Like hell.
“You will come downstairs to the dining room in fifteen minutes,” he says. “Tomorrow, immediately after breakfast, you will start your lessons. And when you are not studying, it will be your duty to clean the house. If I find dust or cobwebs or fingerprints anywhere in my home, you will be punished. I expect the windows and mirrors and floors to gleam.”
I am at a loss for words.
“Lessons?” I choke out finally.
“Cooking lessons and Italian. You should be able to speak fluent Italian, but because of the unusual circumstances, you will only be required to be able to recite and understand your wedding vows. By six months from now, you will be expected to be fluent in Italian. There will be a test.”
I just stare at him in shock, my mouth gaping.
“Shut your mouth – you look like a fish. And do something about your face,” he snaps. “You’ve been crying all damn day, like a baby. Just what I’d expect from a spoiled, decadent, over-indulged little slut like you. You’re lucky I decided to go through with this wedding. Go wash up. I expect you to look presentable for dinner.”
He leaves the room.
In a rage, I toss aside the dress that he selected for me and grab another. All right, kidnapping me to fulfil some twisted family tradition is bad enough, but insulting me and treating me like garbage? I won’t accept it! Let him punish me. I have a high pain tolerance. I’ll take whatever he dishes out rather than let him reduce me to some crawling, mewling thing.
I put on a red chiffon dress, high necked, with ruffles. It’s a Giambattista Valli; apparently Matteo’s family is loyal to their Italian designers.
Matteo is seated at the gleaming mahogany dining table when I arrive. It’s easily big enough to seat ten. Valentina is there, with an older woman sitting next to her. Alonza sits to Matteo’s right, and there is an empty chair to his left.
A strikingly beautiful woman sits across the table from Valentina. Her glossy black hair is piled on top of her head, and her emerald green eyes flash with disdain. She’s dripping with diamonds, and her silky black dress hugs her stunning curves. She oozes sensuality and a haughty contempt.
Chunky silver bowls on the table are heaped with pasta and vegetables and fruits. A maid hovers silently by the wall, wearing a shapeless black dress and a white apron.
Matteo looks at me with cold disapproval and shakes his head.
He says something in Italian to the people sitting at the table, and they start serving themselves dinner. My stomach rumbles. I haven’t eaten since breakfast. It feels like a million years ago.
“Upstairs. Now,” he barks at me.
The beautiful woman smiles to herself as if she’s just won a prize. Valentina bites her lip and looks down at her plate as the older woman piles on pasta for her.
I look at Alonza. She’s scowling at me, penciled-in brows drawn together.
Matteo marches me up the stairs. Fear claws at me, and I stuff it back down, fighting to hold on to my justified rage.
“I am not your puppet. I am not your fiancée,” I hiss as Matteo hauls me into his room by my arm. All my feelings bubble to the surface, and I know it’s foolish, it’s pointless, but I just can’t stop myself. “You nearly killed Lauren, you kidnapped me, took me from my family, and you expect me to be delighted about it? You hurt me for no reason and I should be grateful to you for hurting me?” I’m shouting now, fueled by righteous fury. “You son of a bitch! This is wrong. This is insane, and you know it!”
This kidnapping, the way he’s treating me, it goes against everything that I believe in. I was raised by the ultimate law and order parents. They taught me that if you are a moral, hardworking, law-abiding citizen, you have the right to certain things. Success, a good life, and if people trespass against you, they will be punished.
I’m shouting and screaming for my world-view as much as my freedom. This is wrong. Life can’t be like this. It can’t be survival of the most brutal. It has to be fair or…or I don’t know what. The thought of living in Matteo’s world is too terrifying to accept.
I fall silent, and Matteo tilts his head to the side, letting several long moments stretch out before he finally speaks.
“Are you done?” Matteo’s lips twitch in a smile. The bastard is laughing at me. He’s mocking my pain, my fear, my misery, my attempt at being brave. It cost me everything I had, all my inner reserves, to defy him, and I ended up with nothing. My words bounce off him with no effect. I’ve accomplished nothing, and now he’s going to hurt me very, very badly.
