by J. L. Beck
When she licks her lips, I focus on the path her tongue takes over them. “No. It should, right? I should be terrified of you, but you’re the only man who has ever taken care of me and stood up for me. I told myself if you needed to have your ex, that it was a price I’m willing to pay to remain safe.”
I tighten my grip, but she doesn’t flinch. “And what about the other way around? What do you think I’d do if I ever found another man touching you?”
“Umm…”
“Use your imagination, Angel, because I promise you, if anyone so much as looks at you, I will definitely use mine. No one better so much as breathe in your direction.”
“Yes, but it’s different for you. This is just a de—”
I cut her off with my mouth, slamming my lips into hers hard enough our teeth scrape together. When I lift my face again, she’s dazed and heavy-lidded. “You keep saying this is some kind of deal, but it’s not for me. I didn’t need to marry you if that were the case. Let me tell you for the final time, you belong to me, and if anyone tries to take you away from me, they will pay with their life.”
She shakes her head, some of the lust clearing from her eyes. “I don’t want anyone to die because of me. Not again…”
“Again?”
This time, she squeezes her eyes shut and rushes forward into my arms. I hold her and wait for her to get her courage up.
“When I was a little girl, a woman died right in front of me. My father, as you can guess, killed her. I was the one who handed him the gun, but I was too young to understand what he was about to do with it. Most of the details are hazy, but I remember the road was wet, and there was a puddle of blood leaching into a puddle of rainwater, and the moon reflected off it so brightly. All I could do was focus on the moon’s reflection until my father led me away. That woman died because of me. Rose died because of me. I can’t be the cause of any more deaths, please.”
I hug her tight and then lead her to sit on the bed. She still won’t look at me, as if she’s ashamed. “Angel, you were a child. No matter how you might have assisted in that woman’s death, you weren’t at fault. I don’t care if you stood over her and pulled the trigger. Your father was responsible, and I find it reprehensible he’d let a child feel responsible for that her entire life.”
She gives me a watery smile, and I continue, sharing only what Kai knows about me. “My father wasn’t the same as yours. Just as ruthless, to be sure, but he did his own killing, and he forced me to watch every single one so I could one day become the head of our family. When I refused, he’d force me, tie me down and pry my eyelids open.”
Her warm hands cupping my cheeks drag me out of the memories. “Oh, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. How old were you?”
I cage her hands under mine. “It was a long, long time ago. I think it started when I was four. But it’s in the past, and my bastard father is dead. We don’t need to worry about him anymore.”
There’s nothing more to say about him. Nothing I’m going to tell her, not with her history with her own father and my future with him.
I make a mental note to get one of my guys to research this dead woman. Any skeletons in her father’s closet are skeletons I want to line up in a neat little row to shove his way when the time comes.
32
Valentina
With sunlight shining in the room so brightly, I have to cover my face with my arm. It helps hide the heat in my cheeks as I remember how I acted last night. How I overreacted.
I risk a glance from under my elbow to stare at his bare back. He’s usually up and working well before I get up, but whatever happened last night took the energy out of him. His shoulders are wide and muscular, and my fingers itch to trace a path across them from the top of one shoulder to the other. His skin is darker than mine but not so dark that it looks like he spends any time in the sun. Right below his right shoulder blade rests a tiny brown splatter-shaped birthmark. I wonder if he knows it’s there or if anyone has bothered to tell him.
I lean in and press my lips to that spot, then freeze, realizing what I’m doing. It was one thing to touch him as part of our agreement, fulfilling my side of our deal, but it’s entirely another to crave his fingers on my skin and to want to press my lips all over him.
He stirs under me, and I scoot back in case he rejects me. He’s claimed my body in one way or another plenty of times, but I don’t think I can stand if he actually pushed me away.
“What are you doing, Angel?” he asks, rolling in the bed to face me. Before he’s even flat on his back, he’s drawn me into the curve of his arm. He smells even more strongly of the spicy ginger scent I associate with him right now, and I press my face into his ribs and breathe him in.
“As much as I’d love to see what you’ll do next, baby, I have a meeting with the five in a few minutes. While I can keep them waiting, we have important business to handle.”
He pulls me in tight in almost a hug, then hops out of bed naked, heading toward the bathroom. My eyes burn with oncoming tears, and I stare at the partially open doorway.
What the hell? I don’t even know why I’m crying right now. He didn’t reject me. He just has work to do, and I can’t expect him to stay in bed with me all day.
I swipe at the tears and lie back on the pillow, trying to get control of myself. I’ve never been a crier. At some point, you learn tears don’t make anything better, so why am I all of a sudden a blubbering mess whenever I think about him being away from me?
I drag the covers over my head so he doesn’t see me when he comes out of the bathroom. When the water shuts off, I huddle deeper into the soft bedding and listen for the sound of his bare feet on the floor as he walks to the closet.
“Why are you hiding, Angel? Don’t make me climb under there and find out for myself.” His voice is deep and edges with steel that cuts so sweetly. I close my eyes and fall into it, calming myself. Then I throw the covers off and stare up at him. He’s naked, standing a few inches from the edge of the bed, his eyes locked on my bare skin.
