by J. L. Beck
When he faces me again, he looks a little more composed and less like he wants to plunge a knife into my gut just to see what’s inside me. “My mother was murdered.”
Shit. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” The platitude slips from my lips so easily I wince at the end. Lucas’s dark features remain the same, and he reminds me of a thunderstorm barreling right for you. You’re prepared for the rain and mayhem, but you never know the true destruction until the wind settles.
“Really, I am sorry. Even more so if you loved her.”
He cocks a questioning brow. “You don’t love your mother?”
I shrug. “I don’t even know my mother, not really. She never gave a shit about my sister or me. We were the half-assed fulfillment of a marriage contract.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. He doesn’t care about my family, my mother, or me. All he cares about is making me pay for something my father did to him.
When he doesn’t respond, I gently try to pull my hand back, but he doesn’t budge. I try to remain calm, but it’s hard with the mammoth of a man before me. “I really should get back to work. Sarah is bound to come hunting for me any minute now.”
His eyes remind me of Nicolo’s, if a little unsteady, not crazy so much as the window to a broken soul. I stare into them, despite my fear, and tug again. “Can you let me go now, please?”
From one second to another, his gaze hardens. He twists and lifts my arm toward him, dragging me closer, almost up onto my tiptoes. “Your father killed my mother. He did it in front of me when I was only a child.” His voice is a whisper of animosity. A growl of contempt focused on me.
A rock of emotion has formed in my throat, and I swallow around it and try not to let the tears that are building fall. “I don’t believe you. I know he isn’t a good man, but I can’t imagine him being so cruel…”
Can’t I?
Oh, my god, what if it’s true?
He leans into me, his breath fanning against my lips. The spicy mint scent is too close, too intimate, for all the anger he hurls at me. I cringe and try to turn away, but there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
“Are you sure about that, little girl? Do you even know anything about your dear old dad? No doubt he keeps the gory details out of your precious little head. Why bother the womenfolk with things they have no right knowing, right?”
Well, he’s not wrong. It doesn’t mean I want to congratulate him on knowing my father better than I do. Anger rises, mixing with the guilt and sudden sadness. “Fine, do you want me to apologize for your mother’s death again? I’m sorry.” I really am sorry. Even if I had nothing to do with it, I am sorry for his mom dying, but the anger twists my tone into sarcasm.
He tilts his head to watch my expression, rather like a dog waiting for a trick from his master. I try to jerk my hand free again, but he only tightens his grip. I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from wincing. My fingers are going numb, and a sharp pain shoots up my elbow with every one of his movements.
“What do you want from me?” My voice cracks, and I’m utterly defeated. I’ll be beaten to death by this one or raped by his brother come the end. My options keep getting better and better.
“I want you to admit your family is nothing but scum. I want you to know what kind of kingdom you were born into.” He spits the words at me, his face mere inches away from mine.
“You don’t think I know that already? My family sucks, and I’m the same as them, apparently,” I shout, grabbing onto whatever bravado I seem to have tucked away inside. “I get it. You want revenge. You want to dish out punishment for my family’s sins. If so, I’ll pay the price. I already have, but that’s apparently not enough for you.” With my free hand, I shove him back, and finally, he releases my arm.
I’m caught off balance at the shift in weight and tumble back toward the bed. Lucas reaches out to snag my arms, maybe to keep me from falling or something else entirely, I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t let him get a hold of me again. Without thinking, I lash out with my fingernails, dragging them across and deep into the flesh of his forearms. Everything happens so fast. With a hiss, he shoves my hands back, and somehow, we both tumble onto the bed. Me flat on my back, and him towering above me.
I shove at his firm chest to get him off me, feeling like things have taken a bad turn when I hear a booming voice from across the room that causes us both to freeze. “What the fuck is going on in here?”
Lucas recovers first, shoving off the bed and putting much-needed distance between us. “Nothing. I was just having a brief chat with our guest.”
