Keep Me: A Mafia Romance (The Rossi Crime Family Book 3)

by J. L. Beck

  His dark eyes remain on my face, I can feel the heat of his gaze on my cheeks as he drags two of his fingers down between my breasts and over my belly, leaving a trail of tingling skin behind. I am shocked and confused by my reaction to his touch.

  It is warm and less terrifying than the other man’s. My thoughts swirl. I must be going insane, losing my mind completely, because I am not revolted by him like I was by the other man. I am still scared beyond disbelief, and my body is shaking, but something deep inside of me knows that this man is the lesser of two evils. He’s a monster but nothing compared to the monster I had just witnessed. When his fingers have just about reached my mound, a voice coming from the hall stops his actions.

  “Xander, we didn’t come here for this.” The other voice is laced in annoyance.

  I’ve been so consumed by the presence of this man that I forgot that two guys came in.

  “We didn’t, but since our father is already gone, don’t you think we can at least have some fun? What do you say, little brother? Should we rekindle an old memory?”

  Father? Now the resemblance makes sense. I don’t know why I didn't see it before. It is so clear now. The dark hair and eyes. The sharp jaw and striking high cheekbones. I tried my best not to look at the other man’s face, but the resemblance is too noticeable not to see now.

  “We don’t have time for this,” the other man snaps. “Let’s burn this place to the ground. At least he won't have anything to come back to, if he even comes back at all.”

  “No. Please, don’t leave me here. I… I didn’t do anything…” My voice erupts like a volcano, the words pouring from my lips. The man touching me eyes me curiously, as if I’m a present he can’t wait to open.

  “She’s right, brother, we can’t just leave her here.” A smirk filled with pleasure pulls at the man's lips. I blink, fear tumbling out of control inside of me as I wait for him to say something else. “Maybe we can bring her with us. Torture the truth out of her. I know the perfect method.” At that very moment, he moves his hand, his fingers pressing harshly against my mound. I gasp and cry out in pain, fighting against the restraints. I feel warm blood sliding down my arms, the warmth of it over my skin strangely soothing.

  “Xander…” The other man’s footsteps fill the room. His tone is impatient, and I wonder if I could reason with him. If he’d release me instead.

  “P-please…” I beg, and more tears fall. The other man comes into view. His eyes are on me, but his gaze wavers, guilt consuming his features.

  “She’s his type. Sweet. Blonde, with big blue eyes.” The man named Xander snickers. “I bet he kept this one for a while. She must know something. I could break her, snap her in two, send her body in pieces to him.”

  His words strike fear deep down in my belly, a different kind of fear…. An all-consuming fear. This man doesn’t just plan to break me, to rape me; he plans to kill me and use my body for revenge.

  “I… I don’t know him…” I shake my head, trying to get them to understand. “I…” The pain in my wrists consumes me, and I feel my arms growing heavy.

  “Xander, you need to make up your mind. Bring her with us, I don’t give a fuck, but I am burning this place and all the dead bodies inside of it to the ground,” the other man says, but it sounds so far away. I can’t really explain what is happening… I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears, and my vision starts to blur.

  No, I can’t die like this. I can’t. I won’t.

  I thrash against the bed but feel nothing, not even pain. Why don't I feel anything?

  Darkness closes in around me, and I know then that I am about to pass out. The two men loom above me. The man named Xander still has his hands on my body; his hand is warm, and I want to sink into it, into the warmth it brings.

  As my eyes drift closed, pain is still absent for the moment. My last thought before everything goes completely black is to wonder if I am ever going to wake up again.

  And if I do, what does fate have in store for me?

  Chapter 2

  Xander

  I pull the knife from my boot and slash the rope holding her wrists and her ankles together. Thank fucking god she is passed out, and I don't have to deal with her struggling. It’d be worse for her if she was awake. My patience is far too thin to be dealing with my father's whores.

