by Anthology
“We’re here, ma’am. Would you like help inside?” the driver asked as we pulled up to the shore house—my “safe haven” for the next week.
“No, that’s quite all right. I only have the one bag.” I stepped out from the car, watched the man close the door and climb back in behind the steering wheel. I knew he’d wait until I was safely inside, so I opened the door and watched through the window until he was gone.
As soon as his taillights were no longer visible, I walked back out the door and locked it behind me. Pulling my phone from my purse, I called the cab company and waited for their arrival, blood pumping in my ears the entire time.
But nothing compared to the feeling of my heart ricocheting off my ribcage as the cab pulled into River Walk—a thriving city within a city on the banks of the San Antonia River. My jaw dropped in awe at the knowledge of the Giannottis owning an entire condo, right on the fucking river. We drove into the underground garage of the condominium and my breath caught in my chest. Scarface had said “fuck house.” This was a fuck palace. And the knowledge that I’d be his fuck Cinderella had my body zinging with an excitement tainted with fear.
You see…Cinderella might have been the maid, but she outsmarted everyone in the entire story. You think that bitch accidentally left her glass slipper behind? No. It had been a methodical move. A move that ended with the prince on his knees, between her pulled up dress, to “see if the shoe fit.” Next thing you know…Cinderella is queen and ruling the land.
I hopped out of the cab and entered the elevator, a sadistic smile playing on my painted lips.
Yes…I was Cinder-fucking-ella.
CHAPTER FIVE
The condo building was eleven floors high, with exactly as many units. Each floor was a single residence, some 3,700 square-feet in size. Scarface must have been quite frugal all these years, squirreling away his illegal earnings, and pouring the money into his three hundred-sixty degree view of River Walk. The elevator itself didn’t move, even after I’d pressed the seventh-floor button. Instead, it simply blinked. Then that eerily familiar voice came over the intercom.
“Ah, I see it’s you,” Scarface chimed, his voice oozing with arrogance. “You’re late, bitch.”
Evidently, the elevator had a camera. He must have pressed something on his end, as the elevator finally began to move. When the doors opened, we were in the front entranceway of his condo. It was an open concept, and to my surprise, quite tastefully decorated. Scarface approached me from the left, but I’d been too busy glancing around to give him notice.
I had a compliment on the tip of my tongue over the décor when my knees buckled. I felt a pain unlike anything I’d ever felt before radiate through my entire body, paralyzing every fried nerve. My eyes rolled back in my head and I almost swallowed my tongue. Was I shot? I felt like I’d been electrocuted. Time stood still. I couldn’t move while his evil face hovered over me. He bent down to do something with my arms, but I couldn’t feel them. Only when my limbs stopped shaking, did I realize they had been moving. My wits started to return, and then I realized what he’d done to me.
Oh fuck! The asshole had tazered me.
He handcuffed my arms behind my lower back while kneeling on my ass.
I don’t know how, but I had recovered enough to speak. “Wh-why did you do that?” I stammered, still confused and in shock. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Oh, just for fucking fun,” he answered. “I love this thing. Watch.”
Another loud zap echoed around the room and another painful shock ran through my body from head to toe. He tazered me again. This time, I must have temporarily passed out. By the time I awoke, he had cut away my top and bra, leaving me bare-chested, but my jeans were still on. I lay frozen on the cold, hard, ceramic tiles, face down, my tits pressed onto the floor. He took hold of my long dark hair, winding it tightly in his grasp, and pulled me. Literally. Along the floor.
I arched my back to keep from tugging against the force, and lift my breasts slightly so most of my weight rested on my stomach. As he dragged me along, I felt my nipples flick against the grout between each tile. Luckily, I slid across the floor with ease.
Until we got to the carpeted living room.
“Here, let me show you around,” he teased.
He didn’t stop dragging me. My stomach and breasts, especially my nipples, now suffered from rug burn, adding to the pain in my scalp. With my wrists cuffed behind my back, I had no way to defend myself, and kicking my legs only made matters worse.