Matteo steers me toward a tall cabinet next to his bed. When he swings open the doors, I gasp. There are whips on a rack on one door, paddles and strange instruments I don’t recognize on the other. There are shelves full of dildoes and lube and handcuffs and thumb cuffs.
“These can be used for pleasure or pain,” he says. “My mistresses know to accept either, depending on my whim, and they never question me.”
Mistresses?
“Yes,” he says coolly, answering my unspoken cry.
“You have mistresses? Still?” Why am I focusing on that? I don’t know why the idea of him being with another woman fills me with such dismay.
“Of course. We all do. You saw one of them at the dinner table. Concetta.”
My jaw drops. He shrugs. “The more you satisfy me, the less time and energy I’ll have for a mistress.”
I splutter with fury. “And if a wife has an affair…”
“Obviously she would be put to death in a painful and slow fashion, as would her lover, with the heads of the families watching and broadcasting it out to all the families as a lesson,” he says impatiently. “But of course you would never betray me in such a fashion.”
“All the wives tolerate their husbands cheating on them?”
Now he’s looking annoyed. “Again, our wives are not spoiled, decadent, worldly whores. They want their husbands to be happy. And they understand that men’s needs and women’s needs are different. If we spend most of our time with our wives, and wear condoms with our mistresses, what’s an occasional dalliance?”
Then he turns to survey the cabinet. “What to choose, what to choose… It’s a shame, Natasha. If you’d just been a good girl, I would have showed you the pleasurable side of pain tonight.”
All my earlier bravery evaporates in a flash, and I turn and run for the door. It’s ridiculous – there’s nowhere for me to go – but I am filled with terror.
He is on me before I go ten steps, and he grabs me by the arm and drags me back across the room.
“Poor Natasha.” His voice is cruelly mocking. “Now I have to punish you three times. Once for rejecting the dress I selected for you, once for speaking disrespectfully to me, and once for attempting to escape your punishment.”
Chapter 8
Natasha
He grabs the neckline of my dress and rips it open in one smooth motion. A couple more rips and the dress falls to the ground, puddling at my feet. Then he cups my breast, running his thumb over the lacy material of the bra.
“Dear, sweet Natasha. I was planning on showing you so much pleasure tonight. Why did you have to ruin it?”
I am liquid with terror. “How could you give me pleasure? I thought I had to be a virgin on my wedding day,” I say in a faint voice.
“There are all kinds of things that I will do to you without taking your virginity. The month before a Peredyshka’s wedding is when she is taught how to please her husband.”
“What? But she’s still living with the family she’s been given to.” I look at him in horror. “Surely the family doesn’t…do that with their adopted daughter?”
He snorts impatiently. “Of course not. Normally it’s done by the same men who train our mistresses. They demonstrate the techniques using dildoes and a mannequin, and it’s done according to her future husband’s preferences.”
He ignores my look of contempt at that. “Of course, because of these strange circumstances, I get to be t
he one to train you directly, rather than through an intermediary.” He cups my face in his hand. “And now we’re done stalling. Put your arms over your head.”
Trembling, I obey – and realize that there is a set of leather handcuffs dangling from the bed frame. How could I not have noticed that? Now it’s all I can look at. “I wasn’t stalling.”
He shakes his head in mild reproof, fastening the cuffs around my wrists. His hands are so strong, so confident, that even now, even here, an image of him running his hands down my body flashes through my mind and sends a thrill of pleasure through me.
“Yes, you were, and you were good at it. Because you’re a smart girl. Brilliant, beautiful. Exactly what I’ve always dreamed of, from the day I was told I’d be gifted with you as my bride.”
The unexpected gentleness of his voice breaks the dam of emotion inside me. Tears spill onto my cheeks. “I thought…I thought you hated me. You called me decadent, and lazy, and corrupt…” Why am I begging for his approval?