  My gaze sweeps over her nearly naked body. My mind is already filled with all the wonderful things I’m going to do to her. Father dressed her in nothing more than scraps, yet another trait of his whores. She definitely belongs to him. Too bad. I would have enjoyed fucking her, but I won’t knowing she has been with him.

  I can’t deny her beauty though. Strawberry-blonde hair frames her heart-shaped face, and her pink full lips are kissable. She’s got big blue doe eyes that I imagine looking up at me while I force my cock between her lips.

  She’s everything a man could want when fucking, but again, I won’t touch her knowing my father has. Pushing the thoughts aside since that’s not what I am taking her for, I slide my arms under her body and lift her to my chest. She doesn’t weigh hardly anything, and I can carry her with ease. For some reason, I don’t fucking like the thought.

  She should eat some fucking food, put some meat on her bones or something.

  I walk out the door past Damon, who is shaking his head at me. He’s disappointed, angry with my choice to bring her instead of just let her go. Good thing I don’t need his approval… or anyone else's for that matter. There’s a reason I’m the leader of the Rossi empire, and he is not.

  I get the fucking hard shit done, the shit no one else wants to do because it crosses lines no one wants to talk about.

  I’ve killed women. I’ve beaten women. Am I proud of it? Of course not. But I do what I have to fucking do. My family and my ability as a leader are defined by the choices I make. If I can’t do something, then I cannot expect my men to do it either.

  “I don’t like this, Xander. You don’t know if she’s telling the truth or not. She looked pretty fucking scared to just be one of his random whores,” Damon rambles, as he douses the house in gasoline.

  “I don’t really care what you think, Damon. I’m taking her. You burn the house down, and that'll be the end of it. Maybe next time, we’ll actually catch him,” I snap, too annoyed to deal with his moral code of bullshit.

  I pick up my pace, walking down the hall and away from Damon. If I wanted my brother's input, I would ask for it. My eyes move over the contents of this place. It’s just a fucking mansion, full of valuables.

  That only angers me more. He didn’t leave any fucking clues, no papers, not a trace of anything. The only reason we knew he was here was because of a now-dead guard we had tortured the info out of. He’d been a long-time friend of the family and was responsible for disposing of my father’s body, which he clearly didn’t do, since the bastard is still alive.

  With my anger threatening to boil to the surface, I tighten my hold on the small body in my arms, drawing a faint whimper from her lips. I look down at her beautiful face, so peaceful looking, now that she is passed out. Her long amber-colored lashes fan against her cheek. There’s a slight bruising below her right eye, the skin black and blue as if she’d been slapped. Something about that angers me as well, and I don't know why. I’ve laid my hands on countless women, and in much worse ways than that, and yet, a slight bruising of this woman’s face has me feeling some strange emotions.

  I walk out the front door, down the steps, and into the driveway. The unnamed woman bounces in my arms every step I take, and I hold her tighter. Her head presses against my shoulder like she is leaning into me for comfort, for protection. It awakens an odd feeling inside of me. A feeling that surprisingly tamps my anger down… I don’t like it, but then again, it’s not an unsettling feeling either.

  I walk up to the SUV where two of my men are already waiting. They look at the girl in my arms and then back up to me. They know better than to ask questions. I motion for them to open the back doo
r and when they do, I slide into the back seat, still holding her in my arms. I could probably let her go now, place her down on the leather seats, but I like the feeling of her in my arms.

  Startled by the thought, I curl my fingers into her skin, feeling the heat. I imagine her whimper in pain as I do, and that thought makes my cock hard.

  “Where to?” the driver asks from the front seat, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Home.”

  He doesn’t hesitate when I answer, and we drive off the property as if we just came for a short visit, instead of a killing spree. I spend the majority of the ride to the mansion looking at her. Studying her features… wondering what she looks like when she smiles.

  What a ridiculous thought. Smiling. No one does that in my presence. I try to imagine myself torturing her, breaking her bones, slicing her skin. For the first time ever, the thought revolts me, but I know I don’t have a choice.

