Entangled with the Mafia Don novel Chapter 69

Davina’s POV

Just as the auctioneer’s gavel began its final, soul-crushing descent, a heavy, metallic thud shook the entire hold. The massive steel doors at the rear of the theater swung open, admitting a violent draft of freezing sea air and a man who radiated a darkness far more potent than the leering predators in the audience.

It wasn't the cold that made my blood turn to ice. It was the man who stepped out of the shadows.

Ivan Sokolov.

The world tilted, and for a second, I wasn't on a ship; I was back in the neon-lit haze of The Devil’s Club. I could almost taste the bitter tang of the drug he’d slipped into my drink. I could feel the ghostly weight of his hands on me, the way he had looked at me with that same sick, predatory hunger before Ezra had broken through the door and nearly beaten him to death.

My breath hitched in a ragged, agonizing sob. I recognized the way he carried himself—the arrogant, broad-shouldered swagger of a man who thought the world was his for the taking. He didn't sit. He strode down the center aisle, his boots echoing against the metal floor like the steady beat of an executioner’s drum.

"Twenty-five million," Ivan called out. His voice was a jagged rasp, the same voice that had whispered filth into my ear while I was too drugged to scream.

The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. The other bidders pulled back like whipped dogs. Ivan reached the edge of the stage, looking up at me not as a woman, but as the "prize" that had escaped him once before. He began to climb the wooden steps, his hand reaching out, fingers curled as if to snatch the silk and drag me back into the nightmare.

I scrambled back, my heels catching on the sheer hem of the gown. I hit the stage floor, crawling backward until my spine slammed into the cold steel of the rear bulkhead. The terror I had felt before was a mere spark; this was a wildfire. If Ivan took me, he wouldn't just own me—he would finish what he started at the club.

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Ezra's POV

I watched Ivan Sokolov step into the light, and the last shred of my restraint—the thin, agonizing tether that kept the monster at bay—disintegrated. This was the son of the man who had ordered my men slaughtered in a hospital closet. This was the brother of the woman who had put a needle in Davina’s arm.

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