BEND ME: A Dark Romance

by Leah Wilde

  Fiona exhaled heavily and placed the pen back down on the desk, keeping the contract’s pages in place so that Vince would see her name written on the final page whenever he reentered his playroom.

  She slowly crossed the room back to the door, opening it carefully so as not to make a lot of noise. She felt like she’d just done something secret, something unspoken. It would have felt almost vulgar to draw attention to herself right now, even though she felt like any bystanders could probably hear her heartbeat drumming from inside her body like the crackle of fireworks.

  But before she could even make it halfway down the hallway back to the dining room area, a servant appeared out of nowhere, wearing a fancy dark suit. “Mistress Fiona,” the servant said, offering his arm forward for her to take. Fiona just stared down at it for a minute, feeling utterly confused, not least because she’d never been addressed as “mistress” before in her entire life.

  The servant must have detected her confusion, as he added, “Master Vince instructed me to lead you to the town car outside. Do you wish to come with me?”

  Fiona smiled politely, and for a second, she considered refusing, feeling too awkward to be literally ushered downstairs like she was some kind of princess. But at the last moment, she made the opposite decision, slipping her arm around the servant’s as comfortably as she could. “Lead the way,” she said, her voice coming out much more confidently than she felt inside. But she figured she had to try to do things Vince’s way, at least tonight. She needed to start getting used to being uncomfortable or unsure of what to do. She was in Vince’s world now, and she had to learn to be spontaneous, to expect the unexpected. And hell, maybe for once, it’d be nice to feel like a princess. That would definitely be quite a change of pace.

  Still, she felt a little disappointment as she headed with the servant outside to the town car waiting to take her home. She realized she wanted to see Vince again, to say goodnight. I’ll see him tomorrow, she said to herself silently, berating herself for being such a girl about her new non-relationship. But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? She wasn’t going to see him tomorrow. In the morning, he’d be an entirely different person, and so would she.

  It was better this way, keeping the worlds separate, she thought as she entered the town car, letting her head fall back on the headrest of her seat as the driver pulled away into the night. She’d be safer this way, never really letting him touch her. But some part of her, a deep, secret, dark part, hungered to be touched.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, Vince couldn’t rush to the office fast enough. Usually, whenever he was called home in the past, he’d procrastinate as long as possible to make sure that he was minimizing time spent around his brother and mother. But today, he was going to see Fiona again, and as a result, his heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to jump cleanly out of his body. He couldn’t wait to see her, to see if she looked any different from the day before, if their experience together had changed her. He knew they hadn’t fucked yet, hadn’t even kissed or done anything remotely sexual, but he still needed to know if she’d been changed at all. If she felt freer or happier or just better since she’d signed the contract, the way he felt ever since he saw her name written across that final page the night before.

  Vince smiled and nodded at the various employees already present in the compound before stepping into his father’s old office, feeling his chest get lighter as he noticed the back of Fiona’s head. She was already sitting at her desk. So at least her punctuality hadn’t been changed by their new arrangement, Vince thought with a smile. “Good morning—” he started to say as he shut the office door behind him, but he cut himself off when he noticed the other person in the room. Guido. Sitting at the edge of Fiona’s desk, a mischievous grin spread across his face. Fucker, Vince thought, feeling all the joy leave his body at once as he marched around to the front of Fiona’s desk to face them both.

  “What exactly is going on here?” Vince said, his voice coming out stern and hard before his gaze finally landed on Fiona’s face. She looked distressed, her eyebrows furrowed together as she bit down on her bottom lip, staring up at him with wide, worried eyes.

  Guido’s face remained unchanged, though. He looked as happy as a clam, balanced on the edge of Fiona’s desk, but his eyes shone with something else, some smug satisfied sense of victory, like he’d just beaten his opponent. Vince’s hands balled into fists as he stared down at his idiotic younger brother, who was clearly harassing the woman he’d wanted to fuck for over a year. “We’re just talking, you know, hanging out,” Guido said with a shrug, his smirk firmly planted on his face.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Vince said sharply. On any other day, he might have held back or played nice with his little brother, but after his father’s death, he had little to no patience for this kind of bullshit. “We have work to do here. It’s not playtime, Guido.”

  Guido shrugged again, looking unbothered by his brother’s harsh tone of voice. “All right, fair enough. I guess I’ll talk to you later, sweet thing,” he said to Fiona as he leapt off the edge of the desk, heading straight for the door.

  Vince felt a fire start to burn at the base of his throat, his rage building higher as he saw Fiona squirm uncomfortably in her seat. Guido needed to be taught a lesson, but how? Vince didn’t want to come right out and say that Fiona was his property. He really couldn’t afford anyone knowing that they were together. It would complicate things too much, especially since he still wasn’t sure how comfortable Fiona felt about their little arrangement. But it was clear he had to teach Guido about boundaries. This type of behavior couldn’t be permitted to continue.