Finally, we stopped. Not because he wanted to show me some mercy, but simply because he became breathless from to the exertion. He flipped me over onto my back. Chancing a glance at my own breasts, I noticed they looked sunburned due to the friction. He kneeled down and took hold of my poor, unprotected nipples.
As he spoke, he emphasized certain words. “I’m not sure why I have such a desire to hurt you,” he said, rather matter-of-factly. “Is it because you’re so damn beautiful?” Pinch. “Is it because you’re Gene fucking Albanese’s daughter?” Squeeze. “Or, is it because you were stupid enough to come here, by choice?” Twist.
My nipples were under torturous assault. The pulling and twisting were relentless, and not at all enjoyable. When he finally stopped, I breathed a sigh of relief. And then he backhanded me. Hard.
Sex didn’t happen until several hours later. By then, I’d turned into a blubbering mess. He used various random instruments on my body. A spatula, a ruler, and an umbrella—which he delighted in poking into my ribs. Then he positioned me over an ottoman while he fucked my ass, forcefully. His seed leaked out, running down my leg until it pooled on the rug near my knee.
Temporarily satiated, he took a break to watch television. “We have all week,” he said between sips of his beer. I hadn’t been offered anything, even though I was beyond thirsty.
“Sir,” I said at one point, interrupting him, “may I have some water and perhaps a moment of privacy?” Surely, he didn’t want me dehydrated, and I really had to relieve myself.
He pulled me onto my feet. It was the first time I stood since the tazer had hit me. I became dizzy and my knees wobbled. He tugged me into his bedroom, toward the en-suite, and that’s when he stopped to kiss me. Right on the mouth. A lover’s kiss. I almost gagged at the taste of stale cigars and pulled away with a disgusted groan.
The punch hit me hard in the stomach, completely knocking the wind out of me. I crumbled, hitting the floor in a heap. Then he dragged me to a dark closet and shoved me in, all while I hyperventilated. Once the door closed and I was left to my own devices, I cried to myself silently, not making a single sound. But I also made a vow. You will die for this, you cock-sucking bastard.
Nobody does this to Jordana Albanese.
My father won’t get revenge on him—I will!
You might be winning the battle right now, but you will lose the war.
What had to have been hours later, with my head against the wall in the corner of the dark closet, I fell asleep. But my body didn’t rest long before my need to pee pulled me from a dreamless sleep. My wrists were still cuffed behind my back, and they ached. My neck sore. My nipples badly chafed. My ribs tender. My inner thighs still stinging from that damn spatula, and my forbidden hole still tender from his lube-less cock. A week? How in the fuck am I going to survive a week with this sick freak?
Just then, I heard movement in his room, and it sounded like he had gotten out of his own bed. What time is it? What is he doing? I heard the familiar roar of a pressurized stream hitting water and realized it was Scarface urinating. When he finished, I waited for the sound of the sink turning on. I couldn’t hear it, so I pressed my ear closer to the closet door, and then practically jumped out of my skin when it flung open.
“Here you go, you stupid fucking cow,” he said and threw a newspaper at me. “If anything gets on the carpet, you will regret it in more ways than one.”
The door closed hard in my face. I knew what I had to do.
I kneeled upright and maneuvered the newspaper beneath my body, pulling it apart, page by page to make it more absorbent, the task made more difficult with my wrists bound as they were. Then, with the sound of snoring in the distance, I did my business. I’d never felt so humiliated in my entire life.
He whipped me the following day. The only food I’d been given was his leftovers. He fucked my pussy and took great delight when, despite my attempt not to, I came like a whore. Then he washed his rancid dick in my mouth.
Worst of all were the games he played. That night, he watched the Knicks game while I was hogtied on the floor at his feet. He held an old car antenna in his hands and every time the Spurs scored, he’d hit me with it. That thing stung like hell. By the end of the game, I hated Leonard, who scored thirty-two points singlehandedly. My body riddled with red stripes everywhere.
But I plotted. Oh, how I plotted. He took this sadistic barter much further than I’d imagined. Which could only mean one thing: at the end of the week, he’d dispose of me. No fucking way would this guy let Matty off the hook. He’d kill me. I was sure of it. So, despite the sick, twisted things he did to me, I maintained my composure and studied my surroundings, plotting my survival. Because I would survive. There was no way in hell I’d let this sadist take me out.
