Dark Desire (Famiglia Book 1)

by A. J. Daniels

  “But I’m not going to kill him just yet. I want him to come for you. I want to see him break when he realizes I’ve had my way with you. I want the last thing he sees before he dies to be my cum decorating this lush body of yours. I want him to know, without a doubt, that my hands were the last you felt before you died alongside him. I want him to suffer, and only then will I put him out of misery.”

  The sound of a zipper being undone sounds behind me seconds before I feel Dante press into me. My hot tears mix with my snot as they run down my face while Dante takes from me, while his hand presses over my mouth, no doubt leaving bruises. For the first time since I was ripped from my bed in the middle of the night, I pray that Braxton doesn’t find me. I pray he never sees me like this. Degraded. Used.

  I shut my eyes against the sound of Dante grunting behind me and try to will myself back to the last time Braxton and I were together… happy. He fought against our growing relationship for reasons I couldn’t understand then, but do now. I saw what I now recognize as a war going on inside him every time his eyes would meet mine. That need to push me away to protect me, but at the same time wanting to pull me closer. I noticed the way his gaze would soften whenever he would look at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. I always thought he never paid me much attention while he was working from home, but I was wrong.

  “Come here, Mia Bella,” Braxton says lifting a blanket from the side of the couch with one hand, and patting the seat next to him with the other.

  I bite the corner of my lip not really sure I’m capable of sitting down right now. If I sit then I can’t keep pacing and if I can’t keep pacing then my thoughts are going to spiral and I need the outlet that pacing allows me to have.

  “Klara.” Braxton’s voice is firm and when I look over at him I know that he’s not going to let me off the hook easy.

  Reluctantly, I take the seat next to him, curling my legs under me and leaning into his side. Braxton covers us with the blanket and it’s at that point that I notice it feels exactly like the gravity blanket I have back at my apartment, but it looks nothing like it. This one is nicer. He settles his arm around my shoulders and pulls me into him more so my head is resting on his chest.

  “Talk to me. Why are you pacing a strip in my flooring?”

  “They want me to give a speech at graduation next week,” I sigh.

  “That’s great, Mia Bella.”

  “No,” I interrupt his praise. “I mean, yes, it is, but not for me.” I sit up slightly so that I can see his face. “Do you know how many people come to these things? Hundreds. Which means I have to stand in front of hundreds of people… all looking at me… and talk.” I swallow hard. “I can’t do it.”

  “Klara,” he whispers, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “You can do anything you set your mind to. You are stronger than this anxiety, but if it’ll help Alessandro, Gio, and I will be there.”

  “Braxton, you don’t hav --”

  “Will it help you deliver your speech if we were there?”

  It would. Just knowing that there’s someone out in the sea of people who are there for me, other than Adrienne, to cheer me on, who I can look to when it becomes too overwhelming will help significantly. And that’s exactly what I tell him.

  “Consider it done,” Braxton says, placing a soft kiss on my lips then tucking me back into his side and scrolling through Netflix until he comes across my latest show obsession and pressing play.

  I think that was the night I realized that falling in love with Braxton De Luca was a real possibility. Now, not only was it just a possibility but a reality because right before I found him in his office, I was ready to tell him that I didn’t care what he did for a living, that as long as I got him I could learn to someday be okay with not knowing.

  Dante’s groan pulls me back to reality and I feel him slide out, hot cum dripping all over my ass before the unmistakable sound of a belt being done up reaches my ears and then a door opens and closes before the lights are shut off.

  Darkness.

  So, this is what hell looks like.

  Footsteps draw near from one of the corners of the room, stopping in front of me but with the lights off I can only just make out the shape of a person. A finger rakes down the side of my face and I flinch away from it.

  “I told you not to get involved with him, but you just wouldn’t listen. You brought this upon yourself, Klara.”

  “How could you? You were supposed to be my friend,” I sob.

  “And you should’ve listened when I told you to stay away from the De Luca family,” Rick snarls.