  “Guido,” Vince said without turning his head, stopping his brother right before he exited the room. “Come with me to my other office, all right? We need to discuss a few things.”

  “Okay…” Guido said a little uncertainly, remaining in place while Vince slowly backed away from Fiona’s desk. Fiona stared up at Vince worriedly, probably concerned that Vince was about to make a possessive claim on her or something like that, but Vince finally turned and led his brother out of the room, going across the hall to his old office.

  Vince closed the door behind them, just to make sure that none of the servants or other employees bustling around could overhear. He had to be careful about this. “What’s up, brother?” Guido said, taking a seat on one side of Vince’s dust-covered desk, which had gone unused for over a year.

  Staring down at his brother’s squirrely, almost anxious little face, Vince made a split-second decision. He wouldn’t discuss Fiona directly. For one thing, he simply couldn’t afford to let Guido know that he was planning on fucking her. First of all, he’d never hear the end of it, seeing as how Guido had “called dibs” on her months before, as if he was just waiting for their father to keel over so he could get a chance to fuck her. But secondly, he didn’t need Guido spreading rumors to their mother. Mama Romano was many things, but forgiving was not one of them. She was totally convinced that Fiona had been screwing her husband before he died, and she’d be absolutely infuriated if she heard that Vince was doing the same thing.

  “I just wanted to talk to you about the funeral,” Vince said after clearing his throat, keeping his tone as calm and polite as possible. He didn’t want to make Guido his enemy. He could be useful, seeing as how he knew the business about as well as Fiona did, all things considered.

  “I think Mama’s planning that,” Guido replied, leaning back in his chair as he relaxed. He seemed to realize that he wasn’t about to get yelled at, at the very least.

  “Right, that’s another thing,” Vince said, improvising the conversation as it went along. “I’m a little worried about her. Is she doing okay, you know, with Dad passing and all?”

  Guido frowned a little. “You know, it’s hard to say. The old broad keeps herself so guarded all the time. She hasn’t cried or nothing that I’ve seen, but you know how she is. She’s probably falling ap
art in private, where nobody can use it against her.”

  Vince nodded slowly, feeling a little guilt begin to burn at the base of his stomach as he thought of his mother. He hadn’t even spoken to her since his dad died, not really, and that was after months upon months without contacting her. Sure, she was kind of a bitch, always bossing him around and telling him that he was a total disappointment compared to his little brother, but she was still his mother. She deserved better than the total neglect that she’d experienced from her eldest son over the past year.

  “I’ll help with funeral planning,” Vince said. “I have the resources right now to devote to it.” Resources was code for Fiona, but he wasn’t about to say her name and open that can of worms with his brother.

  “Are you really sure you should use those…resources?” Guido said, raising his eyebrows skeptically. “I mean, given our mother’s opinion on them?”

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke, leaving Guido’s question hanging in the air. Tension crackled between them, neither of them willing to say Fiona’s name aloud or even admit that she was what they were really discussing.

  Vince bit on his tongue without opening his mouth, considering his words carefully before finally speaking after another moment of protracted silence. “I think what Mama doesn’t know won’t hurt her, if you catch my drift.”

  Guido clicked his tongue from behind his teeth, rolling his eyes up in the back of his head as he considered Vince’s statement. “Fair enough. But you should talk to her yourself, you know. She’s still your mother.”

  Vince felt a flash of shame, followed by dull anger that Guido was judging him. What did he know about his relationship with their mother? It wasn’t like he could ever understand, anyway. He hadn’t grown up with the weight of his mother’s expectations pressing down on him at all times. It was okay if Guido failed. He was just the younger brother. He was never supposed to be a part of the dynasty anyway.

  But Vince held himself back, offering a tight smile instead of cursing his brother out the way he wanted to. “I understand. Well, get to work. We can’t afford to slack off, even if Dad isn’t in the ground yet,” he said with a laugh, gesturing for Guido to get out of the chair and follow him back out into the main room of the compound.

  Before heading back into his dad’s old office, Vince grabbed Guido by the shoulder and pulled him in to whisper into his ear. “Just…be careful around the office, all right? You don’t want to get a reputation like Dad had near the end of his life.”

  He saw Guido flush a little, his eyes narrowing for a second before he recovered. “Got it,” Guido said before winking at his brother and walking away.

  For now, at least, the two brothers would keep the peace between each other, neither of them mentioning the source of the tension between them. Vince felt better, though, as a result of the conversation. His brother seemed to get the message that Fiona was off-limits, and anyway, now that he was the boss, Vince had more control over his little brother than ever before. If anything, Guido was the one that should have been worried about his standing in the organization under the new leadership.

  Still, as he watched his little brother walk away, Vince felt a nagging voice at the back of his mind whisper, Watch out for that one.

  Vince pushed the voice to the farthest corner of his mind. He couldn’t afford to worry about his brother right now. He had bigger things on his plate, like taming the wild-hearted woman who’d signed herself away to him.

