I had no guilt, despite the way I'd stolen her and blown apart the only world she'd ever known. Dealing with Gioulio and his boys was the first priority, yeah, but fuck if I wasn't gonna make her whole.
If I could make her work with me, see me for the man I really was, then I'd remake everything she knew. I'd push my dick in that hot, wet space between her thighs, that pink slit I craved worse than freedom itself when I was behind bars. I'd fucking brand her, own her, fuck her 'til she opened her eyes and saw exactly what I wanted her to see.
This girl was gonna see the stone cold truth soon, the truth about me and everything else.
I hit the floor, sweating and shaking, totally spent. The black leather punching bag bobbed in the air, the impressions from my fists fading like evening shadows.
This was my chance to start over, living like a free man, and no fucking way was I gonna squander it. I wouldn't let Sabrina waste a minute more of her life without a good man, hiding in the dark from her fucked up family.
I couldn't make any promises about being good. But I sure as shit was the man she needed, and soon she'd see it, plain and pure as the sweat sliding down my chest.
5
Captive Trust (Sabrina)
I expected him to throw me down and fuck me, leave me locked up, subject my body to the craziest tortures until I gave all three psychopaths what they wanted.
But the bomb he dropped on me that morning was worse than anything I could've imagined.
I trailed him limply to my room, slow and blasted like a zombie, my brain melting in my head.
The 'truth' he'd told me about the bombing at Club Duce defied everything I thought I knew. It was sick, wrong, insane – and just terrible enough to be true.
No, I wasn't ready to give in and believe him yet. But if I totally doubted what he'd said, I wouldn't have spent the evening cramped up in bed, feeling my stomach twisting in bows.
I used the intercom to hail the servants after a couple of hours. Thank God they actually came, an old woman with a thick accent carrying a silver tray. Toast, a carafe of mineral water, and lots of Pepto Bismol.
I was sick right down to my soul. I didn't know what to believe, didn't know where I was, didn't know what I'd really left behind anymore.
Uncle Gioulio always scared me when I was growing up. His personal thugs were always around at dinners and birthdays, menacing as well trained wolves.
Once, he took me out to get a prom dress, a strangely touching attempt to make me feel better about the fact that no boy had the balls to ask me out. When we came out of the shop, he opened his trunk and I saw the black bags inside.
“Fucking shit. Can't believe I forgot to unload my lamb from the butcher,” he'd said with a grin.
I couldn't unsee the very mangled, but human shapes beneath the plastic. A man's limbs, torso, and head, clearly dismembered, folded neatly into the trunk and forgotten. The faint stink of rotting flesh didn't lie either.
He rushed me home and then waited with the servants while his men came to deal with it.
He was a brute, a killer, and seriously intimidating.
Still, he took me under his wing after papa died. He protected me, even when he wasn't around, sending steady checks and fleshing out the already sizable accounts I'd inherited. I lived like a spoiled brat during my teens and put the richest sorority girls at college to shame.
Good old Uncle Gioulio was always there for Christmas or New Year's, my last real blood relative. Even when he had two drunk, slutty bombshells half his age draped around his neck, he brushed them off for a couple hours to have a glass of limoncello or good wine with me.
Now, I wondered if those bombshells were just well paid whores with a taste for older men, or well trained slaves ready to suck his cock because they had a well concealed gun to their heads.
Later, I got up and took a nice, long bath. I had to hand it to Anton – this little prison he'd chosen had all the amenities I was used to, and maybe a few that were even nicer than the condos and suites I'd grown up in. The hug jacuzzi in the adjoining bathroom helped work out the creases in my skin.
But it didn't stop me from cursing my captor and all the Ivankovs at least a dozen times in the space of two hours. Yes, he'd rattled me, but he hadn't broken me.
I didn't know what kinda help he wanted either – probably something to do with handing me a knife to gut my own family. I wasn't going to do that. I promised myself I wouldn't do a damned thing until I had absolute proof he wasn't bullshitting me. Even then, I wasn't about to commit to helping him.
I had to know. A bland, but filling dinner laid out by the old servant helped calm my nerves. Tea, bread, and some kind of broth. I fell asleep quicker than I expected, saving my energy for tomorrow, when I expected to lay into him.
The dreams came, harsher and more fragmented than before. Bastard.
Bastard. Brute. Demon.