I’m shaking now, my limbs rattling, no matter how strong I’m trying to be. I can feel Nicolo’s intense stare scanning me from head to toe. Once he’s had his fill, he turns his attention to Lucas, giving him a glare. “Looks like you did a bit more than talking.”
“Aww, don’t be such a poor sport, brother. We were just having a little heart to heart. I wasn’t stealing her precious virtue or anything.”
Nicolo doesn’t even blink. “Get the fuck out.” When his brother doesn’t make a move, he repeats his order. “Are you deaf? Get. Out.”
Lucas rolls his eyes but doesn’t say another word as he walks out of the bedroom and disappears into the hall. With him gone, it’s just Nicolo and me alone in the room. It’s my turn to scramble up, to get out from under the rage I see building in the set of his shoulders and the hard crinkle around his eyes.
“I… I was just changing the sheets. I’m done now, so I’ll go.” I force out the words, keeping my eyes trained on the floor.
I don’t want to provoke him, and honestly, after dealing with Lucas, I am done peopling today. Before I can take a step forward, he stops me, his hand taking the same wrist his brother had crushed so easily in his grasp. His touch is gentle, but even the softest touch hurts enough to cause black spots to appear in my vision. I bite my lip to stop myself from crying out, but the sound escapes, and Nicolo shoves me back, surprise coloring his features.
“I’m sorry, I have to get out of here.” Tears slip from my eyes and down my cheeks, and my nose is already stuffing up.
Rage fills Nicolo’s devilishly handsome features. “What the fuck is going on? What were you talking about with Lucas?”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t in here with him. I was changing the sheets, and I guess he saw me from the hallway and came in to talk to me.”
“Why are you crying?” he demands, like the reason isn’t obvious.
I throw my hands up, my injured one protesting the movement. “I don’t know. I’m tired, I want to go home, and I want some damn clothes of my own.”
He scans me and clears the look of disgust from his features. The man in control of every facet of his life. He stares down at me from his imperial mask. “Get yourself together. You’ll get proper clothing when you earn them, but you won’t do it by sniveling when you’re only doing basic chores.”
He’s impossible. How can he not understand why I hate all of this? My mouth flops open, and I shake my head at him. There is no point in getting angry, but I can’t help it. “You might be worse than your crazy brother if you don’t get why I’m not content to change your sheets and make you breakfast while I wait for you to sell me at some godforsaken auction.”
His eyes narrow at me, and he takes a menacing step forward. Of course, my courage only goes so far, so I skitter backward toward the door. If I made a run for it, he’d probably chase me down to assert his dominance again. I’ve seen it a hundred times before. Men who need to be in charge of every tiny thing, and when the barest hint of control slips, it’s as if the entire world has crumbled around them. My sister called those kinds of men narcissists. And I don’t doubt for a minute that Nicolo fits that bill. Thinking about how much she would have hated Nicolo makes me feel better, strangely. I miss my sister so much.
He faces the bedside table, and I know he spots the necklace out of place from where Lucas returned it. “Did you touch this?”
<
br /> If I lie to him, Lucas will probably rat me out, so I nod slowly. “Yes. But I only looked at it. Then your brother came in and took it from me. I promise I was only looking at it. I wasn’t trying to steal it or invade your privacy.”
I can’t tell if he believes me or not. His face is so carefully blank. Long seconds pass with him just staring at me, the gold chain clutched tight in his massive fist.
“Get out of here. From here on out, Sarah can change my bedding. You don’t need to do it. Find some toilets to scrub instead. And stay out of Lucas’s room too. She’ll show you which one is his.”
As if I wanted to hunt down the crazy brother and give him more opportunities to scream at me. “Okay,” I say. “Can I go now?”
He nods, his focus back on the piece of jewelry.