  Chapter Nine

  His anxieties temporarily relieved, Vince headed back into the office, shutting and locking the door behind him so that nobody could interrupt his time with Fiona. “Sorry for that,” Vince said, referring both to his brother’s actions as well as the late start to the morning’s work. “Sometimes you just have to take care of business.”

  “I can understand that,” Fiona said with a smile. She looked less nervous now, although Vince thought he could detect a note of curiosity within her eyes, like she wanted to know how the conversation with Guido went. But Vince wasn’t going to say anything. He had to observe the rules he’d set the night before. Any talk about the playroom stayed in the playroom, and everything else had to be professional.

  “Right,” Vince said, stepping around to stand directly in front of Fiona’s desk, keeping his arms crossed just to resist the urge to lean over her as she studied various piles of papers. “Tell me, where should we start today?” Vince tried to keep his breathing steady, even though his organs were humming inside with anticipation. Fiona might not have been aware of it, but this was the first test. Was she going to mention the playroom or the contract or their new “relationship?” Or was she going to remember the terms that she’d agreed to? Was she going to prove herself?

  Fiona stared up at him silently for a moment, something unspoken stewing behind her eyes, before she finally cleared her throat and pushed one pile of papers forward for Vince to look at. “I figured we’d begin with some of the C-block stuff,” she said, shuffling in her seat to pull herself as close to her desk as possible. “Pull up a chair; we’ll be here for a while.”

  Vince fought the urge to grin. She’d passed the first hurdle, and in the process, she proved that she remembered what he’d said before. Here in the office, she was the boss, not him. “What’s the C-block?” he asked.

  Fiona paused, her pen frozen in midair while she gaped at Vince wordlessly for a long moment. “You’re joking,” she said in a soft voice a moment later.

  “Uh, no, really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vince said, feeling himself blush a little under his collar in embarrassment about his own ignorance.

  Fiona sighed softly and nodded. “Right. Okay, that’s no problem. I got this.” She pointed across the room at the nearest chair, snapping her fingers once to get Vince’s full attention. “Get the chair. I mean it. You’re going to need it. We’re really going to be in here for a while. As in, we’re going to order lunch and stay all day, so buckle up, pal.”

  Vince couldn’t suppress the smile that popped up effortlessly on his face as a result of Fiona’s commands. It sounded so natural, so unforced, hearing her boss him around. She really was a dominant in the office. If anything, she should have been the one in control, making the decisions, while Vince poured the coffee and kept the records in order. But of course, his pride, not to mention his family’s expectations, got in the way of that. He had to be in control, even if in reality he only felt powerful in the bedroom.

  He did as Fiona instructed, bringing a chair up to the other side of the desk so that he was sitting across from her. “All right, what’s C-block?”

  Fiona reached across the desk for her bottle of water, taking a short sip before clearing her throat again and answering him. “Cocaine. Or more specifically, the path the cocaine travels up from Mexico to here.”

  Vince flinched a little, even though he shouldn’t have. He knew his father was involved in drug trafficking and dealing to users in Jersey and the city. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was like he was hit in the face with a brick. This was real. The responsibility, the power, the duty, the danger…all of it was hanging over his head. He swallowed to clear his throat before forcing a smile at Fiona, nodding at her to continue speaking.

  “So, we’ve been running the C-block the same way for the past six months, using this MC from New Mexico to get the goods into the country. The only problem is…they met up personally with your father before making the deal. They don’t know you, and that might be an issue.”

  “What do you mean?” Vince asked.

  “Well, it’s not like it’s a huge deal or anything,” Fiona began, “but they’ll want to speak with you. Face to face. They’ve got a lot on the line here, bringing the drugs and the money back and forth across the border. If anything goes down, they’re the ones holding the bag, so they like to be sure that they’re in business with somebody they can trust. I can arrange the meeting for a week or so after the funeral if you
’d like some time to prepare.”

  “Jesus,” Vince said under his breath, the word slipping out of him like air. What the hell had he gotten himself into? Or more accurately, what had his father forced him into? His heart stuttered in his chest like an exhausted runner slowly stumbling to a stop. He refused to admit it to himself, but honestly, he felt terrified, completely overwhelmed by the volume and intensity of the work that was stretched out before him on Fiona’s desk.

  “Hey,” Fiona said, reaching her hand forward across the desk. For a moment, Vince was worried that she was going to touch him, to try to calm him down physically with actual affection, but she held herself back, balling her hand into a fist instead. “I know you can do this. You just got to invest the time into it, and it’ll come together. I’ll pull you through. I promise.”

  Vince huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “You can’t promise that I won’t totally fail at this. That’s kind of my burden to bear,” he said.

  Fiona shrugged, clearly unbothered by his counterargument. “We’ll see about that. But anyway, I’ll make a note about the meeting with the C-block people. Let’s see, what next, what next…” She looked down at the stack of papers, flipping through them for a minute before she landed on the one she wanted. “Here. The Cannavale case. We’re watching it as it moves through the pretrial process.”