Seductive Santino by Anne Marie Citro - Book Tour + Giveaway
Savage's Buck & Doe #4
Adult Romance
Date Published: January 30th, 2020
Words like love and hate invoke strong feelings that can change a person, but the word revenge can make a seemingly normal person pure evil. Santino Savage understands all these feelings because he lost his dad and oldest brother to a madman in a mass shooting. Everyone asks: how do you move on after such a loss? Santino would say he survived because he had to. The choice wasn’t his to make. The family left behind needed him.
The same protective instincts Santino has for his family kicks in when the captivating, soon-to-be bride, Chloe Marsh, shows up at his family’s resort for her bachelorette and bachelor party. Deep in his bones, he knows something is off with her fiancé. Santino will have to betray those closest to him to do what he knows is intrinsically right.
Chloe has felt the sting of wickedness that life has to offer. For the soft-spoken woman, trust is a word that is the hardest to achieve and the easiest to be broken. However, she is ready to leave the past behind and start afresh. But then the four-day, mini-vacation brings back the ghosts from her past and thrusts her into a nightmare of epic proportions.
Can Santino save Chloe from the ghosts of her past and the evilness of the present? Is saving a woman he is instantly attracted to worth the sanity of the woman he has always protected? Santino has to discover if truth is a word consisting of facts or feelings. Or if both depend on the beholden.
Excerpt
“Can I request ‘My Old Man’ by Zac Brown
Band?”
“We’ll definitely play it,” Luca addressed
him, “but it’s always our last song. A tribute to our old man.”
“You lost your father and your brother?”
Jacob asked.
Santino got another type of chill as the
air crackled and the group silently waited for the answer.
The boys looked at Valentina before
Sabastian answered, “Yes, they were both killed in the Las Vegas massacre.”
Jacob shook his head. “No way! I lost the
girl of my dreams at the massacre too.”
Chloe shot her head up to look at him, and
she paled as she began to tremble. This was the first time she had heard he had
lost someone in the Las Vegas massacre, or that he had been in love before.
“Nicole was the sweetest girl to ever
grace this earth. I grew up with her and planned to marry her one day. It seems
the asshole who murdered the ones we loved got off too easy. I bet you wish you
could kill everyone related to him. That kind of evil just breeds evil.”
“Amen to that,” Valentina said. “I
understand how you feel, but luckily, you’ve moved on and you’re marrying Chloe
now.”
Jacob curled his fingers into tight fists.
“Moving on? That’s what you think this is?” With more disdain than anyone could
believe, he went on, “I wouldn’t marry that crippled bitch if she was the last
woman on Earth. And do you know why, Valentina? Let me tell you.”
Chloe’s deepest, darkest secret paralyzed
her with fear. How did Jacob know about her father?
Would she ever escape the man who had made
her life a living hell?
Each of the brothers exchanged confused
looks, though they knew this was what they had been waiting for. One by one,
they put their guitars down and stood.
Jacob pointed at Chloe. “This little whore
you’re so fond of is the devil’s spawn. Chloe is the daughter of the man who
murdered your husband, son, and my Nicole. She looks innocent, but she’s really
a wolf in sheep’s clothing, bred by the devil himself.”
Everyone’s eyes and bodies swung from
Jacob to Chloe.
“Is it true?” Valentina screamed. “Are you
the devil’s child?”
Quinn tried to grab her as she leapt from
her seat and started attacking Chloe.
“Why in God’s mercy did you come here? Why
do you want to hurt me?” Screaming louder, she shook the frightened, crying
girl’s shoulders, causing the flowers in her hair to fall from her jarred head.
Chloe chanted through her tears, “I’m
sorry. I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.”
Alessandro got to Mamma first, right
behind him was Quinn. “Mamma, stop. You’re hurting her.”
Valentina halted, stretching her head
around and responding with venom, “I’m hurting her? What about how she’s
hurting me? All of us? She has the same vile blood in her veins as the man who
murdered my famiglia!”
“Mamma!” Sabastian yelled, coming up to
her other side and yanking her elbow.
Valentina dug her nails into Chloe’s arms,
leaving marks as she let go.
Sabastian released his mamma, thinking she
was backing off. Before anyone could stop her, though, she raised her hand and
slapped the young woman across the face with enough force to knock her off the
log bench.
Alessandro locked his arms around
Valentina’s waist, pulling her back, but not before she screamed, “Puttana!”
spitting in the sobbing girl’s face.
As Alessandro twisted her away from Chloe,
Quinn got right into her frantic face, calmly but firmly reprimanding her.
“Valentina, that’s enough. You need to get control of yourself. Chloe didn’t
shoot Shawn or Marcello.”
Valentina fell into his arms, sobbing, and
Quinn waited to straighten her up until he felt her strength come back. “I’m
taking you inside to talk.” Tucking her under his arm, he looked at Luca. “We
all need to talk. I want all of you to come to her apartment after you sort
this out.” He then guided the weeping woman away.