I flush hot and look away, unable to keep my eyes on all of him. There’s too much to look at, too much to want to touch. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
He crawls across the bed until his knees brush my hip, then he drags my chin to the side so I’m meeting his eyes. “Don’t lie to me, Angel. When something is wrong, you better tell me, or I can’t do anything to fix it.”
Tears threaten to fall again. “What if you can’t fix it?”
“I can fix anything, Angel, even death.” His voice gentles. “Tell me why you’re crying.”
I slap my hands over my face, knocking his away. “I don’t know. It just started when you said you had to leave, and it won’t stop. I did this last night when you went to your business dinner too. This isn’t me. Sure, I cry, but not for no reason. Certainly not for no reason I can’t do anything about.”
He gently pries my hand away from my face and holds them. “I’m sorry I can’t stay with you today. We have a lead we need to chase down before he moves somewhere else.”
A slither of fear works its way through me, and I’m grateful he didn’t say his name out loud. Not here in our bed, especially while we are both naked and he’s touching me.
I nod once and shake my head, trying to give him a smile. “I’m sorry. It might just be hormones or something. I’m still tired and maybe just need some more sleep.”
“Then rest today. I’ll check on you later.” He climbs off the bed, and I don’t even hide the fact that I’m watching his beautiful round ass disappear into the closet.
He’s beauty and brutality in perfect harmony. And I want both for as long as he’ll keep me.
I roll over and snag my phone off the bedside table. It vibrated a few times while I cowered under the covers. I quickly click through to the read alerts and find a new text from the same number as last night.
Suddenly my stomach is in my throat, and I can barely draw in a breath. All thoughts of him nude a
nd dripping wet flee my mind, leaving only naked fear. I open the text, but this time, it’s a video.
Instead of waiting, I turn the volume to zero and glance at the closet. He’s still dressing, so I have a minute. I hold my breath as I click the video and wait while it starts.
What pops on the screen isn’t what I expected, yet it turns my stomach all the same. Bile rises in my throat, and I toss the phone into the covers and race to the bathroom. I barely make the toilet before I dry heave over the bowl a few times. The video images swimming in my head cause my body to try to expel them all over.
A cool hand on my neck, gathering my hair, breaks me from the vicious cycle, and I can sag back onto the tile. It’s cold, and I let it cool me down, every part of me burning from fear, shame…I don’t know.
“Are you sick? Do I need to call the doctor?” he asks gently.
I shake my head. “No. I’m fi—”
“If you say fine, I’m going to turn you over my knee and spank your ass until it’s pink and you’ve spilled the truth. Don’t fucking lie to me, Valentina.”
It hurts to lie to him, and I don’t want to, but I don’t want him to see the video. If he sees me like that, he won’t want me anymore. Who would?
I shake my head and lean back into his hand. It’s wrapped completely around the base of my head as he cradles it.
“Angel,” he prompts.
It turns my stomach all over again to think about him watching that disgusting video.
“My phone,” I manage, unable to give him anything else.
He gently eases his hand away until he’s sure I’m sitting up on my own, then heads back into the bedroom. A few seconds later, I hear glass shattering.
It takes me a moment to heave myself off the floor, with vertigo trying to pull me back down.
He’s standing at the end of the bed, my phone clutched in his hands. There’s a broken lamp on the floor, and I stare at it a few seconds too long. It’s not that I fear he’ll do that to me, just that I wish I could let go that way, break things, destroy them when something hurts me. It must feel good. Yet I can’t. I wouldn’t feel right, no matter how cathartic it might be.
“Put some clothes on, Angel. We’ll have company in a moment.”
I cross to the closet and throw on a T-shirt and a pair of black leggings. Quickly, I gather my hair up into a messy bun and gingerly step around the broken lamp. A few seconds later, a knock on the door reveals all of the five, followed closely by Kai.
They survey the scene, but he hands Vincent my cell phone. “Get what you can from this. Then gear up. We’re going hunting.”
“But, boss, we haven’t finished our research.”
He glares at all of them. “When you see what’s on that thing, what that bastard sent her, and you don’t want to go get him as bad as I do, then you can walk out the door now and don’t bother coming back.”
I step into his side and cling to his arm, trying to take his full attention off his men, and put some on me. He’s always gentler with me when his temper rises, and I don’t want to see any more of them hurt.
“Angel,” he grits out between his teeth. “Get in bed and rest. Kai will be here with you while I’m gone.”
He stares down his men. “Everyone else, get ready. We leave in fifteen minutes.”
When he turns to face me, it’s not the beauty winning today, it’s the brutality, and Sal is going to feel the brunt of it.
I think about it for a moment and find I don’t care one bit. This is what I bargained my life away for, and I’m finally going to get the revenge I’m owed.
The revenge Rose is owed.
33
Adrian
I feel like a fucking idiot as I stare down the wooden dock toward the boats. Why didn’t it occur to me to check if his family owned a boat? Of course he’d want to hide somewhere that offers a quick escape. Which is why my team and I sit here in the dark, car off, as the temperature inside the vehicle warms up without the A/C on.