I gather the dirty sheets and the stack of clean ones and flee back to my bedroom. Once I’ve locked myself in the room, I rush into the bathroom and stare at my wrist under the brighter lights. Can a man break a woman’s bone just by squeezing her? It hurts from my fingertips all the way to my elbow. I don’t want to cry because once I do, I know I won’t be able to stop. The tears will become sobs. And I don’t want Nicolo, whose bedroom happens to be next to mine, to hear me.
It isn’t a matter of being strong. I just don’t want to give him another excuse to enter my room. I’d expected another display of dominance, another grab to my crotch or nude catwalk, but so far today, he’s avoided me. A mercy. If only his brother would follow that lead.
A faint bloom of purple has sprouted on my fair skin right below the hard nub of my wrist bone. Shit. It isn’t as if I have anything to wrap it with. They’ve only given me one damn shirt, after all. I also refuse to hunt Nicolo down and ask him for anything. Including medical attention.
I enter the room again and find the stack of sheets. They feel thick, and I’m not sure I can rip them without something sharp to assist me. I opt for trying to tie one around my neck and wrapping my wrist in it like a sling, but I miscalculate the knot, my balancing abilities, and my distance to the side table. I don’t see the destruction before it happens, and I go down hard, my wrist smashing into the wood.
Pain shoots up my arm, and a sharp cry escapes my lips before darkness mercifully ushers the pain away.
12
Nic
What the fuck was I thinking? First, by allowing Celia to wander the house at will. And second, by not throttling Lucas when I should have earlier. He’s growing more and more insubordinate by the day. I should’ve known he’d go after her again. And now she’s hurt. I have no one to blame but myself, and I don’t like it.
It’s not like I care about her pain. But if she is battered and bruised before the auction, it’ll mean less of a payment. Like her virginity, my clients will want her skin unmarred, a canvas for their own brutal pleasures.
It’s not her pathetic attempts to stifle her tears that give me reason to check on her. It’s the possibility of her hurting herself. I’ll have to lock her in a padded cell until I can pawn her off on some other asshole. Which will screw with my revenge plans. I need her.
Celia is nothing like her father, at least as far as I can tell. He’d never degrade himself by blubbering. She’s even tried to pry out some kind of connection between us, despite the fact I’ll be putting her tight little ass on a block in front of her daddy’s friends in a few short days.
As long as I can keep Lucas away from her until then. I don’t trust him not to do something rash the closer we come to the event. Maybe I’ll put Soo on him once we get a little closer to the day. He’s dying to knock a little sense into Lucas, even if that means hitting his head into a wall a time or two.
Another sob cuts through the wall, and I huff out a ragged exhale. There’s no way I’m going to get any sleep tonight if she continues with the crying. She didn’t even cry this much on her first night here.
The thought that maybe Lucas hurt her worse than I suspected hits me. I quietly slip out of the room and down to the kitchen for an ice pack. No one else is lingering in the halls. The kitchen staff have already retreated to their rooms for the evening. I find the jar of balm we keep in the refrigerator for cuts and bruises. As well as one of several thick gel packs we keep stocked in the freezer. The balm is our mother’s recipe and works quickly to numb minor pains, and I get a twinge in my chest thinking about using it to soothe Ricci’s daughter.
I wonder briefly what my mother would think of the man I’ve become? Would she be proud? Angry? None of that matters because she isn’t here. She isn’t alive. She was murdered the same day as my father and older brother.
The anger rushing through my veins becomes a slow boil, but when I enter her room and find her sitting on the edge of the bed, my anger dissipates altogether. There’s a faint trickle of dried blood running down from the top of her forehead, and she’s clutching her wrist to her chest, rocking it slowly against her.
I shut the door, closing us inside before turning around. “What the hell happened?”
Hastily, she takes her uninjured hand and wipes it across her face, most likely trying to hide her tears from me. As if I hadn’t heard her crying in here all along.
When her soft brown eyes finally reach mine, they’re rimmed red and glistening with tears. “It’s nothing. I got into a fight with the table. It won.”
Is she seriously joking right now? I hold up the jar of balm and the ice pack. “Let me see it.”
