Nico taps the desk to get my attention. “What if it’s not a man?” he mouths at me, in Italian. I’m an excellent lip reader, as is he. He makes a gesture with his hands, indicating a curvy woman.
I frown in thought. Concetta, he’s suggesting. I don’t see how she could have anything to do with the Russians’ warehouses getting raided, but could she be behind our trucks getting stopped? Yes, she’s hurt that I am pushing her away now that I’m getting married – and yes, she’s greedy, which would mean she’s susceptible to bribery. But I dismiss the idea, for various reasons. First of all, she hasn’t even been around when I’ve set the routes for our shipments. She has no access to my office. And she isn’t that bright, or that brave – taking on the Rossi family is the worst kind of suicide, and she knows that. It’s days-long agonizing death at my personal direction – skin slowly being peeled off, an autopsy while still alive.
He sees the look on my face and shrugs to say it was worth a try. We’re like brothers, the two of us – we can all but read each other’s thoughts.
“All right. We’re going to have to cancel the shipment,” I say to Nico. “And let’s place a few calls to the ATF ourselves, tipping them off that the decoy trucks have guns. Then we’ll have our lawyers come down on them like the wrath of God, and eventually they’ll back off.”
So far, all they really have on us is one seized truckload of guns, and accusations.
Nico nods. “Good thinking. About the shipment – I can deliver.”
I wince. “That’s very risky, Nico.”
“So is pissing off the Mexicans and losing our best customers. Look. We’ve got multiple points of entry, right? I will go alone, I will continually change my route, and at the last minute, call me and tell me which checkpoint you—
“Andiamo! E ora di cena!” Alonza yells from the doorway, looking annoyed. Come, it’s time for dinner. She adds in Italian, “You boys can go back to playing video games tomorrow. You must try the lasagna that your fiancée cooked and deliver your verdict.”
“How is it?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “It won’t kill anybody.” Coming from her, that is actually praise of the highest order.
And indeed, Natasha did an excellent job with the lasagna, and with the tiramisu, and I make sure to praise her for it repeatedly. She’s mostly been beaten down over the last couple of days, and I’m not trying to crush her spirit. I want her happy and content – but I also need her to fear and obey me. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. She just needs to truly understand, down to her bones, the consequences of pleasing me – and also of displeasing me.
Concetta has put her happy face on, smiling and complimenting Natasha on her cooking. Natasha thanks her, and even says something nice about her hair, which makes Concetta preen, because even though she hates Natasha, she’s vain as hell.
Natasha’s upbringing as a politician’s daughter has some benefits, I’ll give her that. She is so polite, you’d never know that she’s bitterly jealous. And that warms my heart. Natasha wouldn’t be jealous if she wasn’t coming to care for me.
After dinner, Natasha clears the table by herself and loads the dishes into the dishwasher, then resumes cleaning the house.
She comes to my room at around eleven p.m., and I can see the look of exhaustion on her face. She’s showered, and she’s wearing pajama shorts and a T-shirt.
“I think I’m done,” she says wearily.
“You think?” I say, and I smile at her.
“Either way, I can’t do any more. Everything on me hurts. I’ll start again tomorrow, right after my lessons.” She lets just a little resentment creep into her voice.
“Lie down on the bed, then. On your back.”
A look of nervousness flashes across her face, but she lies down on her back like a good girl and lets me pull her pajama pants down without protest. I pull her shirt off over her head and take a few moments just to look at her, to drink her in. She’s delicious – so beautiful, so sweet.
I bend down and kiss her belly very gently, and she shivers beneath my lips. I move so I am lying between her legs and kiss my way slowly down her stomach, reveling in the sound of her deep breaths and the sweet aroma of her pussy. Then I spread her legs open with my hands. She whimpers in anticipation.
Nobody’s ever done this to her before, and it must be perfect. I am eager to please my woman, to know that I can satisfy her in this intimate fashion. I will make it very good, and I will take my time. I stroke her with my tongue, lapping up her honey, and that first lap of my tongue makes her shudder. She moans aloud and spreads her legs wide.
