Shit.
I feel trapped. Trapped in this room. Trapped with him. Trapped in the shitstorm my life has become. I can’t even say it all went off the rails when I met Vince. I was on the wrong path long before that. Hell, maybe it was when Mom died. Sitting around whining isn’t going to do me any good though, so I decide to do some snooping. I mean, he has to know I’m going to snoop around a little if he just leaves me here all day. I check the clock. Eight in the evening? He’s been gone six hours. For all I know, he could be out all night.
Feeling completely justified, I start with his closet. The pine forest scent of his cologne washes over me as I step inside and I guiltily dig through his neatly folded clothes, carefully replacing them when I’ve finished to make sure I leave no trace. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I feel like I’ll know when I see it. Some other girl’s number? A condom wrapper? More guns tucked away?
The truth is I am enjoying looking behind the scenes a little in his life. Other than his taste in movies, he has been a mystery to me. Maybe I’m hoping to find something that will make it easier to walk away from him. Maybe I’m trying to find something that will convince me to stay.
His socks are all folded into pairs, each pair clipped together with a golden tie clip. I raise my eyebrows. I don’t know how he has the energy. Maybe someone does it for him. I don’t think so though, somehow I suspect Vince wouldn’t be the type to pay for someone to do his dirty work, even if it was just around the house. His shirts are organized by color, but he apparently has an aversion to anything other than black, grey, white, red and deep blue. There are at least ten shirts of every color in slightly different shades or cut to different fits. He has a smaller room within his closet that’s entirely full of exercise clothes: shorts, t-shirts, and a rack of neatly kept tennis shoes. There’s even a small pile of expensive looking tennis equipment in the corner.
I smirk. Tennis? It’s not exactly the sport I would picture a mobster playing, and picturing him out on some grass courts with white short shorts makes me want to laugh. I lean down to pick up one of the racquets out of idle curiosity and accidentally knock it against a rack mounted to the wall. It flips out of my hands and lands hard on the ground. A small rubber piece pops out of the base of the racquet and a golden key bounces to the carpet.
I kneel, looking at the key. My heart flutters. A secret key?
I spend the next thirty minutes searching through his house, practically bursting with curiosity and wanting to know where the key fits. I finish my third round of the entire apartment and end up in his bedroom again. I dejectedly walk toward one of the few solid walls in the place that isn’t a window and plop down, banging my head slightly against the wall in frustration. The sound is hollow. I frown, turning to look at the wall.
I stand back up and start patting my palms along the wall, following the hollow sound until it becomes solid, right behind a bookshelf. I try pulling almost every book out and opening it, tilting it, or trying to trigger some James Bond style secret door, but nothing works. It’s only when I’m about to give up the idea that I realize there’s a nearly invisible seam in the wall right behind the bookshelf. I do one more check, this time looking at the shelf itself and I discover a small, unmarked keyhole near the center of the shelf. I try the key and it works. The bookshelf clicks on some hidden hinge, turning into a door that I pull open to reveal a well-lit room behind the wall.
The room isn’t huge, but bright white lights burn overhead, casting everything in a clinical shade of white. My stomach churns when I see five very large guns mounted on the wall and five sets of body armor. There’s also an assortment of grenades, knives, and other objects that look deadly. A single picture frame sits on a table on the other side of the small room. I move forward and lift it, looking at the young man smiling back. He’s handsome, but in an innocent sort of way. I recognize Vince’s dimples in his cheeks, the fullness of his lips, and the same thick eyelashes. But it’s definitely not Vince. I carefully pull the picture out and read the back.
Jackie - 2014
Jackie? Maybe he’s a brother of Vince’s. But the way his picture sits by itself on the shelf seems so dramatic. Did something happen to him? I suddenly feel like I’ve pushed my snooping way too far, like I’m spying on Vince’s darkest secret.
“Hello?” A voice calls from the living room.
I nearly scream, backing out of the room and slamming the bookshelf-door shut. My cheeks are flushed and my stomach feels like it’s rolling around. Christ. I smooth my hair and move toward the living room. I wait in the doorway to Vince’s room, listening carefully. Violent flashes of memory from my kidnapping make me close my eyes hard. Please don’t let it be them again.
“Room service?” asks the voice. I can tell now he’s relatively young, a teenager maybe. Definitely not a mobster.
I step out to see a boy wearing a tuxedo that looks slightly ill-fitting. He’s carrying a brown paper bag on a silver tray. “Ma’am?” he asks. His eyes fall to my tits and lack of pants. I blush even deeper. I’m wearing an oversized white T-shirt and panties. I fold my arms over my chest, trying to pretend I’m confident and not just careless.
“You can leave it there,” I say.
He nods, swallowing hard and turning quickly to take the elevator back down. Vince said no one could come up the elevator without his permission, so I guess the room service kid must have come on Vince’s behalf. He sent food...that probably means he’s not going to be coming back tonight. Whatever it is, it smells wonderful.
I open the paper bag and find several plastic containers of steaming hot food. One holds a large portion of steamed rice, the other is full of pulled chicken in an orange sauce, and there are also several pieces of pita bread wrapped in tinfoil. Indian food? I’ve never really tried it, but if the smell is any indication, I’ve been missing out.