On Wednesday, he let me bathe. Then he used a wet towel and flicking his arm, snapped it against my body a dozen or so times. He laughed each time I recoiled in agony. Just another glorious afternoon with Scarface the sadist. Thursday was by far the worst day yet. He unwound a wire clothes hanger and sliced it across the bottom of my feet. The pain had been so unbearable that I saw starbursts behind my eyelids and thought I’d pass out. Despite my strength and perseverance, I begged for mercy, but it fell on deaf ears. Just you wait, you fucking prick!
Friday, while I knelt between his legs with his stubby cock in my mouth, the intercom buzzed.
Scarface ignored it and continued to fuck my mouth while stepping on my fingers with his steel-toed boots. It buzzed again—and again, he ignored it. That’s when his phone began to ring in his pocket. The fucker answered it without stopping his hateful fucking of my mouth, pulling me closer and shoving his cock to the back of my throat. I couldn’t hear anything he’d said over the rush of blood in my ears as I tried not to choke.
He threw the phone down and lifted my head by my hair. “Gotta go, sugar, but I’ll be back. Duty calls.” And then he dragged me back to the spot in the corner where he enjoyed having me on display. It was the place he had kept me when he wasn’t using me. Chains hung from the ceiling with cuffs at the end—two for my wrists and two for me feet. The ones for my arms hung down longer, letting me kneel on the floor, but still short enough to keep my torso upright. Once he had me locked in, he left, leaving me spread out, naked and bloodied, beaten and battered, with my arms above my head and my chafed knees spread wide beneath me on the floor. I couldn’t even close them. My head hung, not out of defeat, but out of exhaustion. He would never defeat me.
Never.
CHAPTER SIX
I must’ve passed out, because as my eyes slowly opened as best as the swelling would let them, I saw Stefan, breathing heavily, sweating, hunched over, and holding his hair in his fists. He mumbled, “What the fuck? What the fuck? Oh, shit… what the fuck?”
He lifted his head and his eyes met mine from across the small space. In a quick second, he moved to his knees in front of me. His eyes were full of anguish, fear, pain, and a rage I had never seen before.
I opened my mouth, struggling to force the words out. “I’m sorry, Sir. I’m so sorry.” Tears immediately ran from my eyes in streams down my face before falling from my chin.
I didn’t think anything coherent had come out, but he shook his head, locking his despondent eyes with mine. “Don’t you dare fucking apologize to me.”
The hot tears burned the lacerations on my face, but I couldn’t stop them. Stefan was angry with me, and that I couldn’t bear. I’d take the lashings and beatings over his anger. My mouth opened once more, but Stefan placed a tentative finger over my split lip, silencing my apologies on my tongue.
“Tesoro, what the hell happened?” he asked with strained words, his voice full of pain. His nickname for me cut deep.
“Barter,” I whispered as more tears clouded my vision.
“Barter?” His voiced raised to a near roar. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Matty’s debt.”
“For your life? How did this happen? How did he get to you? I thought you were hiding out?”
I shook my head and desperately tried to hold in the sobs that wracked my beaten body. His arms went around my waist and he pulled me into him. That’s when I realized I had no longer been chained. I didn’t know when he released me, but at some point, Stefan had freed my arms and legs from the cuffs. Every part of my body tingled, numb.
“I came here,” I finally managed to get out.
He pulled away and gawked at me with furious eyes. “By choice? You willingly came here? To be his whore?” Stefan stood up and began to pace, pulling his hair taut with his fists. “I told you I’d protect you. I told you I would take care of everything. Why wouldn’t you let me? Why wouldn’t you let me keep you safe? Why didn’t you trust me enough to do that?”
My heart broke into a million pieces. Completely, utterly shattered. He thought I hadn’t trusted him. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I did trust him, beyond the trust I had ever felt for anyone else other than my own father. But this had nothing to do with trust. This was survival. This was for my brother. Nothing about it had anything to do with Stefan or trust.
