Russo Saga Collection

by Nicolina Martin

  He opens his mouth to speak but stops when the door opens.

  “Nothing,” says the man who pushed me in here before. I have my back to him, but I recognize his voice.

  Salvatore glances down at me as a smirk spreads across his face. “Thank you, Ivan. Leave us.” There’s silence, heavy and ominous, then the door clicks closed. I look up at the mob boss, widening my eyes. “You’re a really stupid girl, aren’t you? Now how do you want to do this? I can have my nephew finish the job. I can cut you open and feed you to the dogs, or maybe I’ll grant you a clean shot to the head.”

  I thought I had felt terror before, but the fright that seizes my chest and wraps cold fingers around my throat is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

  “Please, no,” I whisper. “I’ll do anything.”

  He looks me over and scoffs. “You’re not even fuckable. Maybe some of my men can have a go at you. They’re not picky.”

  Tears well up in my eyes and start rolling down my cheeks. “No, please.”

  “Stand up.”

  “Please.”

  “Stand the fuck up!”

  His growl is so vicious that my knees buckle, the rush of fear so primal it almost makes me wet myself. My legs barely obey me as I one-handedly push to my feet.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  “What? No!”

  Salvatore takes one long step forward, almost nose to nose. I’m not a short girl, but he’s way taller than I am and lethal threat radiates off him as he stares me down. “Take off your fucking clothes. If I have to repeat an order one single fucking time again, I’ll beat you. Got it?”

  I nod, my whole body rigid to the breaking point. I unhook the sling around my neck and look around me for somewhere to put it. Laying it on the backrest of the chair, I then start to squirm out of my shirt. It’s a shapeless shirt I borrowed from the hospital. I had a tight, black, glittery top on when they admitted me. I could never have gotten that over the cast. Under the shirt, I’ve only got a bandage around my ribs and my bra, a black push-up bra meant for a fun night out. My breasts are too large to go braless even though it was a bitch to put it on. When I let the shirt fall over the backrest too, I cover my chest with my arms and plead with him, wordlessly, not to do this. Is he going to rape me? Rape me and then kill me? Have his men take me? I should just ask him to kill me. I can’t do that. Never.

  “Go on,” he growls. I don’t see interest in his eyes, even though he looks at my breasts. It’s as if I’m a thing he’s evaluating.

  Fighting not to sob but failing miserably as my breath hitches on each intake of air, I flick open the button on my pants. These are the pants I wore on the night out, though, black, wide legs, snug around my butt. Pulling down the zipper, I realize I have borrowed hospital underwear on. I’ve never felt so humiliated in my life as I let the pants fall to the floor, bunching around my ankles.

  Salvatore’s eyes sweep across my body, then he laughs. “That’s the ugliest fucking pair of panties I’ve seen in my life.”

  My cheeks heat up. “It’s not my fucking fault,” I sneer. I cry out as he backhands me. Not overly hard, but my already bruised face is too sensitive and I gasp from the pain.

  “You’ve got to learn some fucking manners,” he growls.

  “What for,” I spit, “you’ll kill me anyway.”

  “Get out of your fucking grandma panties, now, or I won’t fucking get a hard-on ever again in my life.”

  I can’t help thinking that sounds like a good idea. My gaze darts to his pants, and sure enough, there’s a bulge. He’s liking this–my humiliation–because I can only assume he isn’t turned on by my broken appearance. One-handedly pushing down the waistband, I shimmy out of the panties and let them fall too. I can’t help glancing down at my thin carpet of light red hair down below. Shaving my pussy wasn’t really something anyone considered at the hospital.

  “Don’t move.” He takes a step to the side, studying me. Lightheaded with horror, I try to remember how to breathe. Disappearing out of my sight, he moves around and stands behind me. The only thing that is heard is his breaths. “Spread your legs.”

  I freeze up. “No, please.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” He slaps my butt so hard that I stumble forward and I cry out in pain. “I warned you about obeying my orders. For every time I have to repeat myself, there’ll be consequences, and since I just had to repeat myself again—”

  The next slap is much harder, sending a shockwave up to my already hurting brain. I lift a foot to step out of the bunch of clothes on the floor and immediately spread my legs.