I spread the food out on the kitchen table and have myself a feast for one. I don’t know if I’m doing it the right way, but I use the buttery orange sauce and rice to stuff the pitas and eat them like little sandwiches. The pita is a little crusty on the outside and incredibly soft on the inside. The flavor in the sauce is hard to describe, almost nutty, yet oily and buttery, too. It helps that I’ve barely eaten anything in the past week out of spite, except when Vince decided to do the sweetest thing ever and bring me a monumental tower of cheetos because he saw me eat some the previous day. I still smile when I think about it.
When my stomach is so full that it’s actually rounding out beneath my t-shirt, I look at the table where I’ve set the small golden key. I think about the room again. To be honest, it is a little off-putting. I’ve been surprised by the way his dark side seems to wake something warm inside me, but that room felt wrong. Somehow it made me think of a cold violence, not a passionate, emotional violence. I don’t know why the distinction bothers me, but it does. And why would he have a picture of a relative in there? It was almost like a shrine to violence.
Here I go again, confusing myself. Wasn’t I just thinking about running? About leaving him behind and trying to salvage what was left of my life? Wouldn’t I be running for my life if I wasn’t terrified of being kidnapped again?
I drown my sorrows in the delicious orange sauce, eating more than I have room for until it hurts. I turn on the T.V. and start watching the end of Me Before You. I fall asleep with an abused belly and a conflicted heart.
23
Vince
When the elevator doors open, I see Aubriella passed out on my couch. She’s not wearing any makeup and the t-shirt I gave her is bunched up just beneath her tits. One of her legs is bent and the other dangles from the couch so I can see the soft bulge of her mound through her black panties. Fuck. I’m already near full-mast by the time I kneel beside her on the couch. I take a look at the carnage on the coffee table and laugh. It seems like she really enjoyed the Indian food. I ordered enough for her to have leftovers, but she practically ate everything already.
At the
sound of my laugh, she stirs. Just as her eyes open, mine catch on the golden key sitting beside a bunched up ball of tinfoil. My key. I pick it up and hold it in front of her face.
“How did you find this?”
She runs a hand through her hair and looks fuckin’ gorgeous as she blinks the sleep from her eyes and sits up. The shirt falls to her waist, bunching up around her wide hips. She’s been snooping. I know she has. I expected it, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to punish her for it. It has been too long since I’ve had her the way I want; hard and dirty. I can only stand building her trust for so long. I just want to destroy her tight little cunt, but I can’t rush it. That takes all the fun out of it. If it was any other girl, I wouldn’t give a shit. I’d have her how I wanted and not care what it did to her. The problem is I don’t want Aubriella to run off after she sees how I really like it. I have to make sure she’s ready before I show her, and I can’t risk losing her.
She finally notices the key and her eyes widen slightly. “That…”
“Yeah, this,” I say, shaking it in front of her face. “You went through my shit, didn’t you?”
Her face hardens. “I think I have a right to go through your shit if I want to. You basically just turned my life upside down and dragged me up here like some fucking damsel in distress. And you’re not exactly an open book, so how am I supposed to get answers if I don’t go looking?”
“I’m not an open book? Try me,” I say.
She looks at me for a moment, as if she’s worried it’s some kind of test.
“Ask me one question and I’ll answer honestly.”
“What do you really want from me?” she asks so quickly that she must have already wondered about the answer a dozen times.
The question takes me off guard. I had expected her to ask how many people I’ve killed or what I do or how many girls I’ve fucked. I at least expected her to ask why I had a small fortune’s worth of weapons hidden in my apartment, but maybe that’s obvious after what she’s seen. What do I want? My first response is to smirk and reach to pull her thighs open, but she slaps me away.
“I’m fucking serious. What do you want? If it’s just sex, then you can fuck off.”
I clench my teeth and my fists. She’s going to be sorry she mouthed off to me when I get her clothes off. “I want more than that. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t still be here.”
She crosses her arms. “So I should just count myself lucky that you haven’t tossed me to the curb after a few good fucks? That’s it?”
“That’s not it. You’re different. Special. And I don’t think I can let you walk out of my life. I can’t. If some other crumb ever tried talkin’ on you I’d have to break his fuckin’ neck, and I’d end up in jail before long.”
She smiles a little, looking down. “So you’re saying I can’t leave because you’re worried how many people you’d have to kill? Because you’d have to kill them if they tried to hit on me?”
I shrug. “Something like that.”
She kicks at me with her bare foot and I grab it, pulling her toward me by her leg. She yelps in surprised pain. “Shit,” I say, forgetting about her injuries in the moment. I lean over her as she winces, sucking in a breath. “You okay, doll?”
She smirks up at me and suddenly doesn’t look like she’s in pain anymore at all.
“You faker,” I say, laughing.
“Just wanted to see you worry over me again.” Then she does a poor acting job at trying to pretend her leg hurts again. She even pushes out her bottom lip. “I think you need to kiss it to make it better.”
