by Lana Sky
He especially enjoyed using women to cause a man pain. Their daughters. Their wives. If they were lucky, he’d merely slit their throat while the unlucky “motherfucker” was forced to watch. If he was in a mood, he might sell them off to the highest bidder and send the man photographic evidence as a little reminder never to fuck with Vincent Stacatto.
I was used to the splendor that came with plotting destruction—but Lucifer and his fallen brethren apparently chose to discuss such matters in a dimly lit bar, their faces grim, their voices clipped. Forsaking the bar counter, they stand huddled around an empty pool table, treating it like a makeshift battlefield.
The blonde woman had left the moment Lucifer returned with me in tow. “Go and make me some fucking lunch, baby,” Mack had told her, slapping her ass on her way out. But I saw her eyes as she scurried for the door; she wanted no part in this.
“I say we hit the fucker where it hurts,” Arno proposes, slamming his palm down against the green felt. “All out, full frontal assault.” His eyes gleam at the thought of taking Vinny on, guns blazing.
I want to laugh, but Lucifer beats me to the punch. “No.” His guttural tone takes all the “fun” out of our lethal game. The devil isn’t playing, he’s strategizing. “Taking him out in the open would be suicide—”
“So says the Kitty,” Mack counters with a glittering smile. “Prison’s made you even more skittish than before.”
If the insult breaks through his skin, Lucifer’s expression doesn’t reveal it. He merely glares down at the surface of the pool table, his mouth thoughtful. Pensive. He’s a scholar of war, planning his every move with the thoughtful care of a general. Arno and Mack scoff and sneer at his silence, but even I know that they wait until he finally glances up, his eyes alight with manic fire.
“We take him apart piece by piece,” he says. He jerks his head in my direction and cuts me into slivers beneath the intensity of his gaze. “She’s going to tell us how.”
“Bullshit,” Arno scoffs.
Mack is less dismissive. “Unless it’s while she’s spreading her legs for my clients, I don’t follow.”
Lucifer merely smiles, and...in all the times I’ve watched Vinny relish in the thought of bloodshed, I’ve never seen him look so...desperate for it. “Tell them what you told me,” he commands.
I stiffen. I told him lies—snatches of conversation and rumors. I told him what little I’d been able to remember in the few moments when fear hadn’t clouded my thoughts. I told him whatever Vinny allowed me to hear.
But Lucifer’s gaze is steel, reinforced with something vague that makes my chest tighten. Is that trust? I study it and try to match the word to the definition of the term I’d learned in school. Faith was a synonym for it; that same emotion he seemed to want me to feel in the arena. My faith that he would win his battle somehow translates into his trust that only I can “take down” Vinny.
“He...he has three things,” I start to say. My throat feels dry. Swallowing hard, I try to combat it, and I wind up scanning the length of the pool table until I find the shelf built into the side of it containing the small colored balls used to play on it. My fingers slip into the crevice, and I pull out three, juggling them in my hands. I pick a yellow one, marked with the number 1 and allow it to drop onto the table first. “His ‘palace,’ the hotel.” I drop another ball, a blue one this time. “His money.” The red ball I save for last, twisting my fingers around it. When it finally falls, it rolls into the other two, sending them darting toward opposite ends of the table. “His name.”
As Vinny would say, Bada Bing; those were the three prized possessions of any self-appointed king. “You use his name to destroy the other two,” I say. “That’s what matters most to him.”
“How do we do that?” Lucifer demands, but he isn’t curious, merely prompting—it’s like the man is already aware of the thoughts circling my brain. I can feel him inside my skull, creeping through the darkness, at home in the decay of my sanity.
“My video,” I say. “Put it everywhere. The internet. Everywhere. C-Caption it...Lynn Stacatto, Vinny’s soon to be fiancée.” The move would make him angry, but it wouldn’t be enough. Anger was his favorite weapon of all the ones in his arsenal, and that alone would be enough to fuel his hunt for me...but impatience would make him reckless. “While he’s...distracted we launch a true attack on this—” I follow the edge of the table and pick up the blue ball again, eyeing it carefully as though it really did contain all of Vinny’s millions inside it.