She shakes her head and backs up onto the bed to keep me from getting close. “No, I’ll be fine. I don’t have the energy in me to spar with you, and the last thing I want is for you to touch me. I think you and your brother have hurt me enough.”
I narrow my eyes and stalk forward, sending her to the farthest edge of the king-size bed. “To be clear, I own you. That means I can touch you whenever I damn well please. Right now, I want to touch you in a way that helps you. But if you want to be a brat and won’t come back over here, I’ll tie you down and force it on you, anyway. Then I’ll leave you that way until Sarah comes to get you in the morning.”
Her red-rimmed eyes stare up at me, and it looks like she can hardly believe what I’m saying.
“If you make me count you down like a toddler, you won’t like the repercussions.” My words must hit their mark because she gives another half-hearted sniffle and then crawls slowly toward me.
“Good girl. Sit here and let me look at your head.” I pat the mattress.
The gash is just past her hairline. “What did you do? You weren’t suffering a head wound when you left my bedroom earlier.”
She exhales, her chest deflating. “I told you. I got into a fight with the table. It was dumb. I hit my arm and blacked out. When I woke up, my forehead was bleeding. I must have cracked it on the edge before I hit the ground.”
Her dark hair sits around her shoulders in waves. It’s slightly tangled from her brushing it out of the way and the lack of grooming items. I didn’t think she’d be able to make a weapon out of a hairbrush, but I also would not put it past her to try.
I gently tuck the mass of brown hair down her back and ignore the stiffening of my cock. Her sweet scent wafts at the movement, and for a moment, it’s all I can smell. Honeysuckle, lavender. Saliva builds in my mouth at the thought of taking her, devouring her from the inside out. She already thinks I’m a monster. Putting her flat on her back while injured wouldn’t help things.
Her big doe eyes peer into mine. She doesn’t shy away from my gaze, nor is she glaring like she is imagining all the ways she could kill me. At this moment, she is soft, broken, and in need of saving. Too bad I’m not the saving type.
I squeeze the cut together to make sure it’s clotting. She winces, but remains still in my hands.
“I think this will be fine. Just be careful from now on. Don’t get any ideas about hurting yourself. I’m not taking you to the hospital.”
She ducks her chin, a flash of pink racing up her neck. “I wasn’t trying to hurt myself
, and I’m not usually so clumsy.” A moment of silence stretches on between us. Her pink lips part, and her eyes skit away from mine before meeting them again. It’s obvious she has something she wants to say, so I give her a moment to gather her thoughts. Truthfully, I don’t really care about what she thinks or has to say. She is a means to an end, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit conversing with her is the best type of foreplay.
“I don’t understand your vendetta. I’m not a bad person. I don’t deserve what you’re trying to do to me.”
I rearrange her hair again, even though it doesn’t need it. I want a reason to touch her, and that annoys me.
“And what am I doing to you?” I prompt, taking the time to inspect the breadth of her scalp to ensure she didn’t crack it anywhere else.
She huffs like I’m some sort of petulant child she needs to dumb down her speech for. “You’re taking whatever revenge you have saved up for my father, and my family, out on me. Your brother has already said as much, plus his sheer animosity whenever we’re in each other’s vicinity.”
I gently curl my fingers and scratch my nails across her scalp now.
She lets out a breathy sigh.
“My brother has no love for your family, that’s true.”
“And you?” she asks, almost in a sigh.
Should I tell her I’ve had fantasies where I obliterate her entire family in gruesome detail? Probably not while she’s so soft and pliant in my arms.
I trail my fingers to the back of her neck and dig into the bones right where her neck meets her head. Her breathy sighs shudder out of her now, and my cock aches with each sound she makes. Would she sigh and moan in my arms as I sink into her deeply, owning every inch of her flesh, or would she curse me, her nails digging into my skin, drawing blood? Both sound fucking great to me.
“Your brother—” she begins, trailing off in another moan, dropping her eyes closed with each tightening and release of my hands on her.