by Nicole Fox
“How did you?”
She shrugs. “Dumb luck,” she suggests, as though she herself isn’t sure. “And hatred. Hatred of you.”
“I’m flattered.”
“He may be stupid,” she says. “But his anger is real. And he’s desperate now. When Drago gets desperate…” She trails off and her expression falls. She looks so incredibly vulnerable for a moment that I feel the need to reach out and touch her. I have to clench my hands into fists to stop myself from doing exactly that.
It’s not my place to comfort her. Especially since I’m the one who put her in the very position of suffering she’s talking about.
She shakes off her thoughts and looks back at me, her expression focusing again. “Let’s just say that when Drago gets desperate, he gets violent,” she says softly.
“Did he get violent with you?” I probe.
“I was used to being his punching bag,” she tells me. “He hurt when he was angry. Sometimes, it was physical. Other times, it was emotional. Mind games and the like. I was used to it. But when my brother is pushed into a corner… well, he becomes someone else entirely.”
If it’s possible, she pales a little more. As though fighting back a memory that’s so abhorrent that her body doesn’t quite know how to react to it.
“Renata…” I rasp. “What did he do to you?”
She pointedly ignores my gaze. “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing.”
Her eyes flash to mine and just like that, the fire is back, forcing the sallowness of her skin to recede. She looks fucking magnificent.
“Why do you even care?” she demands. “You’re the exact fucking same.”
“The same?” I echo. “I am nothing like your fucking brother.”
“No?” she asks spitefully. “I don’t see a difference.”
“Then you’re not looking hard enough. The O’Sullivans have morals. The Lombardis have cruelty.”
“I am a Lombardi, too, in case you forgot,” she storms at me.
“Not like him.”
She shakes her head weakly. “You’re not making sense.”
“The lack of food is beginning to mess with your head,” I tell her harshly. “You need to eat.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “No.”
“Jesus, why be so fucking stubborn?”
“You think only men have that right?” she demands. “I got news for you, buddy: I have suffered more than you ever will. I was sold out by the people closest to me and I’m still standing. I’ve earned the right to be stubborn. Your big brother didn’t want you to have to play second fiddle, so he sent you to a place where you could call the shots. And that’s your big tragedy in life? Please. Spare me.”
Her words snap like breaking branches. She’s so hopped up on her own emotion that she no longer looks weak.
She’s not done yet, either.
“Men prick their finger and cry about it endlessly. Women take fucking gunshots and they pick themselves up and keep going. So yeah, I’m fucking stubborn. Get used to it.”
I stare at her, watching as her mouth slams shut with finality.
So much for our decent conversation. It had derailed fast. But I can’t help thinking that I’ve come away with more than she intended to give me. I get to my feet and walk around her bed towards the door. I don’t look behind me, but I can feel her eyes watching me go.
“You can’t keep doing this forever,” I tell her without glancing backward. “At some point, you will yield.”
“Watch me,” she hisses.
I almost smile. But I stop myself at the last moment.
She doesn’t need my condescension. She needs my respect.
And I’m starting to believe she deserves it.
20
Renata
When Kian leaves, I pull at my restraints with frustration. They’re long tethers that give me a certain amount of freedom on the bed, but I still can’t walk more than a foot away from each side.
I groan angrily, but my strength is failing fast. The first twenty-four hours was the easiest. But now, the hunger has really set in. It’s leaving me light-headed, almost hallucinatory. Which is the only justification I have for why I’d told Kian so damn much about my life. It’s the only justification I have for almost telling him about my deepest, darkest secret. The one I’ve spent my life trying to bury underneath feigned strength.
I never talk about. I barely even think about it. Because that way, it’s like it never existed.
Years of silence. Years of suppressed emotion. Buried memories. And yet, after half an hour with Kian O’Sullivan, I can feel the story rising to the surface in a desperate need to qualify my own pain.
What does it even matter? He doesn’t really care about me. I’m just a pawn in his game. I’d be a fool to think he has any real desire to protect me. The restraints speak for themselves.
But I can’t help thinking that I’d be having a very different reaction if another man were to have tied me up like this. If this were Rokiades’s house, I’d be sick with fear.
Then again, if this were Rokiades’s house, I have no doubt that I’d have already been raped ten times over by now. Kian, on the other hand, hasn’t laid a finger on me.
Tired of struggling and tired of thinking, I lie back against the sheets spread-eagled. I close my eyes and try to shut him out of my head. Of course, all that does is ensure that he’s the only thing in my head.
Unable to do anything else but stare at the ceiling, I start to drift off a little. If nothing else, it’s a nice distraction from the hunger.
But the next time I blink, I realize I’m not alone.
Kian is back in the room. He’s standing off in the corner, regarding me with a seductive gaze that makes my body heat up.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, trying my hardest to sound angry.
“Watching you.” His voice is weird. As if he’s underwater or down a well. The light coming into the room is weird, too. Everything is slightly off-kilter. Reality doesn’t feel real.