“His money?” Arno asks from somewhere behind me.
“His business,” I correct, watching the ball rock back and forth on the flat of my palm. “He deals in drugs but...I want to hit the women. He traffics them from overseas. We strike him there, and the rest will crumble.”
“Hmph,” Mack grunts thoughtfully. “Interesting proposal, princess. How exactly does one bring down the multimillion-dollar prostitution ring of a crime boss? Do tell.”
I shake my head. It’s simple, really. Lucifer must have already seen the memories lurking inside my head, decoding them with all the cunning of a wolf while I’d been too afraid to. Think, he’d told me. You’ve fantasized about this. “My last maid. Maria...she was too...too fresh. She talked too much. The first day she mentioned something about a b-bridge and hearing the ships come in at night.”
“The harbor?” Lucifer guesses. “Somewhere near the marina, or maybe the port if she heard them at night.”
“The shipping docks,” Mack admits, reluctantly if his narrowed gaze is anything to go by. “I’ve been scoping out the competition for a while now, but you haven’t seen security until you’ve seen the setup he guards his merchandise with, princess. There’s no way we could even get close to them without a tank. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
“We don’t have to get close,” Dante says. “Not if we use a proxy...”
“The police.” I know I’m right when I see him nod, though grudgingly as if in shock. It’s like my thoughts connect with the pieces he lays out, assembling them as easily as if they’d originated inside my own head. “We use the police to—”
“No.” Mack stands fully upright, flexing his massive fingers into even more intimidating fists. “No fucking police. That’s your true game, isn’t it?” He lashes out from across the table, seizing me by my chin so harshly my jaws snap together. Just like that, all of the air leaves the room. Gasoline replaces it. One tiny spark is all that’s needed to blow everything from the pool table to the people gathered around it sky high.
Lucifer says nothing, though his eyes go to Mack with the intensity of a wolf gnashing its fangs. He pauses when my bloody hand meets the sliver of the table in front of him, though. Slowly, his gaze settles over the bloodied fingers, and I face Mack alone, staring deep into his eyes. His gaze isn’t a mystery to me like Lucifer’s. I can read each violent emotion clearly—greed and jealousy are a universal language that Vinny educated me in so well.
“Why not?” I ask.
He laughs, and his grip tightens hard enough to grind new bruises onto my already battered jaw. “Little girl, you don’t even know the half of it. Not even fucking half. Your beloved fiancé owns the goddamn police. We go to them, and I might as well just give that fucker the keys to my own little kingdom.”
I attempt to shake my head, but I can only jerk my chin, trapped by the force of his grip. “He owns half the police,” I admit. “But...the rest...”
“They answer to the public,” Lucifer says softly. He frowns and rakes one of his bloodied, bruised hands through his hair—something I notice he does when he’s thinking. “Nobody gives a damn about a drug scandal. But women...girls. A story like that would trigger a larger investigation that even Stacatto couldn’t shut down even with every judge in the city in his pocket. It would start a fire that the city couldn’t contain...”
“Hmph, and how the fuck do you propose we do that?” Mack demands as his fingers relinquish their hold on me.
&nbs
p; “We bait the trap,” Dante says as if it’s obvious. “We find a way to lure him out of his hiding spot, and then we hit him where it hurts.”
“Those are pretty words and all, Dante,” Mack counters. “But I’m gonna need something a little more concrete.”
“We tip off the police about the girls. When they go to warn Stacatto—”
“He won’t give a shit, because the police are in his fucking pocket like I’ve said,” Mack interjects.
Lucifer merely smiles. “Not all of them. You get one nosy pig on his trail, and that’ll force him to at least try to cover his tracks. When he does, we’ll be waiting...to steal a little bit of his merchandise.”
“Hmm.” Mack takes his time drinking in the plan. There’s a rough cruelty even in the way he thinks to himself, rubbing absently at his chin. “I get the girls when we’re done—”
“No.” My fingers release the blue ball, and it bounces twice across the table’s surface. “I get them.”