I grin wolfishly at her and push her legs apart, lowering my mouth on her inner thigh. I slide her panties off and go to work on her with my mouth, taking my time. She throws her head back and laughs at first, then quickly melts into heavy moans. Her thighs tighten around my head as she nears climax, and I use the tip of my tongue to work her clit and her entrance until I feel her convulse around me. My cock strains against my pants when I sit up, relishing her taste in my mouth. She’s fuckin’ delicious. I could go down on her every day. Fuck.
She props herself up on her elbows. “I could really get used to that.”
I lift her carefully until she lays across my chest as I lean back on the couch. Her bare legs wrapped around mine as I palm her ass. “You’re fuckin’ gorgeous,” I say into her hair, giving her ass a rough squeeze as I do. She squirms against me and slides her hand over my cock. I put my hand over hers, stopping her from unzipping me.
She looks up at me, eyes confused and angry. “Why?” she asks. “Am I not good enough for you anymore?”
“It’s not that,” I say. “I want to do it right the next time I get inside you. I want to do it my way. No in between shit. A hundred percent.”
She swallows hard. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I want to fuck you with no reservations. My way. How I want.”
“I thought you already did that. When you...when you hit me.”
“Complete control. That’s what I want,” I say.
She tucks her chin a little, looking up at me with those large, innocent eyes and blushing. Fuck. It takes all I have not to pull her legs apart and fuck her right then. Looking at her sends a torrent of heat from my spine straight to my dick. Goddamn. Does she even know how much she’s turning me on right now? She’d be more than a little freaked out if she knew how hard I could fuck her right this second, how much I could punish her and make her enjoy every second of it.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet.”
I smirk. “You will be soon. I have good news.”
“Good news?”
“Yeah. The family that was targeting me and you? We crippled them last night. The less you know the better, but it’s under control. For now. So I can take you out somewhere. We can even stop by your place and sort whatever shit you need to sort out.”
Her eyes well with tears. “Really?”
I laugh a little. “Yeah. C’mon. I’ll take you shopping to get some new clothes. Anything you want, on my card.”
24
Aubriella
Vince helps me from his car on 5th Avenue. I can’t help ogling the stores. The streets are swarming with people and he pulls me protectively to his side and wraps his arm around me. Before we step away from the car, he reaches in and squeezes some suntan lotion on his hands and spreads it over my exposed neck and face. I scrunch my face at him, giving him a perplexed look.
“Your skin is perfect. You don’t want to ruin it in the sun.”
I let him smooth out the uneven patches of sunscreen, quietly enjoying being fussed over by him. The moment makes my mind wander to Dad and to Aria. I feel like such a shitty person right now for not asking him for a phone the moment he and I were on good terms again to try letting her know I was okay. I sensed the question might be a dangerous one. It might make him start to worry that I was trying to call for help or betray him, so I selfishly kept my mouth shut. Now I feel even worse because it all feels so good. It feels good to have his arms around me and to be with someone so strong. It feels good to know he cared enough about me to be okay with me telling him I wasn’t ready yet. He has shown such a caring and compassionate side to his personality that I’m finding it harder and harder to really fear him, even if I still see hints of a dark anger behind his eyes at times.
I resolve to enjoy this moment. It’s a moment I can’t even say I’ve dreamed of, because even my dreams weren’t so optimistic. I’m on 5th Avenue, the most expensive street in New York, and home to some of the most expensive stores in the world, and he is giving me free reign. My first impulse is not to take advantage of his kindness. I steer us toward a Macy’s because I know I could probably find some good deals there, but on our way, we pass a store called Akris. I’ve never heard of it, but the mannequins in the window are wearing some of the most amazing clothes I’ve ever seen. They are trendy, light, flattering, and eye-catching all at the same time. They look expensive though, so
I pull my gaze away and keep walking, but a strong hand takes my arm. I look back to see Vince, who nods his head toward the store.
“Did you like what you saw? Let’s go inside.”
“I can’t. It’s too much. There aren’t even price tags on anything in there.”
He takes my shoulders and meets my eye. “Aubriella. You will buy anything you want, and you will not think twice about it because you think it’s too expensive. Do you understand?”
I can’t help smiling a little. It all feels too good to be true. “You’re really sure?”
“Do I look like I’m fucking around?” he asks.
I purse my lips playfully and eye him up and down, taking in all of the fine details: the perfectly fitting jeans, the way his muscles press against his white t-shirt, his powerful neck, and the irresistible way his hair always looks tousled but somehow neat at the same time. Almost every woman who passes us does a double take when they see him, some even turning around to gawk or nudging their friends to point him out. He’s that gorgeous. And he’s mine. I feel light-headed.
I pick out three outfits in the store: one is a mostly white combination of an airy blouse, a half-jacket, and a flowing skirt that is unbelievably flattering on me. The other two are casual business clothes that look nice enough to wear on a day with friends or even in front of the camera. They are the most comfortable things I’ve ever worn, and I spent extra time in the fitting rooms gawking at how I looked in them. I’m used to seeing myself in second-hand, rundown clothing that saw its best day years ago. The woman staring back at me in the mirror looks beautiful, wealthy, and confident. It’s like looking at a stranger.
His: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Citrione Crime Family) Page 13