“Why?”
“You know why.” He pushes himself off the wall and saunters over to the foot of the bed. He stands directly between my legs, his eyes languishing over my body like he owns it.
Then he gets on the bed. I tense up. But not because I’m scared. No, it’s much worse than that.
It’s because I’m excited. Aroused. Lustful.
“Stop,” I whimper.
“Why?” he asks casually. “You don’t actually want me to.”
“You can’t do this.”
“You can stop me if you want,” he says.
“How can I when you’ve chained—”
I break off mid-sentence when I realize my restraints have disappeared. I’m no longer confined to the bed. I sit up and my face almost collides with Kian’s.
His blue eyes carry hints of green around the irises. I haven’t noticed that before. But then, I’ve never been quite this close to him before.
“You want me to stop?” he asks, his hand moving up my right leg.
“I… I…”
“All you have to do is say the word, Renata.”
Fuck, I love the way he says my name. Guilt crashes over me as I struggle to form the word that will force him to stop touching me. I just have to say it. Say it. Say it. Fucking say it!
I can’t.
He pushes up my skirt and drops his head down between my legs. His lips land on my thigh and I shiver, desperate for him to go higher. “Tell me you want me to stop,” he taunts.
He raises his head. But it’s not Kian’s face anymore. It’s twisted into something else. Something almost unrecognizable—
Wait, no. I know this face.
Dread fills me like water rushing into a cavern. Dark, swirling water and dark, swirling dread. I want to scream but my lungs won’t work. It’s not Kian between my legs.
It’s the beast I tried to bury a long time ago.
If I see his face
again, I’ll die. I know I will. I thrash and thrash, but the restraints are back and tighter than ever. That face is looming closer and closer, filling up my whole field of vision, and I try to scream louder but—
“Ma’am?”
I jerk. My eyes fly open with terror. But Kian’s nowhere in sight. But neither is the monster.
It was just a nightmare.
The woman in front of me is staring at me with concern and something else in her eyes, something I can’t quite place. It takes me a few more moments to shake off the disorientation of my dream before I can concentrate on any details about her.
She’s standing next to my bed, wearing a white and black maid’s uniform that’s been pressed to perfection. She’s young, probably around my age, and understatedly attractive. Something about her makes me feel as though she’s purposefully downplayed her looks in an effort to not to be noticed. Her blonde hair is kind of oily and tied back behind her head in an austere bun. Her eyes are a dark blue verging on brown.
“I wouldn’t have woken you,” she apologizes. “But you seemed to be in distress.”
I sit up a little and try to change the position of my arm, but my restraints hold me back.
“Here,” she says, surprising me by removing the restraints altogether with sure fingers. “Let me.”
I frown in shock as she casually rids me of the fucking things. The moment I’m free, I rub my fingers over my aching wrists.
“Are you gonna get in trouble for doing that?”
She smiles. “Not at all. Master Kian told me to remove them.”
“He did?”
“He did.”
She turns her back on me and walks over to the circular side table, on which sits a silver tray. I’m expecting to see a plate full of food. Kian bribing me to eat again. Instead, there’s only a pitcher of water and an empty glass.
The maid pours me a glass and walks back to my bedside. My mouth is parched, but I resist the urge to accept it. After what Rokiades did to me, I’m a little wary of unfamiliar people offering drinks.
“No, thank you.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
She doesn’t try to persuade me to drink like Nessa has spent days doing. She just shrugs, sets the glass on the bedside table, and walks over to the chair in the corner.
I catch sight of something silky draped over the armrest and frown. “What’s that?”
“Master Kian sent it up for you,” she tells me in a soft lilt. “I’m here to help you get dressed.”
“For what?”
“For dinner.”
Making use of my newfound freedom—relatively speaking, of course—I get off the bed and walk over to the chair on shaky legs.
The dress is protected underneath a translucent wrap, but I can still tell that it’s beautiful. And clearly expensive. “He expects me to wear that to dinner?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she answers quietly. “I believe Master Kian ordered it specifically for you.”
She says it as though she expects me to be grateful. And that just makes me curious about who she is. About why she’s here. Does she know who she works for? What he does?
I’m also distracted by the strange turn of events that’s brought her to my room in the first place. A formal fucking dinner? One that involves designer clothes?
Just what is he playing at?
I’m pissed that he thinks he can so easily manipulate me. But before I sound off and tell the maid to go find “Master” Kian and tell him where he can stick his dress, I take a breath.
I need to be more than angry and combative. I need to be smart. With the restraints gone, I have a chance of escaping. Maybe, if I play along, I can get out of here and leave this world behind once and for all.
Feeling slightly unsteady on my feet, I sink onto the chair. The maid smoothly maneuvers the dress out of my way so that I’m not sitting on it. I’ve noticed that, every time she’s mentioned Kian, it’s with an almost reverent tone. And since I the plan is to lull her into a false sense of security, I decide to hit two birds with one stone.
