Elena.
The priest asks me if I want to repent.
Maybe I do. But not to him.
I feel lighter when I step out of church, but not because I felt God. There’s a new clarity in me.
My driver is waiting where I left him. I skim the messages. They’ve located the fuckers in a house in a rundown suburban hellhole on the outskirts of town and are heading out prematurely. The plans were for tonight, but I rarely engage hands-on in the wet work these days and Ivan and Eric can handle this for a couple of hours. I tap a quick message back to keep me updated.
“Dust, take me to the whorehouse,” I say. “Call Elena and tell her to meet me.” I close the window between us and lean back. I finally know what I want. I just don’t know how to fix it.
It’s mid-day. The house is quiet. There’s probably not a lot of business going on at this hour and most of the girls are sleeping. Elena sits in one of the smaller common rooms, a cup of tea in front of her. I pull off my suit jacket and drape it over the back of a chair before I sit down in front of her.
“Luci. What can I do for you?”
“Teach me to pleasure a woman.”
Elena, the master of poker faces, still has a brief flash of surprise crossing her features before she rearranges her face back to her usual serene, motherly expression. She folds her hands in her lap, interlacing her fingers as if to pray. “What do you want to know? You know how to get a woman off.”
I wave impatiently. “Of course I do. I just… how do I give? Without taking, I mean. How do I know I’m really giving her a good time?” My neck feels hot and the collar of my shirt suddenly seems too tight.
“Oh, Luci. After all these years. Finally found her?”
I sneer. I’m not comfortable with that question at all. “How do you feel about me? What did I do to you?”
“I love you,” she says simply. “And I hate you. You made me your whore and then forced me to work for you.”
“I crossed a continent for you,” I say. “You loved it.”
“Did you ever love me?” she asks.
I frown. “No, Elena, I never loved you.”
She looks away. I put a finger under her chin and turn her head back toward me. “It doesn’t mean I didn’t care.”
She scoffs and jerks her head away, her eyes flashing.
“Elena,” I growl. “Don’t fucking act up.”
She dashes to her feet. “You want to learn how to pleasure a woman?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
I don’t like the arrogance in her eyes, but I wait for her to go on.
“It starts in the mind, Luciano. Stop acting like an asshole, and the rest will come.”
I jump up and grab her arm, pulling her to me. Her eyes dart between my hand holding her, and my face.
“Are you going to hit me?” she asks.
I grit my teeth as I loosen my grip, holding up my hands in front of her in a gesture of peace. “Show me,” I say and sink back on the old rococo style chair.
She sighs and sits too. “I’m an old woman. I can tell one of the girls to co—”
“I don’t fucking want one of them. I want someone I trust. I want your old magic. You taught me to be cruel. Teach me to be tender.”
“I’m sixty years old, Luci. You don’t want me.”
“You fucking leave it to me to decide who I want and not,” I snarl. “You’re as hot as they come.”
A flash of genuine appreciation passes her eyes. “Well,” she purrs. “That’s a really good start. A well-placed compliment will get you far.”
Her voice is sugary, and all it does is piss me off. She’s acting. She just put on her fucking whore act. In front of me! Clenching my fists, I have to fight not to slam her into the wall. She is sixty. She’s stronger in her mind than many men I know, but she’s so thin that her hip bones protrude. I frown as I take her in, letting my gaze travel along her body. She was always lean, but I wonder if she’s taking care of herself.
“Elena,” I growl. “Watch it.”
She softens immediately, her submissive core obeying without hesitation.
“I’m sorry, Luci. I tend to go on routine. I’ll give you a real answer.” She reaches out and takes my hand, pulling lightly at my fingers until my fist loosens. Tracing the lines in my palm, she holds my gaze, as if she’s going to predict my future. “You already have it in you, babe. Physically, you know everything about how to make a woman go crazy for your touch. It’s the cruel streak in you that you must rein in. You give with one hand and take it back with the other. You drain people. Use that giving hand only, and then listen. Listen to her.”
