she said coolly. “I don’t particularly care for sugary sodas, and the aspartame in diet sodas is a terrible chemical. Carcinogenic.”

Gustav actually ground his teeth, and Ariana wondered if he had made a special trip to get the sodas. Was he really making an effort to please her? Surely he didn’t think she could be seduced by his efforts!

Ignoring him, she sat down at the table and looked at the food spread before her. At least there wasn’t a feast fit for twenty tonight; there were only half a dozen dishes on the table, none of them grandiose or complicated.

Gustav poured a glass of water for her, and innate good manners made her murmur a quiet thank you. He took his own seat.

“Tonight we will know just how highly your father values your skin,” he said maliciously.

“He does not value it above our country, I assure you,” Ariana said in a bored tone, considering what she would like to eat. While the plate of fruit earlier had taken the edge off her hunger, she needed to keep her strength up even if she wasn’t getting any exercise. She selected some quesadillas and placed two on her plate.

Gustav didn’t seem to have indulged in the cocaine tonight, because he was eating, filling his plate and wolfing the food down with healthy slugs of red wine from his glass. His table manners were repulsive; Ariana did her best to keep her eyes on her own plate so she didn’t have to see his open-mouthed chewing, the greasy fingers he wiped on his clothes.

The drug lord didn’t seem to know what to say to her when he wasn’t making threats. He made a few remarks that Ariana could almost have construed as flirting, if the compliments weren’t so backhanded. Clearly El Lobo thought that women were the inferior sex, and treating them

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