“What’s your name?”
“Aisling.”
“Aisling,” I repeat. “That’s an interesting name.”
“It’s an old Irish name,” she explains. “A family name, too. It was my mother’s middle name and my gran’s first name. I kept the tradition alive and named my daughter Aisling, too.”
“That’s beautiful.”
She gives me a tight smile. I sense a deeper story there. One I want to coax out of her. “How did you come to work here?” I ask, hoping the question doesn’t put her off.
“I’ve drawn you a bath,” she demurs in a good-natured tone. “How about I talk while you soak?”
“You’ve drawn me a bath?” I repeat, dumbfounded.
She smiles. “Trust me. You’ll love it.”
I want to refuse, but the idea of soaking in a hot tub is just too tempting to resist. So I follow her into the bathroom. Sure enough, the tub is good to go. I can see a thin veneer of steam rising over the water and a couple of bottles of open bath salts perched on the broad porcelain ledge.
I start to remove my clothes and Aisling comes up behind me, helping me out of everything deftly. It’s infuriating to admit, but I actually need her help. It’s like my limbs are so rusty from disuse that I’ve forgotten how to move them.
She helps me into the tub with surprisingly strong hands. The moment I find a comfortable position, she twists a nozzle off to the side and the water starts bubbling and pulsing around my aching bones.
“Whoa,” I breathe.
Aisling just smiles politely though and pours in a few more bath salts with a delicate hand.
“So,” I say, breaking the silence. “You were about to tell me how you came to work here.”
“It’s a long story, really,” she starts.
“Isn’t everyone’s?”
“You may have a point there,” she laughs.
As she bends, I notice the chain hanging around her neck. A pendant with initials on it. “That’s pretty,” I tell her.
Her fingers curl around the pendant and then she stuffs it back into her blouse. Her expression changes. Becomes more subdued, more hesitant.
“Sorry, have I said something wrong…?”
“No, no, it’s okay,” she says quickly. “I just… It’s hard for me to talk about my daughter.”
“Oh,” I blanch, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize—”
“She’s not dead,” Aisling swoops in. “She’s out there somewhere. I just have to find her.”
A single tear trickles down her face. She wipes it away and shudders. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “This is why I don’t talk about her. I get too worked up.”
I ask gently, “Where is she?”
“With her father,” she replies. “They moved years ago. After… after I was taken.”
My eyes go wide. “Taken?”
“That’s the story. The start of it, at least. I used to wait tables at this highbrow club in the city. It was a challenging job, but I made a killing in tips and Warren and I needed every penny.”
“Warren?”
“My husband. High school sweethearts, if you can believe that. We were only eighteen when my wee one was born. So young to be parents. We both graduated high school, but college with a little one was out of the question. My job kept us afloat. Which is why I never quit, no matter how difficult things got.”
I hold my breath. I have a feeling this story is about to take a sickening turn.
“There was this particularly horrible group of men that used to come in on Fridays and Saturdays. They spent tens of thousands of dollars every time. Some nights, I made at least five grand on tips waiting on their table alone. I thought they were a blessing.”
My heart thunders in my chest. Any second now, that nasty twist is coming. Something like that is always too good to be true.
“They were sex traffickers,” Aisling exp
lains simply. “One night, they requested my presence in their private room. I went in with drinks and then… they forced me to… to…” She trails off and takes a deep breath. “Well, you can imagine. There were four of them. Once they were done, I thought it was over. But they took me with them. Sold me to more bad men. It’s amazing how one night can change everything. You leave home without thinking twice about it, and you never quite make it back.”
I stare at her in shock. “How long?”
“Three years,” she tells me. “Three years with them. And then, finally… I got out.”
“How?”
“Kian O’Sullivan,” she murmurs. The reverence is back in her tone. “We were at what they call a ‘meat market.’ An auction to sell off girls. I was part of the lineup that night.”
Meat market. The term alone is enough to make me retch.
“I was prepared to be sold off to some old creep with a point to prove. It wasn’t the first time. But before the auction had even started, guns started going off. And in storms Master Kian with this, this… look in his eye.”
She glances up at me, eyes brimming with tears and memories.
“He saved us. All of us. And he killed every single man in that place. He could’ve stopped there and I would’ve fallen at his feet in gratitude. But he did more. He helped us all find the ones we left behind. Girls were reunited with their parents, their friends, their spouses.”
“And you found Warren and your daughter?” I ask hopefully.
She smiles, but it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “I wish. They disappeared without a trace. No one had seen them in two years. And the world’s a big place when you’re looking for just two little people.”
“You still haven’t found them?” I gasp.
She shakes her head. “Master Kian is still looking for them on my behalf. In the meantime, he gave me a job and a place to stay.”
I take in her story with difficulty, part amazed and part horrified. “I… I mean… How are you still standing?” I ask at last.