  Tears are flowing freely down my cheeks now as Rick’s footsteps fade away in the distance.

  ***

  (Braxton)

  I sit at the kitchen counter watching my mother chop vegetables for the beef stew and try not to feel like I’m five years old again while she lectures me about my stupidity when it comes to hurting Klara.

  “I’ll tell you this though. You’re an idiot for letting her go.” She shakes her head. “You don’t cheat on a woman like her. You hold on tight and don’t ever let go. And you pray that you’re good enough.” She stops chopping and glances up at me pointing the knife in my direction, “but when that girl loves you, you’ll know. She’ll go out of her way to make you happy. She’ll sacrifice for you, and she’ll love you like no one ever has before.”

  “Ma, you sound like you’ve known her her whole life,” I say, taking another drink

  “No honey. I just know how to read people.”

  “Boss, we have a problem,” Alessandro announces, walking into my kitchen. He stops when he sees my Ma standing across from me, the counter separating us and the tip of her knife pointed directly at me. One eyebrow raised and a half smirk forming on his lips. Yeah, yeah laugh it up asshole. At thirty-three I’m still getting lectures from my mother.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, Alessandro,” my mother admonishes. “Come. Sit. Dinner will be done shortly.”

  She waddles over to the pot and throws in the rest of the chopped vegetables. My eyes narrowing at the fact that she’s favoring one foot more than the other. I hope her diabetic nerve pain isn’t acting up again. We finally got a handle on it with the new medication and she seemed to be doing fine. I mentally shake the thought away. I can’t lose both of the important women in my life.

  Alessandro looks to me in a silent plea for us to talk somewhere else. “Let’s talk in my office,” I tell him, walking around the counter to place a kiss on my mother’s head. “I’ll be back to set the table.”

  The fact that she doesn’t argue, just smiles and pats my arm, is enough to have me worry. She hasn’t been her usual self since she got back from her trip to Italy years ago, and I wonder if the extend trip and long flight weakened her already low immune system. I make a mental note to call her doctor in the morning while Alessandro follows me into the office and closes the door behind us.

  When I’m sitting down, he hands me a file folder with two pictures inside. One is of a man outside of my cousin’s club. His hand firmly clasps in Dante’s with Dante’s other hand on his shoulder. The second picture is of the same man, only this time he’s smiling at the woman next to him while she takes a selfie of the two of them.

  Klara.

  “Who is this?”

  “His name is Richard Belan. Apparently, he and Klara have been friends for almost as long as she’s lived here.”

  I look at the first picture again, studying the way he’s interacting with my cousin. They don’t look like two people who’ve just met. They look like they’ve known each other for years. Alessandro shifts in his seat, sensing my questions and tips his chin toward the picture of Richard and my cousin in my hand.

  “Word on the street is that your uncle and Mr. Belan did business together years ago. That’s how Dante and Richard met.”

  “You think this Richard had anything to do with Klara’s kidnapping?”

  He holds my stare, his eyes neve
r wavering. “Had one of the cops on our payroll talk to the roommate, she said the only other person with access to the apartment is Richard. The guy lives on the floor below them, that’s how they met.”

  I go back to studying the pictures again. Taking in everything Alessandro just told me and hoping like hell that this is the break we need to get closer to finding and bringing Klara home. “Where’s he now?” My voice comes out smooth… controlled, the opposite of everything I feel raging within me.

  “One of the soldiers just brought him in. He’s in the basement.”

  “Good.” I stand up, doing up the two buttons on my suit jacket. “You and Gio get started. I’ll join you in a bit.”

  “Uh,” Alessandro clears his throat, looking everywhere but at me.

  “What is it, Alex?”

  “Gio, Boss. Nobody’s heard from him since we dumped that body.”

  Taking a deep breath, I will myself to stay calm. It’s not like Giovanni to do a disappearing act, and he better have a good explanation for it since we’re in the middle of a war with my fucking cousin. I’m already antsy, and this isn’t helping. With a hand on the doorknob, I turn slightly to look over my shoulder.

