“Yes, sir.”
“Is he here?” I hear Felix ask as we’re ushered upstairs by Helga.
“Not yet but we’ve had word his envoy is on its way.”
I momentarily hear a harp as a server pushes a door open carrying an empty tray into the large kitchen. He doesn’t spare us a glance as we’re led up two flights of stairs to a luxurious hallway with gold and pink wallpaper and plush carpet. The patterns are dizzying. There are a dozen doors on this floor. As we walk past them, I hear some sound, but not a lot. What I can hear reminds me of the boat with those women. This must be the auction. This must be where they were brought.
Mara and I are taken to the room at the far end of the corridor. It’s a bedroom more luxurious than any I’ve seen. The huge bed is the centerpiece, the fabric draping it like something out of a princess movie. Pink all around, as far as the eye can see. I wonder if a five-year-old decorated this place.
Three men accompany us inside and Helga starts right away.
“You, sit.” She points to a chair in the far corner as if Mara is a dog.
Mara spares me a glance before walking to the chair and taking a seat.
Helga turns to me, looks me over, eyes scornful. I can’t tell how old she is. She could be thirty or sixty with her gray-streaked hair drawn back into a tight bun, face pudgy, the lipstick she has on strangely out of place, too pink, too smudged. She’s sturdy, built big.
She unhooks the same strap she’d used to strike Mara from her belt.
“Strip her. Get her on the bed on her back.”
The men obey without a word, my struggles not hindering their efforts in the least, my curses doing nothing but earning a clucking of the tongue from Helga.
Once I’m naked, I’m lifted and hauled to the bed, my arms still behind my back, wrists still bound. The metal of the handcuffs digs into my lower back.
“Open her legs and keep her down.”
“No!” Again, it’s useless to fight. I know it. There are too many of them and I’m bound. One of the men takes hold of my shoulders to pin me to the bed. The others move to either side of me each taking a leg, spreading me wide.
Helga’s gaze shifts to my exposed sex then to my eyes. “Wider.” She runs the strap through the palm of her left hand, and I realize what she means to do. She’ll strap me there. It’ll leave a mark, won’t it?
“Good,” she says once my legs are at the point they’d break if they were spread any wider. “Hold her still.”
She shifts her position slightly, I guess to get at me at a better angle, raises her arm and brings the strap down over my sex.
For a split second, all I hear is the sound of the strap, then nothing. Just nothing. And then the white-hot pain.
“You’re a fucking sadist!” I shout when I can speak again.
She straps me again, not bothering to comment as she lashes me six more times. My crotch is on fire and I’m wriggling to get out of the way but can’t. She’s precise. She’s done this before.
“It’s enough,” Mara says from a few feet away.
I see she’s gotten off her chair, but she stops the instant Helga turns her attention to her. I see the girl’s throat work as she swallows in fear of the woman.
“Did I tell you to get up?”
“He’ll get less if she has marks. She’s swollen,” Mara tries.
Helga walks toward her. “Did I tell you to get up?”
“No, Ma’am.” She lowers her gaze to the floor.
“You’ve just bought her six more lashes. Unless you’d like to take them in her place.”
Mara looks up at her, then at me, tears in her wide eyes. Her lip trembles. This is what they’ve done to her these years? This child?
“Do you get off on this?” I call out to Helga. “Does it turn you on to look at helpless girls, Helga?” she turns her attention back to me, rage boiling inside her making her cheeks burn an angry red. “Are you going to fuck yourself when you’re done? Come thinking of how my pussy looked when you strapped it?”
She walks back to me. If the first six were painful, I know the next will be hell. But it’s worth it. I can’t let her touch Mara. I would rather die than let her do that.
So, I take it. I take the lashes and I clench my jaw so as not to cry out, but I can’t help my tears.
When it’s over, I’m lifted up off the bed and carried into the bathroom. It’s a good thing, I guess. My legs won’t quite work as I process the still-throbbing pain. There, I’m submerged into a tub of too-hot water, doubling the sting.
“Bind her hands in front of her. I’m certainly not paid to clean that filth.”
One of the guards does as she says, taking off the cuffs and re-cuffing them with my arms in front. It feels better at least. Easier on my shoulders.
Helga stands over me and grins, hooking the strap back on her belt. She leans toward me.
“Give me any trouble and your next punishment will make this one look like a walk in the park.”
I don’t answer with words. It’d be stupid to. But I tell myself I’m going to kill her if I get the chance. Even if it’s the last thing I do, because this is looking more and more hopeless the longer I’m here.
Cristiano is dead. No one is coming for me and there are enough soldiers out there to hunt me down or outright kill me. Even if I managed to get out of the house, I’m not valuable to them anymore. Maybe I’d be better off dead if I think about the alternative Felix has in store for me.
No. Dead is never better. Isn’t that what Cristiano always says?
Said.
Not says.
Not anymore.
She straightens, gestures to one of the men to give her the shower gel and shampoo.
“Now get out,” she snaps at the men.
The men look at each other like they’re confused.
She looks up at them as she sets the things on the ledge along the tub. “I said get out. Are you as stupid as you are ugly or just hard of hearing?”
