by Lana Sky
I withdraw just in time to see her eyes flash with interest. We’ve hit upon her favorite topic of conversation, it seems. Apparently, nothing gets a bitch to talk like her own fucking love life.
“This won’t work,” she says. She meets my gaze fully, and I don’t know if it’s amusement or despair that I see there. “Hurting me...it won’t work. Vinny will expect me to suffer.” She shrugs as if the threat of pain is just a messy business she’ll have to just endure. “He thinks I’ll die for him.”
It’s the second time she’s spoken like that. He expects her to be honored to die for him. He thinks.
“So, what doesn’t he expect?” I wonder. Arno certainly seems to be in the mood to try all new kinds of torture. The princess doesn’t seem capable of giving me an answer, though. She frowns, her expression thoughtful. I guess she hasn’t considered that side of the scenario. Her gaze drifts down to the ring sparkling on her finger.
“You’re wrong,” I tell her. “What Arno plans to do to you...” I trail off, shaking my head. Something that could be a smile shapes my mouth, and I watch her carefully to see how she reacts to it.
“You don’t know Vinny,” she replies, her voice steady and assured despite the tender hint of a bruise that’s already blooming over her jaw.
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to see those things happen to my fiancée—”
“He’s not human,” she counters as if it’s as simple as that. I frown, not liking the way she assumes that I’m not in the same boat. We’re all monsters here, I think, looking her up and down. Even her to some degree. She’s seen things—her eyes hold the scars. Whatever shred of humanity she may have once had has already been tainted, long before Arno’s men snatched her.
“Well, what would piss him off?” I wonder for the second time. She laces her hands together, seeming to think it over.
“I’d have to...disobey.” She frowns as if confused by the possibility. Her ring catches my eye again, and I can’t resist imagining what drew her to such a man. Perhaps the little princess gets off on power?
“Disobey?” I repeat, curious despite common fucking sense. She whispered the word like a prayer—one of those naughty ones we mutter internally, so the priest won’t hear—those imploring pleas for God to smite whoever wronged you. To hurt that bully on the playground or strike down a wayward offender with fire and brimstone. I knew those prayers well, back when I’d still believed in them, that is. “How?”
She shrugs, and her gaze begins to glaze over.
But I’m not satisfied, and I snatch for her wrist; she won’t fly off so easily. “Disobey how?”
She doesn’t answer me and rather than press the issue I let her go and reach for the camera Arno left. It’s small but easy to use. “He wanted a picture,” I remind her. A part of me bristles at doing Arno’s dirty work, but something tells me his men won’t let her pose alone. Intervening isn’t my main goal, however—once again, I’m fucking curious. Disobey, she’d said. As if the man controlled her by a leash and not a priceless diamond ring. When I raise the camera, and capture her face on the screen, it’s utterly expressionless, dangerously pale. With the wad of duct tape over her mangled ear and her hair a mess, she cuts a striking image. Despite what she claims about the man, a mad dog can guess the reactions of another mad dog—and there isn’t one alive who wouldn’t growl when another beast steals his toy.
“Smile, sweetheart,” someone goads from the sidelines.
When my finger hits the button, and the flash goes off, I assume she ignored the taunt. With the swelling shaping up nicely on the left side of her face, Arno will have a very ‘pretty’ snapshot, regardless. But when I glance down and scroll through the gallery something rises up swiftly, knocking me full in the chest. Shock?
The zombie-caricature of a woman stares at me from the camera’s screen. She smiles back. The grin contorts her mouth, plumping up her cheeks and giving life to her eyes. She looks like a party girl, exhausted but having the time of her fucking life. She isn’t imploring help or begging her fiancé to save her with puppy-dog eyes. She taunts him, her bitter smile a twisted message: I’m bruised, and broken and bloody, but I would rather be.
Disobedience, I think, looking up to face the woman in person. She entertains a much different definition of the word than I do. I let the camera fall back onto the table. A part of me wonders if I should make her take another one—force her to look pathetic—but I don’t, and she stares blankly ahead as if she never reacted at all.
I keep her secret and return to my place at the wall, watching her. Arno’s men are anxious. They loudly discuss what they’ll do when Arno finally gives the go-ahead. How many ways they can make a “bitch scream.”
If she hears them, the girl’s face offers no indication. She’s ice cold, her expression a carefully composed mask. I’d admire her if I weren't almost as impatient as the other dogs were. The waiting game had never been my forte, but Arno seems to relish making her sweat. I wish he would fucking get it over with. I want to see how the little princess keeps her head held high when she’s forced to pleasure an entire crew of brutal, violent men. Something tells me she’s been through worse, and I fucking hate the part of me that wonders exactly what.