I pull my hand out of hers and push my fingers through my hair. “I don’t fucking know how!”
“And this I can’t tell you. There is no secret. It has to genuinely come from within. From your heart.”
I dart up and pace the room. “I don’t have a fucking heart!”
Elena lets her hands fall on her lap. “Therein lies your problem, dear.”
I stop and stare at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you need to allow yourself to become vulnerable.”
“Not happening.”
“Then this whole conversation has been for nothing.” She stands and smoothes out her skirt. “I have work to do. You can see yourself out.”
I storm out of the whorehouse, slamming every door I pass through closed with more force than necessary.
Elena’s words gnaw on my mind the whole way home. Images of Chloe flicker through my brain. Soft spoken and beautifully patient with David. A constant in my life that I’ve come to expect. An espresso in companionable silence on my back patio in the early morning, watching the fog dissipate, listening to the silence before the first hesitant bird starts to sing. A budding workout partner. A woman I want to ravage every waking moment. I tease her body every night. Every morning I make her shudder with need, and still she resists me. I have a near-constant ache in my balls, and her hooded gaze when she thinks I’m not looking, filled with desire, nearly does me in. I’m on my last straw in our endless game. I’ve never wanted anyone’s body as much as I want hers. I’ve never restrained myself so fucking much. I’ve never been celibate for even a week of my life since I was fourteen.
It’s been six months.
Give without taking.
How the fuck do I do that?
I don’t know. All I know is the growing resolve that I’ll find my way. I want to bury my cock in her hot, tight pussy so fucking much, but after all this time it’s more than that. I want her mind. I want her to want me.
Give.
Give. Not take.
What makes her hot? What makes her smile? What will take her mind and not only her body along on the journey?
My heart speeds up by the last curb before I reach my mansion. I know. I think I fucking know. I’ll release her brothers. I won’t hold their lives over her head anymore in exchange for her obedience.
I don’t know what else to give except for letting her go, and that’s not happening.
When we pull up by the gates, they stand ajar. There are deep ruts in the gravel and my guards are nowhere to be seen. Every instinct in me jumps to life and every sense sharpens. My heart slams in my chest as the driver and I pull our guns simultaneously and jump out of the car on each side. I sneak up on my side of the gate and gesture for him to stay hidden behind the car. With my back against the wall, I take a quick peek around the corner. Everything is quiet. Too quiet. A few feet to the right I see a pair of legs, lying on the gravel, unmoving. Gun raised, I gesture for the driver to move, and we dive inside on each side of the opening. The yard is empty of all things living. Two cars I don’t recognize stand with their doors open right outside the stairs to my front door and by our feet lie my three gate guards, dead.
Chapter 20
Luciano
Fuck!
Fuck-fuck-fuck!
We advance toward the house, grabbing a semi-automatic ea
ch from the dead guards. Dustin is not only a driver, like all my men he knows how to handle himself in a fight. He cocks his head toward the left side of the house and I nod my approval. I’ll take the front door, he’ll work his way in through the side door.
Everything is quiet. Too quiet. The cars indicate there are people here who are not supposed to be in my house, and I wonder where the fuck everyone else is. Are they still busy shooting up the Russians? Who the fuck is here?
I fall to one knee hidden behind the door that stands slightly ajar, listen, then peek inside. Nothing. Gun raised, I make a quick dash into my hallway. On the floor lies Ivan, covered in blood. There’s no one else in sight. I dart to him and crouch, putting two fingers to the side of his neck. There is a pulse, a weak, rapid thudding. Ivan groans and opens his eyes a sliver.
“Boss.”
“Hang tight,” I say as I glance around me. Hauling up my phone I see that I’ve gotten a ton of messages and calls, but I’ve had it muted and missed them. Ignoring them all, I call 911.
“Not the cops, Boss,” whispers Ivan.
“Shut the fuck up. My call.”
“911, what’s the emergency?”