Mack laughs. Even Arno has to snort. Such a silly idea, the princess wanting to claim a bunch of whores. Lucifer doesn’t snicker, however. Maybe he knows my plan already. Maybe he doesn’t really care.
“I get the girls,” I repeat, staring Mack dead in the eye.
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because I’m going to use them to hit Vinny right where it hurts.”
“Oh really?” The corner of his mouth quirks, revealing a sharpened canine. “And just how do you plan to do that?”
I shrug. Then...I smile, going against the neat expressions that Vinny preferred me to display. He hated when I smiled for anyone but him. He hated when I laughed out of his earshot. It seems only fitting that, with him being the topic at hand, I do both. “I’m going to let them go—”
“Bullshit.” This time Mack really does come for me, swinging his massive form around the pool table to grab me by the throat. He presses hard, just enough to make it a struggle to breathe, and I feel the curve of every finger, down to the ridge of each nail gouging my skin. “I’ve had just about enough of this little bitch,” he snarls, his breath hot on my face, his mouth still curved into a mocking smile. “Say one more stupid, fucking word, and I’ll find a good use for that smart little mouth of yours.”
“Let her go.” The command comes from Arno, but his eyes are focused somewhere behind me, where another man lurks, his shadow swallowing mine. “M-Mack, let her fucking go!”
“Should I, Dante?” Mack wonders, directing the question beyond my shoulder. He drags me forward until I have to strain on tiptoe just to keep him from crushing my throat. “Should I let the little whore go? Or maybe I should give her a little taste of my cock, first?”
He shifts one of his hands and tries to jab the pad of his thumb between my lips. I choke when he goes too far, and my teeth clamp down. Hissing in pain, he draws his hand back and then pain. I see silver. I taste blood. Agony plays a deafening melody through my skull, and when I finally regain my senses, I’m on the ground, both hands braced against the floor in front of me. It trembles. There has to be an earthquake taking place...
Or a body being thrown against the wall.
“Dante, stop!”
There’s a beast attacking Mack. Arno does his best to rein the monster in, but nothing can stop a devil unleashed. If I’d been stupid enough to believe that Lucifer’s skill in battle extended only to the show within the cage I would have been sorely mistaken. That fight had been child’s play. This is the true devil off his leash.
He snarls, his muscles rippling with every punch he lands before Mack can even form a proper defense. Blood flies with each blow, after blow, after blow... Arno has to throw himself forward just to get enough leverage to wrap both arms around Lucifer’s waist. He tugs, but the man doesn’t move. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t comprehend anything but the violence.
“Eh...Enough,” Mack snarls, his voice garbled by the hammering thud of repeated punches. “Enough! Enough!”
When Arno finally manages to haul Lucifer backward, Mack staggers away from them, spitting out blood. His bottom lip is split, but he’s laughing, clinging to the wall with one hand. “And there he is ladies and gentlemen, the real fucking Kitten.” He swipes at his mouth while chuckling maniacally. When his gaze meets Lucifer’s, there isn’t any rage in his eyes. Just glee. Insanity. Hatred. “This is the bastard who I wanted to face in the cage. We’ll have our rematch soon, eh Dante? And next time...we’ll play for keeps.” He winks, but Lucifer stares right past him. Through him. For a terrible second, he’s not human anymore, and a monster stands in his place, searching for the nearest prey to bite, gnaw at, and kill. When I start to move, he spots me and takes a step forward, his hand flying out.
I should flinch back like I’ve been trained to do. I should run—but when I finally react...it’s only to catch his hand before it can even touch me, pressing my palm to his. Only then does Dante return, glaring out through hooded eyes.
He grips me in turn and hauls me to my feet, but I can’t keep up when he starts for the door, pulling me along after him while Mack still cackles. Outside, a steady rain continues to fall, and with every step he takes, I’m forced to stagger forward three. He doesn’t care when I trip as he hauls me inside the detached garage and heads for the stairs, dragging me up every single one. After wrenching open the door to the apartment, he shoves me through it, barring the only escape.