Maybe an hour passes by the time Arno finally returns, his hair streaming behind him like fire. His eyes scan the room, spotting me near the corner. “Dante.” He doesn’t seem surprised to see me back early—his sighs, apparently more relieved instead. “Something came up. I need these assholes to help me...take out the garbage.” He gives the words a meaningful edge that make his men lurch to attention. I can fucking hear them sniffing at the air, eager to cut their teeth on fresh meat. “Can you watch her? It won’t take long.”
He leaves the matter up to me, but I shrug rather than answer. The little princess has stiffened up in his presence, and I don’t miss the slight slip in her otherwise impenetrable armor. Despite her shit about disobedience, she truly is afraid. I can’t decide if I’m amused or not.
“Dante?”
I shrug again and run a hand through my hair. The fingertips burn slightly, and I’m not sure why. “I’ll stay.”
“Good.” With one look, Arno musters his men into action, and they follow him up the stairs. The ceiling trembles with their combined weight as they march across the length of the bar and exit out of what I assume to be the main doors.
God help whichever bastard pissed Arno off today. The girl might get a reprieve after all. If she’s lucky, the worst of his murderous lust will be rubbed out by the time he comes for her. Though I doubt it will do much good. She may be better at hiding it than most, but her body can’t stave off the lasting impact of pain and exhaustion for very long. She’s already trembling, rattling the metal legs of the chair. Her skin is icily pale, and a sheen of sweat glistens over her forehead.
I give her an hour, maybe two, before she fully goes into shock—and she certainly won’t be laughing by then. The desire for something to pass the time drives me up the basement steps, leaving her there. She won’t follow, and I doubt she has enough strength left to run. I take my time when I head across the now nearly empty barroom to the counter. The bartender gives me an odd look when I ask for something “strong as hell,” but she tosses me a bottle of dark, nearly black liquor, and I accept it with a nod.
I sip at it while I return to the basement. Whatever it is, burns like hell. I drain nearly a third of the bottle by the time I finally approach the woman.
“Drink,” I tell her, placing the bottle down in front of her—though I don’t fucking know why. If she were stupid, she’d hit me with it and try to run. If she were smart, she’d ignore me. I can see her wrestling with either decision as her eyes warily scan the label.
“W-Why?” She asks.
I cock my head and shove the bottle closer. It flirts with the edge, only about an inch from spilling onto her lap. “Drink.”
Her fingers tremble as she clutches the neck of the bottle with one hand
. Her eyes dart to mine and then flit away again. She knows that she won’t find any comfort in them. She gets her reassurances from the drink instead, taking a small, pursed-lip sip. It’s fucking pathetic.
“Another,” I command, bracing one hand flat against the table, so I have enough leverage to position myself above her. To her credit, she doesn’t flinch or sink into her seat. She keeps that debutante posture, her fingers clutching the edge of the table.
Slowly, she reaches for the bottle and wraps her lips around the opening. She tosses the bottle back and almost immediately lurches forward, sending drink spraying across the table. Her eyes water as she sputters. I bet her lip is burning, along with her throat and internal organs. The little princess has never sampled good booze before. She winces at the taste. Then her cheeks redden, and I don’t have to prompt her to take another taste. This time she gets most of it down, though some trickles down her chin. Her eyes meet mine again, still hesitant, as she should be.
“Another,” I tell her. I mime drinking from a glass when she doesn’t comply and make my tone harder. “Take another sip.”
She wipes at her mouth with the back of a shaking hand. She doesn’t want to. I can see it in her eyes, but she makes a show of taking another measured taste.
“Again.”
“How much?” she counters. The defiance in her gaze becomes questioning, and something in me bristles at that. I’m an asshole, getting the sacrificial lamb drunk before her slaughter to see if she’ll make even more of a mess. Arno’s plans for her don’t faze me in the slightest, but when she takes her hand off the bottle, I don’t know what makes me reach for it.
“Drink.” I press the opening to her lips, ignoring the way she flinches back. “More.”
“W-Why—” She breaks off and rephrases the question, her eyes meeting mine. Probing. “How much more?”
I consider holding her down and pouring the liquor down her fucking throat. It certainly would make for one hell of a prelude to the main event Arno has planned. In the end, I set the bottle on the table. She’s not expecting it when I reach out for her wrist and manually curl her hand around the bottle’s neck. “Drink,” I tell her, my eyes settling over the blood welling from her cut lip. “Drink...until you stop feeling the pain. Until you don’t feel a damn thing.”
Something flickers across her expression as she swallows hard. I’m sure she’ll resist. I’m just about ready to take the bottle for myself when she lifts it and brings it to her lips again. When she throws her head back, most of the liquor is wasted on sputtering coughs as her body rejects the bitter taste. But when I no longer have to command her, I know that she’s gotten enough.