  “Have Richard brought to the aquarium. I’m thinking a deep dive might be the thing he needs to talk.”

  “TAKE THESE THINGS off. Who are you? Where I am?”

  It takes me a minute to remember that the man swinging in front of me, bound by his wrists over the salt-water pool, is in business with my cousin. He looks nothing like the goons Dante employs. He looks more like a soccer player or like he belongs on an ad for a clothing company than a guy who should be doing business with my family.

  The monster prowling on the inside wants me to drop him in the water and let the marine life take care of him for putting a hand on Klara. And I’ll give it that, but not now. I want to have some fun first and those pictures of him with his arm around Klara and shaking hands with my cousin gives me the motivation I need for what comes next.

  “I’m the person your nightmares are based on.” I snicker.

  His body stills, hands gripping the metal chains around his wrists. “De Luca. Should’ve known,” he mumbles more to himself than for my benefit.

  “Ah, so you know who I am.” My finger twitches over the button that will send him plummeting through the frigid water.

  “It was only a matter of time before you connected the dots and came after me. Torture me all you want, De Luca. You’ll never find her.”

  Glancing down at the tank and making sure nothing is in the way—yet—I press the red button and watch as the line gives, and his body slowly disappears between the glassiness of the surface only for a moment before he’s reeled back up again, shivering and coughing up water. His blindfold falling to gather around his neck.

  “You underestimate my abilities.” I smirk when he starts struggling against his binds which only causes him to swing back and forth.

  “Dante’s always one step ahead of you, you fuck. He already knows your plans.”

  And just like that he confirms what I’ve been speculating about the last twenty-four hours, that there’s a traitor within my famiglia. One who was sent by Dante before I took over as Don to keep an eye on me. I have my suspicions, but they’re best kept to myself until I know the truth.

  “That may be. If he’s always one step ahead then are you saying it’s no coincidence that you’re hanging by your wrists suspended over a pool filled with various marine life that could kill you?”

  Richard looks down at the tank beneath his feet, when he glances back up at me there’s a smirk on his face and I know exactly what he’s thinking.

  “Jellyfish? Really? They wouldn’t kill me.”

  I scrub a hand down my growing beard and tap a finger on my chin. “True. Their sting will hurt like hell, and you’ll most likely pass out. But I did say could, not that they will kill you. Would you like to test out that theory?”

  A slow grin spread across my face as I watch him sink below the surface, the middle of the tank suddenly filling with jellyfish of all sizes. Some touching various areas of his body with their tentacles as they swim for the surface. When I think he’s close to passing out, I reel him back up. Various areas of his skin turning an angry red.

  “Like I said, they won’t kill you. For that I have other plans.”

  Alessandro chooses that moment to wheel in a smaller tank with one inhabitant and places it in front of me before swapping out the syringe in his hand for the remote in mine. Richard’s eyes dart between the pufferfish in the tank and the syringe in my hand.

  “Who does he have close to me?”

  “Fuck, man, I don’t know. I wasn’t privy to that information.”

  I tip my chin and Alessandro lowers him back in the water, in the middle of the school of jellyfish. His screams muffled by the water. He reels him back up a few seconds later.

  “You’re a sick fuck,” he heaves, struggling to breathe through the pain of the stings.

  “I am.” I chuckle, crouching down to watch the fish through the glass. “Did you know that this little thing carries toxins twelve hundred times more lethal than cyanide?” I glance up at the man still pulling on his binds. “I’m not even sure of the right dose, but this should do it.” I straighten to my full height, bringing the syringe up to my eye-level and flicking a finger against it. “So, are you willing to talk, or are you ready to swim with the fishes?” I grin at my horrible joke, but also at the way he visibly pales in front of my eyes.

  He curses when the line starts moving, bringing him closer to me but still keeping him hovering over the open tank. Alessandro grabs a hold of his arm on the areas the jellyfish haven’t stung and holds him still while I aim the syringe in the crook of his elbow.