  Silence. A low, almost animalistic growl.

  “Stay.”

  Fingers fiddling with my bra clasp make me gasp. He pushes it off me and it falls to the floor, joining my other clothes. My breaths come out as nothing but short inefficient gasps as I stare at the bookshelves before me, the spines having titles in languages I don’t recognize. The room spins. I really don’t dare to move when I listen to the faint rustle of his feet on the carpet as he walks away.

  “Ivan,” he says, the sudden sound making me jerk.

  “Yes, sir,” comes a disembodied voice through a loudspeaker.

  “You can bring in the first.”

  The first? The first what? I sway, feeling as if I’ll faint. A low rumble from Salvatore makes me freeze up, realizing that if I move, he’ll punish me. If I question him, he’ll punish me. If I beg, he’ll punish me.

  I stepped into the lion’s den, and I’ll be devoured. I just made the biggest mistake in my life, and that’s no small feat.

  Chapter 6

  Luciano

  Chloe Becker stepped into my office. Pretty women rarely come to my house uninvited, so that was a pleasant surprise. Especially since that means I won’t have to go looking for her.

  She’s not particularly pretty right now. Her long, blonde hair is an unwashed, tangled mess. Her face is blue and swollen, she can only open one eye properly, the other only opens a sliver. Her lip has a scab over a wound, and that laceration in her eyebrow is bound to leave a scar.

  I saw her picture a few days ago, though, when the plan was to eliminate her, and she’s a real beauty. She’s hiding away behind a desk job, and not even in a workplace with colleagues, but in her own home. She also used to work at the daycare my son attended a couple of years back. I had Matteo dig a little and couldn’t find anything on her. It’s as if she came from nowhere and it intrigues me. People don’t just appear out of nothing. She’s decidedly American, and there’s got to be something, birth certificate, driver’s license, hospital bills, old addresses. Something.

  Having her standing before me, broken, but not beaten suddenly makes me want to see what it will take to completely bring her down.

  When she undresses, wincing with every move, uncovering a sexy, lacy bra holding a fantastic rack, and a bandage covering bruises I need to see, my cock reacts on its own accord. Her pain transfers to my groin, her humiliation and forced submission hits me like a freight train running through my chest.

  I picture pushing her to her knees and am just about to act on that impulse when I realize it’s time for business. Other business.

  I smirk as I push the intercom and tell Ivan to bring in the first. Chloe stiffens, her breath hitching, but doesn’t dare to move. I slapped her without holding back, and I know my palm hurt her ass cheek like a bitch. She’ll obey. She also thinks I’ll bring in a line of grimy men to fuck her until she bleeds and begs, and still she stands there. She’s incredibly dumb if she thinks I had a bunch of men standing by to come in here and do her, but whatever. This will be fun.

  My almost-friend, and second in command, Eric has asked to see me and I’m curious as to what he has to say. He was out of the country for a couple of months, got back a week ago. We haven’t had a chance to talk yet. I don’t micromanage him, so I don’t know what he’s been up to.

  I fall down on my chair and put my hands behind my head, studying the girl
as I wait for my partner. She’s tall. Her thighs are muscular and end with a perfectly rounded ass. With that athletic body it looks as if she’s a runner, maybe she even lifts because the lean muscles playing on her back and arms are well defined. My legs tense as I’m about to get up and rip off that annoying bandage around her chest when the door opens, and Eric Reed enters. I relax again and take him in. He’s tanned, impeccably dressed in a dark gray three-piece suit, as he almost always is. His dirty-blond hair has grown and he looks a bit rough around the edges.

  His eyes dart to the naked woman and then back to me as his eyebrows shoot up on his forehead. I wave dismissively. “Sit.”

  Eric falls into the chair on his side of the desk. “New plaything? Seems it got a bit rough.”

  I glance over at Miss Becker again. She has her back to us and looks an absolute mess. I bet she’d be unrecognizable healed. Sadly she won’t ever heal. She won’t live long enough.

  “Ignore her.”

  “Luci, I can’t talk shop with some stranger in the room.”