I shiver even before he wrestles the door shut—slamming it fiercely—and shoves me back against the counter. I gasp out when the edge juts against my spine, but Dante continues to stalk forward. His face is expressionless, his gaze dark. I wish to every angel in heaven that I could feel fear. God, I need to be afraid. I try to force the terror, digging my nails into my palms so hard I wince. Even that pain isn’t enough.
I hold my breath, feeling my pulse race as his body towers over mine, his eyes hovering over my throat. When he opens his mouth, I think that he really means to tear into it, but he inhales...and I don’t resist when he tugs on my hips, positioning his bloodied, mangled hands on either side to pivot me around so that my back faces him.
He’s too close. His chest presses against my shoulders, forcing me down onto the counter. I think I could be truly afraid now if it wasn’t for the way my own wide-eyed reflection watches me from the polished surface of the sink. What a greedy little bitch. She’s hungry. Her tongue trails her parting lips while she starts to pant, her back arched toward the man standing behind her.
He catches my chin on the palm of his hand, his thumb prodding my split lip. He smears each drop of blood and doesn’t seem satisfied until I lick all traces of it away. The heat in his eyes grazes my skin, erasing whatever evidence Mack may have left behind. Vincent Stacatto doesn’t exist at this moment, either. To prove it, the devil strips me naked himself, wrenching the white shirt over my head, growling when he realizes that I’m wearing nothing underneath. The jeans, too. I’m already bare for him.
And God, I should be terrified by the possession rolling off him in waves—but I’m spineless for another reason. My skin sears beneath the hand he rakes down my back. He scratches me, and the sharp lines of pain make me clench my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut.
Scream, I tell myself. Fight. Run. Resist. Only Vinny had eyes like that. Ravenous. Vicious. Hungry. Starving eyes. His lust should be poison. I shouldn’t crave...I shouldn’t...
I nearly trip over my own two feet when he yanks me from the counter by my shoulder and manually steers me down the hallway, I see as my eyes open again. He forces me into that narrow, darkened room. He makes me crawl onto the center of the bed, and he positions me on my hands and knees. The mattress protests when he mounts it after me, his body a heavy, solid weight against mine.
Searching fingers trace the back of my skull and find the hair tie I got from the duffle bag the blonde had sent. He tugs it down, freeing my hair to spill over my shoulders. The sound he makes...it’s part growl, part groan. His lips graze the nape of
my neck, and I half expect him to bite there, holding me in place like a true wolf while he thrusts deep.
His fingers tangle in my hair instead, wrenching my head back. My eyes are on the ceiling when he slides a hand down my backside and nudges my legs further apart. This is it, some part of me murmurs. Vinny may have claimed my soul, but Lucifer...he breaks it, grinding himself into me so hard I see double. From far, far away I hear a woman scream, sharp and piercing—he doesn’t enter me in the usual place, and without the preparation from before it hurts. It burns. I’m on fire, and I don’t know what creature is reborn in the ashes when the flames finally die down, and he starts to move.
He’s slower than before, grinding into my inner walls and testing the give of my body. It tenses, every inch of me unsure whether to shut him out or let him in deeper. My body wants him out. My head...it lets him in, overriding the instinctive clenching of my muscles until his thrusts become easier while my vision clears again.
When I blink, I see his shadow thrown over the wall in front of me, tense and endlessly black. He stiffens up, and I make out the shape of his hand, as it falls against my lower back for leverage—did he even realize where he chose to thrust? Before he can change his mind, I flex my hips, urging him deeper, conveying what I can’t with words. I want this. I need this...
Grunting, he starts to move again, and I don’t force his pace this time. I dig my nails into the comforter, arch my back and I...I just let him fuck me.
I don’t think. I don’t feel. I breathe him in. I taste his scent on my tongue. I let his thudding heartbeat set the pace of mine. I let him own me and take whatever the hell he wants. I don’t resist.
And this time he doesn’t hold back.
The mattress sways with every harsh, violent motion of our bodies. Somewhere in the chaos, he starts to increase his pace, finding a pleasure that makes him grit out curses that set my cheeks on fire. Fuck. So fucking tight. Fuck. Fuck.