“We’re to stay—”
“You can wait outside. I don’t want you near Lizzie and you’ve certainly had your eyeful of this one.” She turns her attention to me, looking like she’s disgusted as the men clear out. “Come back in fifteen minutes to take her to the waxing room.
Waxing room?
She turns back to me. “Get to work.”
I pick up the loofah.
35
Cristiano
“We have a lead on David,” Antonio announces as I turn away from the woman in frustration. Her English is broken but from what she’s telling me, she’s one of the women they’d trafficked at some point. Terrified out of her mind, she keeps making the sign of the cross every time she glimpses either of the dead men, a stream of words in a language I don’t understand pouring from her.
“They brought me to make the food,” she repeats again. “But the girl doesn’t eat.” When I turn away, she continues to tell one of the soldiers. “I go now,” she says, nodding as if giving herself permission to leave.
“Where?” I ask Antonio.
“Hotel in Amsterdam. I can get you there in forty minutes.”
“Does he know we found him?”
Antonio shakes his head. “The man who just delivered his dinner called. Soldiers are on their way, but it’ll be about twenty minutes before they’re on site.”
“Let’s go,” I say, then glance at the woman who has started sobbing again. One of the soldiers is holding on to her. She’s not struggling against him, but she wants out. “Let her go,” I tell him.
We file out of the decrepit house and back to our vehicle. With traffic, it takes us almost an hour to get to the hotel where, according to Antonio’s contact, David checked into the Presidential suite for one night under an alias. That alias has a first-class seat booked on a plane heading to Dubai first thing in the morning.
“Does he have men with him?” I ask as we enter the property.
“No. Not that my contact has seen.”
“Anything else on the location of that auction?” I ask for the hundredth time even though I know Antonio would tell me the instant he knew anything.
“Not yet.”
The three of us ride up on the elevator accompanied by two soldiers.
“He’ll know,” Dante says.
I look at him, see the furrow between his brows. He’s processing all this. Processing our uncle’s betrayal.
He runs a hand through his hair and looks at me. I get that he’s feeling responsible for allowing Scarlett to have been taken. He is, on some level. He should have protected her. But I also understand why he didn’t.
“He’ll know where she is. He doesn’t leave loose ends,” he adds.
“Aren’t we loose ends?” I ask him.
His gaze darkens and he shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense, Cris. Makes no fucking sense.”
I nod because he’s right. It doesn’t make sense that he’d massacre our family and leave us alive when he could easily have killed us. Me at least. I lay helpless in a coma. Dante too. Dante trusted him. We both did. It would have been easy for him. What was there for him to gain by keeping us alive apart from having me become his personal killing machine when someone crossed him?
“He’s going to explain it to us now, Brother.”
The elevator lets us off at the twenty-second floor. There are two doors in the hallway. Two suites. One is empty. Or was until I booked it. I won’t take a chance that we’re interrupted.
“How are we doing this?” Antonio asks when we step off the elevator.
I turn to him. “We’re not. Dante and I are. And we’re walking right up to the door and knocking.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Antonio asks, clearly, he doesn’t think so.
“I’m sure.”
Antonio and the soldiers flank us as we walk to the double doors of my uncle’s suite. Once there I raise my hand and knock.
“It’s about time,” my uncle’s voice carries before he even opens the door. “Does your chef know what rare—”
He’s mid-sentence when the door opens. He looks pissed off, holding a plate with a steak on it, the piece of meat sliced in two sitting in its own bloody juices.
My mouth moves into a smile of its own accord. I don’t feel it though. What I feel is a hardening in my chest. A deadening. Because when I look at this man, all I see are the bodies of my family lying on that bloodied marble floor.
“Uncle,” I say as he looks first at me, then at Dante.
For a brief moment, I see that we’ve surprised him. That he truly did not expect us.
“Cristiano!” He smiles wide, sets the dish down on a side table. “I thought you were dead!”
“Hm.” He almost moves in as if to hug me, but I push past him into the suite. Dante follows. Antonio and the soldiers stand sentry at the door as Dante closes it.
“Steak not rare enough?” Dante asks peering at it. “Looks good and bloody to me.”
I take in the large room, the wall of windows, the river that separates North Amsterdam from the center. All the lights, the lives being lived oblivious to what happens under their unsuspecting noses.
Scarlett is out there somewhere. Alone. Unprotected from men like my uncle.
I turn to face him. “Where’s my wife?”
“Scarlett?” He glances at Dante but only momentarily as he addresses me with his answer. “I gave her back to Felix. Unharmed. I thought you were dead, Cristiano. I needed to protect Dante. She was a peace offering.”
“It didn’t look very peaceful on the video you left behind.”
“That was Felix. Not me.”
“You told me my brother was dead,” Dante says.
“I thought he was,” he says like he’s confused by the question.
“No. The soldier who passed the news on, told you I was injured but stable,” I tell him. “I don’t have time for this. Where’s my wife?”
“I don’t know. I took her to the address Felix specified and from there, I don’t know.”