“I need—” I make a quick calculation, thinking about how many wounded or dead there may be in the house. Ivan, cook, butler, chef, maid. Chloe! “Six ambulances.” My stomach churns and nausea rises in me as I relay the address.
“What’s the emergency, sir?”
“I’ve got people shot here. Send everything you’ve got, or I’ll find you and flay you alive in front of your children. Do you fucking understand?” I growl. “I’m Luciano Salvatore.” I disconnect and tear off my suit jacket, pressing it to the wounds in Ivan’s chest with a horrifying feeling I’ll lose him. “Keep the pressure on. Help is on its way. How many are they? Where did they go? Who else is in the house?”
“They were three,” whispers Ivan, his eyelids fluttering.
I nod and stand. “Stay alive or I’ll fucking haunt you and everyone you’ve ever loved in your afterlife. You hear me. Stay put. I gotta move.”
“Your Chloe,” he gasps.
Darkness rises in me, rage and a blinding fury, mixing with fear. “What do you know?”
“Take care of her.” He closes his eyes, his breaths shallow and hitching in his chest. I shoot to my feet. I’ll murder every fucking EMT in town if they don’t make it in time. I run through my house, cursing the vastness of it, the too-large rooms. It suddenly feels like getting to my private wing takes an eternity.
The door stands ajar. I raise the semi and stop for a moment, listening. The hair rises on my nape as I hear a groan and a whimper. Taking a quick peek inside, I see no one, so I push open the door and dart down the hallway, toward the increasing sounds of despair, of horror, of grunting men unaware they’re about to die.
It takes me a fraction of a second to take in the scene. It’s more or less what I expected. Chloe lying spread eagled on her back, pinned beneath three men in various stages of undress, one with a cock down her throat, one squeezing her breasts and one lining up to ram his cock inside her. Just as I lift the gun, Chloe twists, her arm moving like lightning. The man who was lowering his head to her breast roars out and clutches his face. He falls off the bed, a pen sticking out of one eye. Bloody fucking hell. Good girl.
The one who fell to the floor screams and screams. He’ll soon find that a pen in his eye is to be preferred. The two remaining assailants freeze up, still on their knees, too distracted to notice me. Chloe is lying down, out of harm’s way. I fire off the semi chest-level with the men, spraying bullets across the room in a wide radius. Blood and torn off chunks of tissue rain over Chloe, the walls are peppered in holes and splatters of red. The windows shatter.
She screams. Like an animal. Like I made her scream once. I don’t ever fucking want to hear that sound again. I’ll keep the third man alive. I’ll hang him upside down and torture him for weeks. If he has info on anything, good. If he doesn’t, I’ll do it for my own fucking pleasure. I throw the gun and dart to her, shoving off dead men, bits of wood and plaster, pulling her up in my arms.
“Luci,” she whispers, her voice breaking, barely heard over the agonizing hollers from the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, clutching her to my chest. “I’m so fucking sorry.” Admiration for her strength, for her quick thinking with the pen, and for defending herself grows in me and I hold her even tighter, rocking her. My perception of her seems to change every day for the last few weeks. I have yet to fully understand the depths of this woman and I suddenly realize I really want to know everything about her.
“They broke in… I couldn’t…” she slurs.
A noise from behind makes me push Chloe out of my lap and reach for the gun. Dustin holds up both hands.
“Boss.”
“What’s the situation?”
“We’ve got, including them—” he nods toward the men scattered around the bed, “six bodies in the house.”
“Ambulance? Cops?”
“I called. Seems someone else called too. They should be here any minute.”
“I called them,” I growl.
Chloe stirs, wincing as she moves. Her eyes are trained on the man on the floor. His screams have turned into pathetic hitching whimpers. She looks up at me and holds out her hand toward the semi, waggling her fingers. I shouldn’t trust her. There’s no way in hell I should provide Chloe Becker with a weapon of destruction that can rip my body apart in a second, but I turn the semi, letting the barrel point to the floor, and hand it to her without a word. Chloe takes it, aims it toward the writhing man and then an ear-shattering thunder echoes between the walls as she fires off a few rounds into his chest, making it deflate into an unrecognizable mess of torn flesh. The recoil thrusts her back against the bed, the spray of bullets continuing in an arc along the wall and up in the ceiling before it stops. Dustin and I are already flat on the floor. With my heart in my throat I keep my eyes trained on her, adrenaline shooting out of my ears, ready to rip the weapon out of her hands.