Santino stood stock-still, trying to
absorb the scene in front of him. How many times had he wished he could seek
revenge on the shooter’s famiglia? But this was Chloe, not the monster he had
envisioned.
“You bastard! You set us up. Do you see
what you did? Why would you want our mamma to suffer more?” It hadn’t taken him
long to figure out this was why Jacob had brought her here.
“Valentina had the right to know,” he
answered cockily. “All of you should know that this little bitch is living her
life as if nothing happened, while our loved ones are rotting in their graves.
The rest of you only had to deal with her one weekend. I’ve been the one
suffering for months to get her here.
“I had to get her to trust me and convince
her I wanted to marry her. It sickened me to touch her, so I punished her
during sex, my hand burning from the spankings I gave her. She thought I liked
rough sex, while the joke was on her because every time I wrapped my hands
around her neck, I had to stop myself from snuffing her out like her father did
to Nicole.”
Santino charged him, jumping over the
dying fire and attacking like a madman. His fists flew as fast as the words
coming out of Jacob’s mouth.
Luca and Sabastian jumped in, pulling them
apart and holding their berserk brother back with his arms behind his back.
The cruel nightmare unfolding in front of
everyone was destroying Chloe by the second. Each word and action were like
knives plunging into her heart. Then the realization hit that her fiancé had
never loved her. Everything he had done, all the time they had been together,
had been nothing more than his sick way to seek revenge.
No one would ever love her because she was
the Devil’s spawn.
Jacob looked down at the woman he hated as
much, if not more than, her father as Alessandro helped him up from his knees.
“Stand up, bitch, and stop acting like a victim.” Spittle flew from his mouth.
“You should have warned somebody—the police, doctors, anyone—that your father
was psychotic. But did you? No! You safely hid and didn’t say a word, like the
useless whore you are.”
Santino was struggling to get away from
his brothers when their eyes met. Chloe had to look away from the hatred in his
eyes. There was no doubt he believed that she bore some responsibility. What
could she have done to change the outcome, though?
She had to tell him the truth.
Chloe wiped the saliva from her face,
shifting to her knees and pushing herself up to her feet. Shaking like a leaf,
she breathed out in front of everyone, “I didn’t know. I swear, I hadn’t seen
him in years. I had no idea.”
“Liar! You’d say anything to absolve your
accountability, but their blood is on you.” He pulled back a bucket that nobody
had seen one of the bridesmaids hand him, tossing the goat’s blood all over
her. It was just like the scene out of Stephen King’s movie Carrie.
Chloe stood wide-eyed, covered in blood
from head to toe. Her heaving breaths caused her to taste the metallic flavor,
inhaling the blood through her nose, where it traveled down the back of her
throat.
Huffing in and out, petrified, she saw the
hatred in each person’s eyes staring at her. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t
seen her father in years; they blamed her and always would.
“Why should she get to live when Nicole
and your family died?” Jacob continued.
“Please, stop.” Sobbing, shocked by the
tragic events unraveling, Brooklyn came to her friend’s defense. “It’s not her
fault. You should be ashamed.” On one hand, she felt sick for her husband and
his family, having their pain ripped open again, but she was also appalled for
Chloe.
“Brooklyn!” Luca yelled, afraid she would
get caught in the crossfire. “Stay back. Don’t get involved.”
Stunned, she stopped dead in her tracks
and shouted, “You can’t possibly blame Chloe!”
While everyone was distracted, Chloe took
off, running toward the dark forest, terrified that Jacob or someone else would
kill her before the night was over.
About the Author
Anne Marie Citro grew born and raised in the greater Toronto area of Ontario, Canada. She grew up in a large, loving family. Anne Marie is married to a very patient man. He is the love of her life. They have four very cool sons, and the girls they brought into their family that have become daughters of her heart. She has been blessed enough to finally have two beautiful granddaughters after four sons. She has her own personal gaggle of girlfriends, who enrich her life on a daily basis and make her laugh. Caesar Friday is her favorite day of the week. Caesars with the girls and date night with her hubby. She worked with special-needs teenagers, that taught her how to appreciate life and see it through gentler eyes. Anne Marie was encouraged by her husband to follow her lifelong dream to write. She loves the characters that take over imagination and haunts her dreams. She loves the arts and she has tried her hand at painting, wood sculpting, chainsaw carving, wood burning, metal and wire sculptures. Yes, her husband is a very patient man! Anne Marie is an avid reader and enjoys about three books per week. But nothing makes her happier than riding on the back of her husband's Harley and throwing her arms out and feeling the wind race by. Anne Marie and her husband take a few weeks every year to travel to spectacular destination around the world. Anne Marie is excited and can't wait to see what the next chapter holds for her life.
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