“Oh. My God.” Her voice is so full of wonder that I want to burst with pride. Slowly, firmly, I lick every part of her, holding her legs open nice and wide. I move one hand so I can massage her clit with my thumb, and she cries out, making a strangled sound. She’s squirming under me now, and I have to hold her still. I slap her thigh hard. “Don’t move,” I chastise her. “Or I’ll spank you.”
“Please, Matteo, please,” she begs.
“Please what, princess?”
“Please make me…you know…” Her voice is a shamed whisper. So innocent. So tender. So mine.
“Make you what? Say the words.” And I torture her with a long, slow lap of my tongue.
“Make me…come.” She chokes on the word, and shivers, as I steal her innocence for myself and close my mouth around her clit, sucking hard. “Oh, God, oh, God…” She shudders all over. I don’t stop until her cries reach their peak and I taste the juices oozing from her sweet pussy. She’s crying and shaking all over, moaning my name. I did that. I’m the first man to make her come; I’ll be the only man ever to make her come. I own her body and her heart and her orgasms.
I move up on the bed and take her trembling little body in my arms, hugging her to me, and she just melts. She fits with me perfectly, her leg sliding between mine, her small, firm breasts pressed up against my chest. When she finally stops shaking and her breath slows to normal, she murmurs, “You could…you know.”
God, I want to. My cock is hard enough to slice through steel. I ache for her – her sweet little body is on my mind all day long, invading my thoughts when I should only be thinking about work and the danger threatening our family.
But I can’t take her now. “There will be a virginity test the day of the wedding,” I say, and I feel her stiffen.
“Even if it’s only you that I’ve been with?”
“Unfortunately, yes. In some ways we are steeped in the old traditions.”
“I want to…” She glances down at my swollen cock and bites her lip. And I feel a surge of triumph and love and happiness. I know I’m being hard on her, I know I’ve ripped her world apart, but she still wants to please me. It doesn’t matter how bizarre the circumstances of our meeting – we’re truly meant to be together. We’re soul-mates; we are each other’s missing half.
“Wait a moment.” I slide over to the side of the bed and fetch a bottle of amaretto-flavored massage oil from the nightstand. Then I have her drip it on me. “Lick it off,” I order her, my voice harsh, and she eagerly obeys me. Her response to my sexual dominance sends a wildfire of arousal roaring through me. Her tongue sliding over my aching cock is my Heaven on Earth.
I have her use her hand too, making her lick me and jerk me off until I am ready to explode, and then she takes me in her mouth and swallows every drop of my come. The aftershocks make me shudder with desire. She rests her head against my thigh, relaxing into me.
She’s so sweet and so perfect that I almost regret what I have to do next.
“Stand up,” I snap. Her eyes open wide in shock as she obeys me. I stand up too, towering over her.
“I wasn’t…I wasn’t good?” She looks as if she’s about to cry.
“You were fantastic. That’s not the problem. You didn’t finish cleaning the house. You didn’t even check in the seventh bedroom’s closet.”
“I…I didn’t?” She looks bewi
ldered. “I thought I did…”
“And your attitude when you came to the bedroom. You clearly didn’t care whether you were finished cleaning or not. Well, you weren’t. I checked that closet and found dust on the top shelf.”
“Dust on the top shelf?” She chokes on the words. “You want me to cook elaborate meals for you, learn new recipes every day, learn a new language and clean the entire house from top to bottom, then come to your bedroom at night?”
“Are you complaining?” My voice is a knife blade, slashing her heart. Tears are running down her cheeks now.
Her face contorts in a brief spasm of anger, but she’s too smart to voice her feelings. “No. I am just…asking for clarification.”
“I think I was pretty clear.” I point at the dangling cuffs. “Hands up.”
She doesn’t try to argue. She just raises her hands, sobbing hopelessly as I fetch a small riding crop from my cabinet.