  “She won’t be alive to tell. Now what have you been up to?”

  The girl flinches and is about to turn.

  “Don’t move one fucking inch,” I growl. “I won’t hesitate to add to those wounds. You’ll beg to have Christian have a go at you instead.”

  She whimpers but stays in position, her obvious fear transfers straight to my cock. I smother the grin that wants to break through and clear my throat, looking back to Eric who straightens.

  “Right,” he says, “I’ve spent some time in Moscow.”

  It’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Go on.”

  “The Russians have had an annoying habit of sneaking into our cities in the south, joining with rogue Mexican dealers and dumping the prices.”

  “Coke?”

  The girl flinches again. I frown.

  “Weapons,” says Eric. “Kalashnikovs.”

  “And who’s buying? What’s the distribution chain?”

  “Local small-time gangsters. Mainly Latinos. It’s a war. It’s a mess. They have a short life span expectancy down there. Kids assemble the shit, a few pieces here and there, too few to get cop eyes on them.”

  Chloe jerks again, as if she wants to chime in, making me glance over at her. I almost want her to disobey because, fuck me, I’d slap that sore ass before I circle my fingers around her throat and fuck her raw. Pulling myself back to the conversation, I turn back to Eric. “Who collects?”

  “You’re fucking distracted, Luci. This a bad time?”

  I look between him and the girl and smirk. Suddenly I know why I have her standing there naked, even if it wasn’t intentional. Sure, I’m distracted, but it’ll be nothing compared to what my visitors will be. “No. It’s a fucking perfect time. Go on.”

  Eric shakes his head. “You and your whores.”

  A ripple moves through her body at Eric’s words. She didn’t like that, huh? “Yes. You know what I like.”

  Eric scoffs.

  “Russians,” I say. “I’m all ears.”

  Eric proceeds to brief me about Moscow as I keep an eye on the antique clock standing on a bookshelf to the side. I have a whole slew of people to meet today.

  “So we have a contact? An in?” I finally conclude.

  “Exactly.”

  “Have him come here. We’ll pay the expenses. Set him up at the Hilton, feed him drugs, girls, guys, whatever the fuck he wants. Keep him happy. I want to meet him. Now, if there’s nothing else, I have more meetings. I have the whole fucking afternoon filled.”

  Eric stands, his lips curling in an expression of distaste. “I’m happy I don’t live your life.”

  “You better not wish for it. Go home and take care of your lady. She was a pain the last couple of weeks you were gone.”

  “What’d she do?” Eric’s posture goes rigid as he frowns.

  I wave dismissively. “Nothing. You’ve trained her well. It’s that wistful look I just can’t stand. As if she misses you.”

  A hint of a smile tilts up one corner of his mouth, then he snorts and turns. “Later, Luci.”

  I tilt my chin up at his retreating back as I narrow my eyes. Russians. A somewhat new player to deal with. Well old, but forgotten about by all of us. Stupidly enough. I’m lucky to have Eric, and Ivan, and a few more of my closest men when I can’t have eyes and ears everywhere.

  Waiting for Ivan to send in the next man I’m meeting with, I get up and pace the room as I look at the now shivering backside of Chloe Becker. My mind goes to Eric’s woman, Anna Raymond. I wonder what it feels like having someone so devoted to you that they can barely eat when you’re gone. I’ll never experience that. I don’t even know what love feels like. Without noticing where my feet have taken me, I find myself standing a few inches behind Chloe, almost feeling the heat of her skin against my chest. I wonder if I can train someone, break someone so badly, that they’ll become totally and irrevocably dependent on me. Missing me because I’m all they know. I can be tender. When I want. But I need their pain too. I’ve never tried to shatter someone long-term, to actually keep them here and break them down, day by day, with pain, lack of sleep, lack of food, the whole brainwashing procedure. I wonder if I’d have the patience.

  I think of the night a few days ago, when I worked out in the gym after Christian had woken me up. I had sent the redhead away and regretted it. Could I have someone living here? Being mine, at my disposal night and day? My eyes follow the defined muscles on each side of Chloe’s spine, down to the delectable dimples above her very fuckable ass and my cock stirs. I’d want her to come to me, to beg me, plead with me to take her.