  “Fuck!” he bellows, trying to twist out of the reach of the needle. “Okay. Okay!”

  I stop, the needle resting against his skin and look up at him expectantly.

  He sighs, knowing it’s either this or death. “Dante never sold her. He’s been keeping her for himself. His plan is to get you so enraged that you react on a whim…with no security, so that he can kill you both and take over the famiglia.”

  Alessandro and I share a look before he nods, a silent communication that he’ll start looking for the traitor, and there’ll be hell to pay for going against the famiglia.

  “Ah, what the fuck!”

  Richard’s outburst and his eyes rounding in horror as he looks down at his arm causes me to glance down, too. Somehow, in the midst of our exchange, I had pushed the needle into his skin, my thumb pressing down and injecting the lethal toxin.

  “You might not want to move around too much. I have no idea how fast that shit spreads.” I pull back, dumping the syringe and the gloves into a nearby garbage bag.

  “You sonuvabitch! You planned that all along,” he yells at my retreating back.

  I contemplate his accusation as I shrug into my suit jacket. He’s right, of course. I never had any plans of letting him walk out of here alive. “Shouldn’t’ve come between me and what’s mine.”

  ***

  (Klara)

  Braxton’s face flashes behind my closed lids. I would give anything to see his face again, to feel the security of his strong arms wrap around me, his lips brushing a soft kiss against my forehead. To hear him say Mia Bella, My beautiful, again. I would give anything to hear him telling me he was no good for me even while pulling me in and holding me tightly against his body. His voice saying one thing but his body saying another.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  Dante grunts, finishing all over my stomach. Silent sobs rack my body as I grabble for the blanket at the side of the dirty mattress and gingerly pull it over my bruised body. I wasn’t allowed to shower, wasn’t allowed to wear what little scraps of clothes I had. Dante kept true to his word of wanting to make sure Braxton broke when he eventually saw me. He made sure to remind me that, that time was coming soon and as soon as
he had his cousin right where he wanted him he was going to make him watch as he used Braxton’s precious blades to carve up my body until it bled dry, and only then would he end Braxton’s life.

  Dante made sure I looked into his eyes every single time he told me in excruciating detail how he was going to kill me, and then Braxton. He made sure to emphasize that I was only in this hell because Braxton couldn’t keep his hands off me, because I became more to the Don of the mafia than I was supposed to be.

  Oh yeah, Dante let that little fact slip. That Braxton was in fact head of the Italian mafia, and he made no qualms about the fact that he was insanely jealous of Brax. That the reason behind all of this was because Dante wanted the title of Don and the power that title held.

  Strangled cries sounded from the section of room next to mine and I huddled further into my blanket. Sometime during the night, I was brought to this new place. From the sounds I hear at all hours of the day and night, I assume this is where Dante brings the girls he sells into the sex trade. The men have strict orders to not touch me though, unless they want to meet a bloody fate. I was to be used solely for Dante’s personal enjoyment.

  When did my life become so fucked up? When did I go from falling in love with a man who believes he doesn’t deserve to smile, to being used as a pawn in some fucked up game of cat and mouse that was born out of jealousy?

  The man I love is the head of one of the biggest crime families in Canada, and one of my best friends sold me out to his cousin. I cover my ears with my hands, shutting my eyes closed against the onslaught of fresh tears in an attempt to block out the sounds of hell, and I do something I vowed to never do again for as long as I lived.

  I pray.

  I pray not that I make it out of this hellhole, but that a bomb gets dropped on this building, killing me and everyone inside. I pray that the men who hold us here get ripped apart by something more sinister than them. I pray that Braxton gets his hands on Dante, and I pray that he makes the sonofabitch bleed. I pray that he pries finger after finger from his hands, toe after toe from his feet, tooth after tooth from his fucking jaw. I pray that Braxton doesn’t let up until Dante is nothing but a pile of broken pieces on the floor because that… that is how Dante has made me feel.