“How did you find me?” I asked in a weak voice.
“He went MIA. My father is in Italy, taking care of business, and in his absence, the underboss is supposed to be in charge. When no one has been able to get ahold of him, I came to make sure nothing had happened. But now…now…I’ll make sure something does happen to him.”
“What do you mean?” My deprived brain couldn’t make sense of what he’d said.
Stefan turned to me, shoulders squared, feet apart beneath him. “I’m the new underboss from now on. He won’t live to tell of his mistakes. He won’t have the chance to beg for his life. I’ll make sure of it.
My strength decided to return, as best as it could. I managed to pull myself to my knees, causing Stefan to rush to me. He held my hand until I could stand on my own two feet. I couldn’t imagine what he saw in front of him. I knew my body had been used, beaten, broken, and bloodied—the fucker used an air-pellet gun on my back the day before. But I wasn’t about to hide from Stefan. These were my battle wounds. A battle I had not lost. A battle I would not back down from.
“No,” I said defiantly.
“No? You don’t have a choice in this, Jordana. This is my family.”
“And this is my fight!” I roared back, finding more of my voice and strength.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Tesoro.” His words were soft and filled with agony.
“No. That’s where you’re wrong, Stefan.” I made sure to spew his name from my lips. Not out of hatred or even anger, but out of my own strong-will. This was me, standing on my own two feet, doing what was needed of me to save my family. Regardless of whose family it was against. “Your family knows we can’t come up with half a million plus the vig in a week. It was nothing more than a setup. Leaving my brother at the bottom of a river. If this is what I had to endure—if death is the price I’d have to pay—then it was all worth it to save Matty.”
“I told you I would protect you, regardless of what happened with the debt.”
“And what kind of person do you think I’ll be if I have to live without Matteo? Without my brother? Knowing your family is the cause of the missing piece in my life?”
“And what kind of life do you think you’ll lead after letting this sadist touch you? What kind of life do you think we’ll have after he’s tainted you with his sick need? I know
you can handle me…but he goes beyond being a Dom. His kind of pain isn’t for your pleasure—it’s only for his sick, twisted, sadistic gratification. What do you think that would do to us? Huh?”
This is only about sex to him. All he’s concerned about is the future of our scenes. “Go to hell!”
He turned his body to fully face me. His face was red, eyes narrowed, and teeth bared. “If by hell, you mean a place where I’m betrayed by the ones that mean more to me than life itself...a place where I can’t protect the one person I can’t live without. If by hell, you mean walking into this room and finding the one I’m meant to protect, bloody and chained from the ceiling, helpless and lifeless…then, I’m already there. Satan himself couldn’t cause me more pain than what I’m feeling right now.”
I’ve fought my entire life to not be an emotional female. To think with my brain, rationale, and strength…but in this moment, my heart led the way. With his words, he managed to spur life inside of me, healing me, despite the torments my body had been through over the last few days. My brain might’ve registered the pain, but my heart conveyed the love from my Master, the broken man in front of me.
And that’s when it all made sense. Stefan is powerful, dominant, strong beyond normal strength, yet I am his weakness. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I didn’t need to be strong where Stefan was concerned. I could be weak with love, without making me pathetic. I could conquer the world, take on any enemy, bleed, and feel pain…but that didn’t mean I had to sacrifice the weak-in-the-knees emotions that Stefan delivered with one look, one touch, one word. We could be each other’s weakness, while still keeping each other strong.
“I want to do it,” I whispered, though it was loud enough for Stefan to hear.
His eyebrows narrowed and his fists clenched at his sides. “Do what?”
On unsteady feet, I moved closer to him. Each step gave me more and more strength. More and more power. And more and more purpose. I stopped once we were mere inches apart, and touched his worried face, cradling his cheeks in my hands. “You want him gone. You want this bastard to pay the penance. Well, so do I. Let’s do this together. Let’s take him down, show him what it feels like to be on the other end of a burning match. Together. But I want to be the one to still his heart. He did this to me…my body. Let me have that peace.”