  This woman is already broken, her life forfeit. She looks like shit now, but normally she’s a fucking beauty. Could I?

  I spin around and stride over to my desk, pushing the button on the intercom. “Ivan.”

  “Sir?”

  “How did she get here?”

  “I’ll find out, sir.”

  “Good. My next visitor?”

  “He’s late.”

  At first, I’m at a loss for words. That’s bold. “Who is he?”

  “A Devon Jones.”

  I look down on my laptop and type it in. He owes me money. He was supposed to pay up. “I’ll send you for him later. Bring in the next.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  The next couple of hours, I sit through one meeting after the other. Businesses are exchanged, we agree on illegal casinos, legal night clubs, construction and real estate contracts, raising the sum we pay to a few of the higher-level detectives in the police force. There are huge gun deals, small time drug dealers to handle and either rein in or kill off. Someone’s been harassing hookers and we have that part of the city secured in exchange for a percent of their income. The girls are too dirty and run-down to work for me, but there is money to be made. Always money. Always staying on top of the food chain. Always putting fear in others.

  No one has been unaffected by the bruised, naked girl standing to the side. Some have lusted for her, a couple of men asked if she is available. Most looked horrified. I’ve cut good deals today and she has clearly been useful. I’ll keep that in mind.

  I’m pulled out of my thoughts by a knock on the door. I pinch the bridge of my nose and exhale. I’m tired. It’s not my last contact, though. It’s Ivan.

  “She came by taxi.” His eyes dart to a swaying, shuddering Chloe. Her body has been wracked by sobs the last hour. I’ve been meaning to punish her for it, but it turned out to be an even greater distraction, and my cock liked it. A lot.

  “Where is it now?”

  Ivan shakes his head.

  “Someone saw it?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s on camera.”

  I look at the blond, Russian giant and nod. “Find him and deal with him. He’s the only one who can tell she came here and never came out.”

  New sets of strange, hitching sobs from Chloe makes us both look over at her. Then her knees fold and she f
alls into a heap, wailing wordlessly. I nod for Ivan to leave and study her crumpled body as I cross the room. Grabbing her hair, I crouch before her and pull up her head until she looks at me. Her gaze is dark and filled with pain, her cheeks drenched in tears.

  “Please—don’t kill him,” she gasps between hitching sobs. “He wasn’t more than twenty.”

  “That’s none of your business. You should be more concerned for yourself.”

  Her lower lip trembles. “Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone about you or… Christian.”

  I smirk. “No, you won’t. Get over here.” I pull her to her feet by her hair.

  She grabs my hand with her free hand and then doubles over with a gasp, letting go of me, clutching her ribs instead.

  “Are you in pain?” I ask softly.

  She nods as a whimper escapes her, a ray of hope crossing her features at my seemingly concerned tone.

  “I like it,” I say, watching that tiny spark of hope die as I push her toward the couch. “Go sit.” She cries out but stumbles forward. Fuck me, I want to spread those firm ass cheeks and do her. I’m unapologetically hard. Pushing her down until she sits, I stand before her, my crotch level with her face. Tears stream endlessly along her cheeks, wetting her chest. I glance down at her heavy breasts, the skin glistening wet. Letting go of her hair, I reach out and put a hand under one breast, weighing it in my palm, brushing the pad of my thumb over her nipple, reveling in the feel as it turns into a hard peak.

  She flinches but doesn’t try to escape me. Clearly, she has already learned there’s no use in trying.

  My breathing quickens as I think of my frustration the other night. Can I?

  I decide to dig deeper and find out everything there is to know about Miss Becker. Who is she? Where did she come from? Who will miss her?

  “Please, don’t kill me, Mr. Salvatore. I’m so sorry I threatened you. I didn’t mean it. I was angry. I was stupid.”

  Oh yes, she was stupid. She was also incredibly unlucky to have ever met Kerry Jackson. It sealed her fate long before any of us knew it. Crouching before her, I grab her chin. Her desolate gaze fixates on me, terrified. “You’ll live,” I say, suddenly knowing what I’ll do.