  I need to protect my family, my son, above all. The things she may know, the secrets, they’re all that matters. Finding my father and killing him, that’s the important thing here, and if torturing her gives me those answers then that’s what I’ll do.

  The car comes to a halt, and I am about to ask the driver why the hell we are stopped when I look up and realize we are already home. What the fuck! I must have gotten lost just staring at her like an idiot. I shake my head at my own stupidity. I need to stop this nonsense, and I need to stop it now. There is no room for feelings in my life.

  My son. My family, they’re all that matters.

  Not some woman my father probably dipped his dick into half a dozen times. She’s nothing, no one, and the sooner I see her as that, the easier this will all be. I get out of the car, with her body still in my arms, and walk up to the front door. One of guards is already holding the door open for me, so I walk in. I head for the staircase leading up to the bedrooms when I stop myself. My feet stop dead in their tracks.

  What the fuck am I doing?

  I can’t bring her up here. I can’t have her around my son. I can’t treat her like a guest in my house. I can’t do any of these fucking things because she is the fucking enemy. Curling my fingers into her tender flesh, I clench my jaw and turn on my heels, walking down the stairs and into the basement.

  I carry her into one of the holding cells that hasn’t been used since my son was born. It’s cold and damp, and it doesn’t seem right to leave her down here. Deep in the pit of my stomach, I feel that this is wrong. But that’s merely my infatuation with her, or at least that’s what I tell myself. I lay her small body down on the cot. When I do this, I realize one of her small hands is fisting into my shirt, as if she is trying to hold onto me.

  I peel her fingers away and watch her sleeping features turn into a frown. It’s strange how she was so fearful while awake, but now she clings to me as if I’m her savior. I almost laugh at the thought. She has no idea the things I can and will do to get what I want.

  I stand up straight and watch her barely dressed body curl up into herself like she is cold. There are no blankets down here. Comfort has never been on my mind when it comes to holding a prisoner, and I know it shouldn't be any other way with her either, but it is.

  I briefly think about tying her up in my bedroom, but her wrists and ankles are already so bloody it will only cause more damage. I have to leave her here; it’s the right thing to do.

  She is the enemy… a foe, my father's whore. Repeating the verse over and over again inside my head, I force my feet to move, taking me out of the room. I close the door and lock it behind me. I have to do what’s obligated of me.

  I need to think about my son, and his future, about his safety, not some woman who’s only useful for the hole between her legs. I don’t have room for a woman in my life. After all, the last one ended up dead because of her own stupidity. She proved to me that you can’t trust anyone, no one but yourself. Still, I look at this fucking woman and feel a thud in my chest.

  My heart is beating hard and fast because of her, and I don’t fucking understand why. I wrap my hand around one of the iron bars, envisioning myself wrapping that same hand around her delicate throat.

  Would I squeeze hard enough to kill her? Or would I test the limits, showing her what would happen if she disobeyed me?

  It doesn't matter even if she is an innocent in all of this. If she doesn't tell me what I want to know, she'll pay just like everyone else… with her blood.

  Chapter 3

  Ella

  My eyes feel as if there are elephants sitting on them. They're impossibly heavy, and I use every ounce of strength possible to open them. As soon as I do, I remember that what I thought was nothing more than a nightmare is actually my reality. A shiver runs down my spine. Partly out of fear, partly because I’m actually freezing.

  It takes me a moment to take in my surroundings. I’m on a cot, in some kind of cell, but that is not the scariest part. It’s the man who is standing next to my cot looming over me that has my heart rate skipping a beat.

  “Good morning, little mouse.” His voice is deep; his dark eyes hold me in place.

  He takes a seat on the way-too-small cot beside me and, for a moment, I think his weight is going to break the thing beneath us. He's a big man, rippling muscles, at least a foot taller than me.

  His leg is touching my ribs, and I want to move away from him, but his body heat is just too precious to refuse. Instead of pulling away, I move closer.