If he saw us coming, I want him to settle back down, think everything is fine. That the black SUV we rolled up in is just another asshole with a too big boat out here in the middle of nowhere.
I owed Diavolo big for this tip or his coercion of my ex in telling me. Either way, I won’t forget it if he ever needs something from me. With the object of this hunt so close, adrenaline is pumping through my system. I’m buzzing with it, and the anger is still festering from watching the fucking video he sent Val. I’m going to pluck out his eyeballs because he’s seen her naked without her consent. I’m going to rip off his dick and throw it overboard before I drag my knife across his throat. A quick bullet is too good for him. I want him to suffer. I want him to hurt.
It won’t make up for everything he’s done to her, but at the very least if she asks me, I can tell her I made him scream before I put him out of his misery.
Andrea is my sniper today. Her small form is laid flat on top of a nearby boat. When she gives the signal, we all climb out of the car and head toward his yacht.
“If you find him, don’t hurt him. That will be my pleasure. Hold him, incapacitate him, but nothing else.” I meet the hard stares around the group. Everyone is ready for this. I’m fucking ready for this.
We ease up the dock, our boots silent and steady. We’ve done things like this a hundred times, a thousand times, and we move as one. It’s why they are my five and no one else compares.
It only takes a few minutes to board the boat and find the hall leading up to the level he’s lounging on. I motion at Vincent, who will grab him and drag him inside, so we don’t have an audience. Alexie will find any staff on board and pay them well to take the day off. A part of me wonders if that’s what Sal did the night he attacked Valentina. Paid everyone to look the other way.
The problem with sinning is…you must be ready to face the fallout. I’m more than ready to watch Sal’s blood stain my clothing, my hands, all of it.
We ease into the bedroom with the balcony he’s currently lounging on. I drag two chairs into the center of the room, pull my knife from my boot and hold it over my knee, then sit in one of the chairs and wait. A few seconds later, Vincent enters from the balcony, dragging a struggling Sal with him.
I wait until Vincent has him secured to the chair, the entire time staring down the scum who thinks beating on women will make him more of a man. Or maybe it was just her he liked to beat on because he couldn’t fuck her like he imagined. Maybe when it came time to finish things, he couldn’t get it up. That thought bolsters me as I lean forward, bracing my elbows on my knees.
“Hello Sal, I’ve been looking for you. You are surprisingly good at hiding. But what else can I expect from a fucking rat like you?”
Sal struggles against the ropes, but it’s useless. He won’t get free unless someone cuts him out of the bindings.
I wave my guys away. “Secure the perimeter and give us some privacy. We need to have a little chat.”
They scatter as ordered, and Sal almost looks ready to piss himself and beg them to come back. If they only knew how much my men would enjoy helping me carve him up.
I lean forward, close enough now to touch him and trace the edge of my knife along the side of one cheek. My weapons are always honed, and he whimpers before the blood wells up and slides down his face, ruby red on his now bleached skin.
“Now that I have your attention, we’re going to talk.”
He swallows loud enough for me to hear it. “Ab-About what?”
“You may be a slimy asshole, but I don’t think you’re stupid. You know I’m here to talk about Valentina. My wife.”
I watch his face shift as he takes in my words, and his fear turns to rage. “She was mine first. She belongs to me.”
“I think Valentina would have something to say about that. She agreed to marry me in exchange for me killing you. And as you know, I never go back on my word.”
His beady eyes narrow, and a lock of dirty hair falls across his forehead.
“We can make a new deal. You keep her, don’t kill me, and I’ll find another wife. We can call it even. I lost something. You gained something…”
This fucker is actually trying to bargain with Valentina’s life as if he has any say in it. The air around me sizzles, red-hot rage pumping deep in my veins. I shift in the chair, stand, and then slam my fist into his gut as hard as I can.
He wheezes out a breath and hunches over. I take my seat again, crossing my legs, and wait until he sits back up again. I let my rage fester, swallowing it down. I’m going to take my time and drag things out. It takes several minutes, but I have all day and night even to get this done.
“Tell me something, Sal. Once you had her tied down naked to her own bed, why didn’t you finish it like you did with her cousin? Did you expect to be able to come back to the house and resume your engagement like nothing happened?”
He’s shaking now, and a wet spot grows on his jeans. Good. He knows it’s the end for him, and maybe he’s finally accepting it. Still, for someone so brave to hurt Rose and Val the way he did, you would think he wouldn’t piss his pants in front of danger. Then again, a man like myself standing in front of you is like placing a gun against your head and pulling the trigger.
“It wasn’t…I didn’t plan it. It was just…I had too much to drink, and I got jealous when I found her gone, and it happened. That’s all. What does it matter? She survived.”
Red coats my vision as I look at him. I want to shove his chair sideways and stomp on his skull until it gives a satisfying crack.
“She might have survived, but she’ll never be the same. Because of you.”
He breathes heavily now, barely able to keep his back up in the chair as I study him. Why on earth did her father think this man would make a suitable husband? Fucking anyone else would have been a better choice. Anyone. There are so many families in the society, some of them barely functional for lack of connections.