I remember Scarlett talking about how calm she remained in violent situations. How her heartbeat didn’t even accelerate. She thought she might be a monster. I told her she wasn’t. I stand by that.
Because I’m looking at the real monster. His mouth is moving but all I hear is the sound of bullshit. “I don’t even know why you—”
I take hold of his arm, drag him to the desk in the corner and slam his hand flat onto it before taking the letter opener and stabbing it through the back of his hand with so much force, so much rage, that the wood splinters as the blade penetrates the desktop.
My uncle’s scream is choked like it’s caught in his throat. His eyes widen to stare at his impaled hand, at the blood seeping from it, at me.
“Where. Is. My. Wife?”
He turns from me to Dante who is watching from a few feet away. Dante picks a French fry off a dish beside my uncle’s half empty glass of wine. He dips it in mayonnaise and eats it like it’s the most normal, casual situation.
“That’s nasty,” he mutters, eating another one without the mayo. “I’d heard the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, but I didn’t believe it. Why would anyone do that?” He picks up the bottle of wine, pours some into an empty water glass and swallows it down like it’s water.
“Cristiano,” my uncle starts but stops. His eyes are shiny like he’s on the verge of tears.
“You lied to me,” Dante says, bringing the dirty steak knife over, anything casual gone from his face, his voice. “You fucking lied to me and I broke my promise to my brother. That part is on me. I’ll pay for that. But the rest, that’s all you. Now answer his fucking question or put your other hand on the desk,” he says. “It’s going to get messy.” He shifts his gaze momentarily to my uncle’s bleeding hand. “But you like messy, don’t you?”
I wonder how Dante knows that detail but it’s true. It’s what my uncle always asked of me when I took out those names he listed for me. How many innocents have I killed for him?
“You too?” my uncle says to Dante. “You’ll side with him as he accuses me when all I was doing was protecting you?”
“If you were protecting me, why are you here in Amsterdam registered at a hotel under a false name? Why would you run? Why would you hide unless you knew he was alive, and he’d come after you?” Dante pauses. “We’d come after you. It looks bad, Uncle, so help yourself out. Tell us where Felix took Scarlett. Then you can explain the rest of it.”
“I need to sit down,” David says.
Dante pulls the chair out, moves it around the desk and shoves it under him.
David sits, tucks his free hand into his pocket and takes out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead.
He looks up at Dante, smiles a little, the look on his face strange before he turns his attention to me, that expression different, colder.
“I could have let you die, I didn’t. It would have been better for Dante if I’d let you die but I saved your life because he wanted me to. I did it for him.”
“What do you mean it would have been better for me?” Dante asks.
I can’t peel my eyes from him. This man who, if what Rinaldi says is true, masterminded my family’s massacre.
“You don’t know anything. Neither of you. You never knew your father, not really. How ruthless he could be. Only Michael saw that side of him. And you never knew your mother, either.”
I fist a handful of his hair, tug his head backward and lean my face close to his. “Then educate us because you know what Rinaldi told me before I put his own knife in his throat? He told me about the message you wanted him to deliver. The last words my mother heard before he slit her throat.”
Was it the same knife, I wonder? Did I kill him with the same blade he used to kill my mother?
Now comes the emotion. The elevated heart rate. I guess I’m not as much a monster as this man if I can still feel.
He snorts, face contorting a little in pain. “Rinaldi
? That’s where you’re getting your facts from?” He raises his free hand when he says facts to make a single air quote. The instant he does, my brother grabs it, sets it beside the other and drives the steak knife through it.
No choked, shocked silence this time. My uncle screams.
“What did you do?” Dante demands with a roar.
“I did it for you, you ungrateful bastard! She would have gotten rid of you, but I told her no! I saved your fucking worthless life!” He draws a deep, shuddering breath in as tears begin to stream down his face. “You think she ever loved your father? Really loved him?” His eyes are on me now. “She loved me first. Me! Until my brother saw her and just like with everything else, he stole her too. And your mother…” he shakes his head, words foaming at his lips. “He turned her head. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.” He shifts his gaze to Dante again. “I made sure you were off the island. I made sure you weren’t anywhere near that charity event. I made sure you were protected from him. From the violence he brings.”
The he my uncle is referring to is me. And the way he says it, the way he nods his head gesturing to me when he does, betrays his hate of me.
“You think that woman wanted to suck off an inexperienced fifteen-year-old boy? I arranged that. For you.”
Dante stumbles backward a step. His face contorts like he’s just figured something out.
“Why?” he asks, so much emotion in those three letters.
“Why? Look in the mirror and tell me what you see,” my uncle says to him.
Dante’s hands fist at his sides.
I take hold of the hilt of the steak knife and pull it out, freeing one of David’s hands. He gasps with the movement. I’m sure it’s as painful coming out as it is going in. He starts to draw his arm back, but I grab it, turn it over and stretch it across the desk. I set the point of the knife at his wrist and push the sharp blade in. It cuts skin like butter and blood pours from his vein.
“You had him rape her. That’s how you knew,” I say.
“What?” Dante asks. He doesn’t know this part. No one knew but me. I was the sole witness.
I Thee Take: To Have and To Hold Duet Book Two Page 16