She sags from the cuffs, looking utterly destroyed, and frustration swells inside me. Yes, I’m asking a lot of her, but I’m not asking the impossible, and she’s better than this. I’m angry to see her being so weak.
Yes, there are other things I’d like to tell her, things I need to say to her, things that will change everything – but they’ll have to wait until after the wedding.
And in the meantime, she can do as she’s damn well told. To do anything less is disrespectful to me, and I am Matteo Rossi. I do not tolerate anything less than complete and unquestioning submission.
I snap the whip across her left breast, slashing a red line across her tender white flesh, and she screams and jumps.
“Please,” she sobs. “Please, Matteo! I’m so tired! I tried, I tried! I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“Yes, you will.” A flick of the wrist and I’ve whipped her right breast, cutting right across the nipple, and she lets out another shriek.
Several more whip strikes and she’s completely hysterical. If I went a little more lightly, I could make it erotic for her, but I’m not seeking her pleasure right now. And the fact that I am turned on by this just proves what a sick bastard I am – but then, I’ve never denied it. The Rossi men are encouraged to be beasts, to enjoy inflicting pain. It’s part of what makes us real men, our fathers tell us from the moment we’re old enough to understand.
And it’s just who I am. I feel no guilt about it. Looking at my sobbing fiancée has me so hard I could explode just from the sight of it.
I lower my whip arm to admire my handiwork. There’s a pleasing cross-hatching of red across her breasts now.
“You shouldn’t force me to punish you like this, princess. Do you see how turned on I am right now?” I put one hand on my hardened cock. “I might get used to it. I might need it every night.” Smack! I whip her left nipple, and her shriek of pain tears into me, wrapping around my dark soul and squeezing.
I pause to look at her face, twisted in misery, mouth open in a wordless howl. Enough? Have I made my point yet?
To be absolutely sure, I lay down several more slashes across the places I’ve already whipped, and she begs me for mercy. “God, Matteo! No, no, no!”
“No, I shouldn’t help you learn to do as you’re told?” I twist my lips in the smile that’s made hired killers wet themselves.
“I just… Oh God… Matteo, don’t, don’t, just stop it…” This earns her two more slashes, and she rewards me with screams that bounce off the rafters.
She’s hanging limply, too weak even to jerk away when I hurt her, and her sobs have taken on a hopeless quality. I’m done. There’s not a scrap of defiance left in her.
I set the whip down and uncuff her and carry her to her bedroom.
Something’s changed between us. Her muscles bunch up in tension. Up until now, she craved my approval, and I doled it out in tiny enough increments that she was always hungry for more. I felt the tentative threads of her need weaving around me, pulling us together, weaving us into one. But now she doesn’t melt into me the way she did before. She turns her head away from me, and I feel our connection fading. The world is a colder place when she isn’t with me.
I’ve never felt lonely before – never in my life. Not after my father was murdered, not after my mother died of sorrow a week later. Now I feel that emptiness that others have spoken of, and it’s the bitterest taste of all. She’s pulling away, she’s leaving me – in her head. I could whip her until she died and that wouldn’t change. Brutality doesn’t fix everything.
She doesn’t understand why I ask of her the things I do.
So I just set her down on her bed, on her back, very tenderly and carefully. I bend down and kiss the whip marks on her breasts. I will stay with her for as long as it takes to bring her back to me. I can’t sleep until she’s returned.
“You haven’t thanked me,” I remind her gently.
Her shoulders rise as her body tenses up again. “Thank you for…for punishing me.” It comes out in a breathy moan.
“You’re getting better. You cooked very well today, and your accent is coming along.”
She just lies there, eyes closed, her sobs slowing.
I lie down next to her, stroking her hair lightly. “This isn’t you, Natasha. This is your family. It’s not your fault. It’s the way they raised you – they made you weak, and I am here to make you strong again. You are brilliant, and capable, and you can do anything in the world that you set your mind to. You can be what you were meant to be. And do you know what that is, Natasha?”