  “Why am I here?” My voice is small and weak, and my throat and my mouth feel like they have cotton balls shoved in them. I could really use a drink of water, but I'm not dumb enough to ask this man for anything.

  “You don’t get to ask questions. I do and you are going to answer every single one of them or I’m going to have to do some things you don’t want me to do.” The warning is clear. If I don't give him the answers he wants, whatever they might be, he will hurt me.

  I try and conjure up a response. I don’t know what kind of information he thinks I have for him, because I know nothing.

  “Where is my father now?” There's no emotion to his features… in fact, he looks more like a statue than a man.

  “I don't know. I didn't even know he was your father until you showed up. I don’t even know his name.”

  “You are lying. You are one of his whores; you must know something. You cannot expect me to believe a single word you say when you're dressed the way you are.”

  I shake my head gently. “I’m not lying, and I’m not a whore.” My cheeks heat slightly at the words. I would never wear something like this by choice. I've never even slept with a man before

  “Really?” His voice is bitter, and his eyes turn violent. I don't even get a chance to respond to him before he has me by the hair, his huge hand and thick fingers digging painfully into my scalp.

  “Please, Xander…” His name falls from my lips, and I realize as soon as I've said it that I've made a mistake.

  He pulls me into his face, a darkness surges to the surface, and I feel like I might puke. With his hand in my hair, I can't escape him. I whimper, pain radiating across my scalp.

  “Don't try and humanize me. I'll kill you without even blinking.” His other hand comes into view, the fingers flexing as he wraps them around my throat.

  Panic floods my system, and I instinctively start to fight back. My arms strike out, hitting him, and my nails dig into his skin, scratching him, but my attack does nothing to him. He just laughs at my feeble attempts and tightens his grip on my throat. He pulls me really close to him, so that his face is right next to mine. I can smell him, spice and danger; it tickles my nose.

  “I’m going to give you one more chance. Before I really start to hurt you, and this isn't some attempt. I will hurt you.”

  He lets go of my throat, and I slump back down to the cot like a rag doll, gasping for air. My lungs can’t fill with air fast enough.

  “Tell me what you know and where my father is.” His voice is clipped and angry.
I know he is losing his patience with me, but there is nothing I can tell him that is going to make him believe me.

  “I don’t know.” I put every ounce of emotion into my words, hoping that he can see my honesty. “I’ve never even seen your father until today. I don’t know his name. Let alone where he is or where he is going to be. I don't know him. I swear.” I feel like I’m in front of a jury trying to convince them of my innocence… Xander being the judge and the executioner.

  Disappointment flickers in Xander’s dark gaze. “It’s really a shame that my father had you before. I would have loved to fuck you raw. Fuck the defiance right out of you.”

  Anger gets a hold of me, and I find a sudden ounce of courage. “For the last time, your father didn’t have me… No one has had me.” I don’t know why I added the last part, but I regret it as soon as it’s left my lips.

  Xander smirks. “You are trying to tell me than no one has been here before.” His hand is suddenly between my legs, grabbing me there harshly. I gasp and try to move away but his other hand moves to my shoulder, holding me in place before I can move an inch.

  He leans into me, so his mouth is right by my ear. “So… you're telling me that if I slide my finger inside you, it’s going to be tight like a virgin pussy?”

  His words make my whole body shiver. Partly because of fear and partly because some sick part of me wonders what his fingers inside me would feel like.

  Would I like it? Would he make me come? The questions swirl around inside my head, and I quickly shove them away to concentrate on the danger before me. I try and digest everything he's said.

  If this is all it would take to prove to him that I’m not his father's whore, then I would definitely let him finger me. Maybe once he discovers the truth, he’ll let me go. He’ll realize I'm innocent and not the enemy.

  “If I let you finger me, will you believe me and let me go?”

  “If you let me?” He laughs without a trace of humor. “My little mouse, don't you understand yet that I’ll do whatever I want to your body. You're my property now. Your body is mine to do with, however I please.”