He smiles kindly at me. “You are, Natasha. You are all of those things. Both beautiful and corrupt. But you are mine, and I am going to save you from yourself. I’m going to beat the corruption right out of you, all the evil and the selfishness, until there is nothing left but pure goodness and the fervent desire to serve your husband.”
The cuffs are hanging from some kind of ring that allows him to spin me around to face the bed. He fastens my feet to cuffs on the floor. Then he’s rustling around in the cabinet and talking to me. “You’ll get through this, Natasha. You’ll do it for me.”
His tone is so calm and loving that I almost think he’s going to go easy on me.
That illusion is shattered when he slaps my lower back with a rod that zaps me with electricity. The electricity sets my entire body on fire. I am rigid with pain, unable to scream, my muscles locked. I don’t know how long he shocks me before it stops.
I gasp and suck in my breath. I told myself I would be strong, I wouldn’t beg, but I had never felt real pain before. As soon as I can speak, I’ll apologize, I’ll grovel, I’ll say anything so he won’t hurt me again.
But before I can say a word, he shocks me again, and I go rigid, my jaw locked, my breath frozen in my lungs. Every muscle in my body is cramping in agony.
He stops, and I gasp for breath, and tears are streaming down my face, and I’m frantic, I’m desperate, I can’t take any more.
“Oh, no, please…” I manage.
He does it again.
I’m a hideous cartoon caricature, eyes bulging, body arched in pure agony. My nerves are screaming. I’d say anything to make it stop, do anything. I’d sell out my parents to make the pain end, betray my country.
Again.
My muscles convulse and my body arches.
I lose count of how many times he shocks me. My muscles are on fire and I’m in a red haze of pain when he finally stops and sets down the hideous torture-stick.
Then, amazingly, he strokes my back lightly, his fingers trailing along my skin. “You’re so strong. So brave. You’ll learn how to please me, and we’ll never have to go through this again.”
We? I want to scream at him. YOU aren’t going through anything!
“Now for the second punishment.”
“Please, Matteo, please!” I struggle for breath. “No more! I’m sorry – I’m really sorry!”
He grabs a rectangular wooden paddle and brings it down on my right butt cheek with enormous force. My cheek feels as if someone splashed kerosene on it and set it on fire. I scream at the top of my lungs, the sound cut off abruptly when I run out of breath. He waits several seconds, then I hear the whistling through the air of the paddle right before it strikes my other cheek. My legs jerk and my body convulses, thrashing against the restraints.
He strikes me several more times, and my entire butt is on fire by the time he’s done – I feel like I’m being forced to sit on top of an open flame. I howl and wail and hang there in my chains, all the strength drained from my body. The pain goes on and on without relief.
“Please, Matteo, no…” I croak. I don’t recognize the sound of my own voice; it’s hoarse and pitiful.
“We’re almost done,” he says soothingly. “You’ll learn your lesson.”
“I’ve learned! I’ve learned!” I scream.
“No, Natasha,” he says in gentle reproof. “If you’d learned, you’d be eager to accept your punishment, because you would be so sorry that you disappointed me.”
Is he freaking kidding? I’m not a masochist – I’ll never be eager to accept pain!
He walks back to the cabinet. What new horror waits for me?
“I can’t take any more, I can’t,” I babble. “I’ll die.”
“Of course you can. A strong, brave girl like you?”
He returns with a ball gag and forces it into my mouth, affixing it with straps wound around my head. My lips are stretched uncomfortably wide.
Why does he want to do this? I thought the sick bastard got off on hearing me scream.
Then he grabs my hair, holds my head in place, and pinches my nose shut. He’s going to kill me. He holds on and on, his fingers gripping painfully tight.
My eyes bulge in panic. My lungs burn, I beg him with my eyes, but he holds on until I’m almost passing out.
When he lets go, I desperately suck in air through my nostrils. It’s not enough – I need to breathe through my mouth. I make panicked grunting noises. I try to shake my head, but he’s holding my hair so tightly that I can’t.