“No.” Her voice is soaked in misery and surrender.
“The wife of Matteo Rossi. You were made just for me. My perfect, beautiful love, my angel. I do what I do to help you become your best self, and you are getting better every day. You’ve only been here for a few days, and you’ve learned so much.”
“But it’s never good enough.” All her misery and frustration are poured into those words, and I could punish her for being borderline defiant, but I choose instead to focus on the fact that she desperately wants to please me.
“It will be,” I promise her. “It won’t always be like this.” And that’s about as much as I can say to her at this point.
I feather her shoulder with soft kisses. “Think about our wedding day. Our honeymoon. I promise you, you won’t be cleaning the house then. You will be lying in bed with me, dazed with pleasure, begging me for more.”
She’s starting to relax a little bit. I snuggle up against her. “I wish I could sleep in this bed with you tonight, my beloved, but tradition forbids it. I have to go back to my room, but I just want to say, the lasagna that you made was worthy of what my mother used to make. I can’t wait to see what you cook up for me tomorrow.”
“Oh. Thank you.” The word catches on a sob. She’s pitifully grateful now, eager for any little scrap of reassurance.
I sit up and take her hand in mine and kiss the palm. Her soft, breathy whimper strokes a fire between my legs and sets my heart racing with eagerness.
“Can you…can you stay with me for just a little while longer?” she begs, so I settle back down next to her.
I speak to her in Italian, telling her how beautiful she is, how precious to me, and bit by bit all the tension flows from her body and I feel her perfect soul opening up to me and letting me in. I kiss her soft lips before I leave the room.
Tomorrow is another day. Another chance for her to be what I need her to be.
Chapter 12
Natasha
I move through a perpetual haze of exhaustion now.
Matteo has been kind enough to provide me with powerful painkillers. I say “kind” sarcastically, because the reason I’m in pain every day is that he punishes me every night when I fail to clean the entire house to his satisfaction. He’s whipped my thighs, he’s caned the bottom of my feet, he’s shocked me again.
For a couple of nights I was in too much pain to sleep because of his punishments, and I passed out from exhaustion several times when I was trying to clean. I also became cl
umsy in the kitchen, dropping plates, tripping over my own feet, which made Alonza yell at me and pinch me to bring me out of my fog.
Then Matteo started giving me the painkillers at night, after he punished me, and I was at least able to fall asleep. That gives me enough strength – barely – to make it through each wretched day. I make breakfast for everyone, clear the table afterward, load the dishwasher, and then I spend an hour in the kitchen with Alonza learning a new recipe. Then I rush off to my Italian lesson. After that, I wearily practice my lessons using the tape recorder Matteo got me as I push the cleaning cart through the house, and at least I’m getting my pronunciation down. I eat lunch in between cleaning. I make dinner for everyone with Alonza – she teaches me even more new recipes – wash all the dishes, and head back to my duties, cleaning until the sun goes down.
I do notice that Alonza’s room and Valentina’s room are already spotless when I go in there, and I think they’re doing that to help me. I’m surprised to see any kindness at all from Alonza, who is the sourest, most miserable human I’ve ever seen, but I’ll take whatever help I can get.
I believe I have figured out why Matteo is doing this to me – because I’ll be too tired to fight back, too tired to plan my escape. And for now he’s right. I am using up every ounce of my strength trying to clean this house. I feel like Sisyphus pushing the boulder uphill every night, almost reaching the top, only to have it roll back down. But I can’t stop, I can’t ever stop. As long as I at least try, I only get punished a little bit. If I don’t try my absolute best, he’ll torture me until I pass out, again and again.
Every night I’m so tired that I no longer have the energy to please Matteo – and he’s made it quite clear that because of that, he’s visiting Concetta. It shouldn’t hurt me, but it does. I feel utterly hopeless. I can barely fake smiles any more. That used to be my thing, faking smiles.
Matteo: A Dark Mafia Hate Story Page 10