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“You’ve got yourself a mafia princess.”
Jesus. He is my captor. I can’t indulge in the inexplicable physical attraction I feel for him.
“What now?” I ask. “Are you going to serve me dessert?” Damiano’s palms wrap around my waist. “Not unless you’re offering yourself up as one.”
It seems the old saying is true. You can never outrun the mafia.
“I’m keeping her until I figure out how she can best help our cause.” “She’s valuable,” Ras says. “I want to know if her husband is dead.”
“I said you should exploit the soft spot she may have for you by treating her well, not indulge your BDSM fantasies in front of other people.”
Her being afraid of my touch is up there with the worst things that ever happened to me.
I just masturbated to a fantasy of Damiano—the capo who’s keeping me locked up in his house—using me like a doll. There’s something seriously wrong with me.
I’d
rather be alone than love people and watch them die.”
“You couldn’t. And yes, I did help you, but there were others before, and I didn’t help them.” I murdered them because my husband told me to. “I was a coward up until the moment I met you.” “Do you regret not helping them?” “Every day.”
“One day with my sister, and your attitude’s already rubbing off on her.” “Better mine than yours.” A muscle in his jaw ticks. “We need to have a word.” “I’m not done drying myself,” I say, rubbing the towel over my midriff.
“That you’re just like the rest of them. All that talk of wanting to make me yours… It’s that insufferable machismo all mafia men seem to possess. Here’s some news for you: the women in your life don’t exist solely for you to boss them around. That includes your sister.”
Her name feels all wrong coming out of his mouth. How am I supposed to trade the entirety of her away when I don’t even like
hearing anyone but me utter her name?
When her mouth moves, I can’t hear her, but I read her lips. It’s my name she moans.
An inhuman growl tears its way up my throat. I’ve never wanted a woman more in my entire godforsaken life.
Instead of stopping, she drops her head back and finishes herself off before me, her hooded gaze steady on me. “Merda,” I breathe.
“If you think I’m capable of walking out that
door right now, you’ve got me all wrong.”
“You said my name,” I say as I drag my nose against the shell of her ear. “Did you imagine it was me licking your sweet cunt?”
“I imagined suffocating you with it.”
“That’s not a bad way to go,”
“Then I’ll need to make sure to leave you with a bad case of blue balls first.” “You’re still mad about that?” “Not at all. It gave me all the inspiration I needed to thoroughly enjoy my showers.” “You’re telling me you’ve been doing this to yourself all week?”
“Yes. Next time you decide to leave me in isolation, think about that.”
“Left me alone until I was so bored out of my mind I started anger-fucking myself to fantasies of you.” “I’m really never going to get that out of my head,”
“I hate you so much,” she pants. “Why did you do all those things to me?”
“Because I still want you, and I hate it. I hate it so much.”
In that post-orgasm moment of clarity, I realize a very inconvenient thing. I’ve claimed her as mine.
“I need your father to agree to be my temporary supplier. My initial idea was to use you as a bargaining chip, but after further reflection, I’ve identified some flaws with that plan.”
“What if I want to leave when you become the don? Will you let me?”
“I won’t keep you here against your will,” he says finally.
“Mio Dio, you’ve lost your head over her. When will you admit it?” “Admit what, exactly?” “That you’re in love with her.”
“I did realize who she was. The woman who saved my sister. That makes her someone worthy of respect, mine and yours.”
“Oh, I respect her. Very much. She’s done the impossible. She’s brought you to your knees.”
“I really thought you’d learned your lesson the first time you insulted her.” His wild eyes meet mine. “You’re fucking crazy. What the fuck—” Flinch. Gasp. I pull the trigger.
He just jeopardized his entire plan for…me. He stood up for me.
“He made you kill people?” “First he made me torture them. Cut off their fingers and toes. Mark their flesh with words. Skin them alive. He liked doing it himself but for some reason he liked watching me do it more.”
“Very quickly, I stopped feeling like I was human. I stopped seeing my family. It felt really important to me not to see them, even if I couldn’t really explain
why at the time. In retrospect, it was because I was afraid of a few things. I was afraid I’d hurt them. I didn’t know how or why I’d do it, but it felt like a real possibility. And I was afraid they’d see the truth about me. They’d look me in the eye and see I had no soul left. I didn’t want them to know that, even if it was the truth.”
‘Do it, or I’ll hurt you, Valentina,’ he said. I told him he was my husband. He couldn’t hurt me. He laughed at that and said he was the only one who could hurt me.
“He was a mad man,” he concludes. “He put you in an impossible position. This is difficult for you. You don’t need to tell me mo—” “I need to tell you everything,”
“The longer I stayed with Lazaro, the more resigned I became to my fate. It took…” I take a deep breath. “It took Martina showing up to finally make me snap.”
“I know who I am. I’m a monster. The worst of the worst. I should have told you all this earlier. What Nelo did was nothing. I deserve far worse.”
“You are never going
to say that again, all right? You’re not a monster. You’re a fucking survivor. You survived something that most hardened made men wouldn’t be able to come back from, and you put your neck on the line to save my sister. There’s only one monster in the story you told me—your husband. He will pay for what he did to you, Valentina. My God, he will pay a high price.”
“And so will everyone who failed to be there for you,”
“They had no idea. I couldn’t tell them. You’re the only person that knows the full extent of it.”
“This is why you don’t want to go home.”
“I still don’t know if Lazaro is alive. If he is, Papà will hand me right back to him. I got away from him once, but I know I won’t be able to twice. And if Lazaro is dead, there’s a good chance I’ll be forced to get remarried to someone who might be a different kind of monster. I can’t do that, Damiano. You might have me locked up here, but being back in New York would put me in a much worse prison.”