He does it again, and my lungs are on fire and the light starts to fade when he lets go. He slaps my cheeks to bring me back around. Surely he’ll stop now!
But no. He does it twice more.
When he takes the ball gag out of my mouth, I’m half mad with panic, sucking in huge gulping breaths until I black out for a few seconds. Air, air, air. Sweet air. I’ll never take it for granted again.
My cuffs are open and he’s carrying me in his arms down the hallway. When did that happen? I don’t care; all that matters is it’s over. It’s finally over. I’ll never talk back to him again.
I struggle to gather my senses. I still hate him. I hate him more than ever. I want him to die. I want to tie him up and torture him. But I won’t talk back to him. I don’t have the strength for his punishments; I can’t live through them.
“You’re all right. Come on, sweetheart, breathe.” He’s setting me down on my bed now. I slump, limp, almost falling over. He gathers me in his arms, and I’m too weak to resist, my head lolling on his shoulder.
His arms are so strong and comforting, he smells so good, and he’s the son of the devil. I wish I could push him away, but I can’t make any of my muscles work. He hugs me, wrapping me in warmth and strength.
I cry and cry, hopelessly. I never knew how much evil lived in the world. Seeing it on TV, reading it in newspapers, doesn’t convey the true depth of cruelty that one human can inflict on another. I feel terribly alone and frightened, and I just want to go home so badly; I want to wake up from this nightmare, but I never will. My butt is in so much pain that it hurts to sit, and I try weakly to shift to take some of the pressure off it.
Matteo slowly lets go of me. He pours me a drink of water from a carafe next to my bed and hands it to me. My hands are shaking so hard that he has to help me drink it, and I choke on it a little and cough.
“Careful,” he says, patting my back.
Careful? I swallow a hysterical laugh.
He waits a couple of minutes until my breathing has slowed to almost normal and my sobs have faded. Then he tips my head up and makes me look at him, like a daddy with his naughty little girl.
“What have you learned?” he asks me.
My mind scrabbles frantically for the right answers. “Never speak to you disrespectfully.”
“Very good.” Like a teacher praising his star student. “And?” he prompts.
“To obey you when you give me orders.”
�
��You’re doing so well. And?”
“To…to let you pick my clothes for me.”
I loathe myself as much as I loathe him. I’ve always thought of myself as strong and brave, and he’s shattered that illusion and ground it underneath his boots.
He strokes my wet cheek with his thumb. “There we go. Such a smart girl. If you just do what you’re told, we’ll never have to go through this again.”
“You won’t punish me any more?” I plead desperately.
“I didn’t say that.” He laughs. “I told you I’m a sadist. But the punishments won’t be anywhere near as bad, and they won’t last as long. And you may well enjoy them.”
Never! But I don’t scream the word aloud. He’s stolen my opinions and my rights from me. The only words he’ll hear from my mouth are murmured agreement.
“I know that it will take a little time for you to adjust to your new life and to appreciate the true honor that has been bestowed upon you. But you will. By the time our wedding day comes you will be eager to embrace your new life. And of course you would never attempt to escape, to betray us, because if you did, your friends and family would pay the price.”
Then he starts talking about the Syndicate and how far their reach extends. They have men everywhere. They own judges, congressmen, entire police departments; they have men working in the FBI and CIA and border patrol. If I were ever to escape, they’d hunt down me and my entire family. There would be nowhere in the world where we could hide.
But of course, he says again, he knows that I would never leave him.
As he’s talking, I feel myself shrinking smaller and smaller. I’m weak, I’m powerless, I’m up against an entire army and I don’t even have the strength to stand. I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m ready to pass out from the pain.
“I’m going to leave you now. Get some rest. Think of me tonight.”
“I will.” That’s not a lie. I’ll be mentally playing out all the ways I’d like to torture him.
He kisses me on the forehead, then on the lips, with infinite tenderness. “My darling Natasha. I can’t wait until you’re sleeping in my arms.”
Matteo: A Dark Mafia Hate Story Page 6