Panting, she looks at me, her face twisted in disgust, then she drops the gun and sinks to the floor. I’m up and catching her before I know it.
“He was gonna… They were gonna rape me. They said… I’m gonna be sick!”
I look down at her, rub my thumb over her face, rubbing off some of the blood. She looks like Stephen King’s Carrie, drenched, nightmarish, her eyes wide, frightened. There’s a bruise below her eye, a swelling. Her lip is split. I pull up the hem of my shirt from my pants and begin to wipe her face. It’s not right. She shouldn’t have these pigs’ blood on her. Chloe shivers and, realizing she’s naked, I quickly unbutton my shirt and shrug it off my shoulders, covering her up.
“Don’t worry about it, they’re gone. They won’t hurt you again.”
She buries her face in my chest and inhales erratically. “Thank you.”
I hug her harder and somewhere inside my chest there’s a growing pain mixing with impotent rage. I want to kill them again, and again. I should have disabled them, thrown them in chains and cut little pieces from their bodies until they perished for touching what’s mine. Dead is good too, though. Very final. She squirms out of my grip and crawls on all fours to the bathroom. In the distance the blaring of sirens increases.
I cock my head to Dustin. “Go meet up. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. And they take care of Ivan first!”
Dustin nods and disappears without another word. I go to Chloe as I haul up my phone and call Eric. He answers promptly. There’s shouting in the background, sounds from cars.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he growls.
“Where the fuck are you?” I ask as I collect Chloe’s long, blonde hair in my free hand and hold it back as she clutches the toilet, dry retching.
“We’ve shot up the Russians. It’s in the middle of the fucking day, in a residential area, it took some time. We couldn’t just storm in. We’re moving now.”
&nbs
p; “Their friends came here,” I say, gritting my teeth, taking in Chloe’s naked, shaking form. My gaze falls on the long, thin scars on her back, my cruelty forever etched into her skin. I put them there. I should be fucking shot too.
Eric is quiet.
I tighten my lips. “Did someone get away?”
“No. None.”
“Well, they had the time to alert someone. We’re under attack.”
“Anyone hurt.”
“Ivan lies in the hallway, blood all over him.”
I have to rip the phone away from my ear as Eric lets out a deafening string of curses.
Chloe sinks back, staring up at me, hugging her chest. I pull a thick towel off the heated rack and wrap it around her. Everything gets bloody. Their fucking blood. When this is over, I’ll be drenched in a lot more Russian blood than this, and they’ll regret ever fucking with my people.
“I’ll be with you in thirty,” says Eric, his voice strained.
“Don’t fucking bother. The EMTs are already here. Find out where they’re taking Ivan and be with him at the hospital.”
“He’s alive?”
“He better be or I’ll kill him myself.” I hold Chloe’s pained gaze and she doesn’t let go of mine. I suddenly know what I must do. “You did good, Eric, sending Anna away. Now go. I have things to take care of.”
“Will do,” he says, “I’ll keep you posted. But fucking answer the next time.” Eric disconnects and I drop the phone next to me.
I reach out and pull some hair away from Chloe’s face. “How are you?” I ask softly, as if I would scare her if I was louder.
She huddles in her towel, looking eerily like how she looked that first day in my basement, though she wasn’t covered in blood then, but bruises.
“How the fuck do you think I feel?” she snarls.
I sit and pull her stiff body into my arms. “I’ll take care of you.”
Chloe
The shudders are bone deep. My teeth chatter. I can’t control my body. Salvatore holds me tight, so tight that I can barely get air, but I feel oddly safe in his embrace, as if nothing bad can ever happen again now that he is here.
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