I think I hate him the most of all. The bastard with the blue eyes—he’s watching me even now.
The other men are mere dogs like Vinny. They don’t understand anything but violence and bloodshed. But he...this man is different. He’s colder. He’s calculating. He is a snake circling the carnage and swallowing down his chosen prey before the poor soul even knows what’s happening.
Though, maybe it’s the alcohol that makes me so angry. My head drifts. My thoughts are harder to grasp, and sanity is like a rudder, struggling to propel me through the darkness. The bottle is gone; I don’t know what he’s done with it, or if it was really there in the first place.
Delirium likes to play tricks on an already exhausted mind. My head is on a cloud. My right ear is miles away, and everything else feels like distant pulses. I can see my other limbs when I crane my neck down, but controlling them seems about as easy as telling smoke in which direction to float.
I can’t help feeling like this is his own selfish pittance; make the poor girl so drunk she won’t be able to feel her own rape. Hell, maybe she’ll pass out during it. Whatever helps him sleep at night.
Silly, silly bastard. Didn’t he know how impossible it was to sleep with the souls of others weighing you down? They whispered in your ear at night, right before you drifted off, and they haunted your dreams, turning them into nightmares. I haven’t slept in five years. I cease to exist at night. I go numb right until the exact moment that slumber takes me. Then, I open my eyes again, wide awake, and it’s torment.
On second thought, he doesn’t seem as tired as I am. He drank more than me, and yet his posture is stoically erect. He watches me unashamedly. He’s counting down the hours.
“Vinny.” I don’t know why I speak. My voice is a hollow whisper that slithers to the farthest reaches of the room—he can’t pretend like he doesn’t hear me. “Vinny. You want to know what would really make him angry?”
My tormentor doesn’t answer, but I know I’ve piqued his interest.
“If I willingly f-fucked another man...that would make him anggrrrryy.” My tongue fumbles with the words and then end on a sudden hiccup. “That would make him want me back.”
If only so he could kill me himself.
The man doesn’t seem impressed by what I’ve said. He’s un-amused by the unfiltered Daniela, but she suddenly feels desperate to have an audience.
“I would do it, too,” I tell him. Virginal Lynn’s deep, dark secret. I would take anyone over Vinny. The red-haired man. Any one of his thugs. The man with blue eyes.
Anyone. I’d deny him the one thing of value I had left. No matter how tonight ended, Vincent Stacatto wouldn’t claim all of me.
“I’d do it,” I say out loud, just to make it sink in. My confirmation to the universe if not to the man himself. Vinny would never have me fully. The thought makes me snicker, and the blue-eyed man pulls away from the wall, bored of me already.
I watch him head to the doorway that leads to the stairs. There he pauses, and it’s only then that I realize someone else is already in the process of descending them.
“It’s show time,” the red-haired man declares in a guttural rumble. His eyes burn with a sickening mixture of rage and excitement.
Slowly, my gaze drifts over to focus on the wall. I’m not here anymore. I see a stage...a cello. I’m playing Bach. My mind spins the invisible notes. I focus hard on crafting the melody, its soothing cadence. But I’m too dizzy. Words break through the song.
“What the fuck is wrong with her? Is she drunk?” The words dissolve into countless syllables that bounce across the room. My head throbs. A million thoughts and fears leak through the cracks these men have beaten and cut into—I can’t hide them anymore.
A hand grazes my shoulder, and I flinch. Then the entire chair is wrenched out from under me, and I land hard on the floor. My knee smarts. More pain joins the symphony of it that fights with the rising stream of voices for my attention.
“Set up the camera—”
“Where?”
“Any-fucking-where!”
I bite my lip to silence a scream and squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the room and the men who crowd it. I’m not here. I’m floating...flying...playing. Bach’s melody fills my ears again. My bow is in my hand. I can feel the tension in the strings.
“All right...get her clothes off.”
A hand seizes the collar of my borrowed shirt and tugs. I hear ripping. There’s cool air on my back and the laughter and jeers of countless men battle with my attempts to ignore them. My cello is too heavy to lift. The bow breaks. The music dies off.
All at once, I’m lying on an ice-cold floor, clothed only in a pair of underwear, which someone attempts to drag down my legs while they croon what a “sweet ass” I’ve got into my ear.
“Wait.”
The hands stop tugging, but the calloused fingertips still graze my skin. Whoever speaks...he has a voice that makes the entire room go silent. The roar of a lion is heeded by all predators. A part of me flinches in recognition. I know that voice, but my mind is too busy spinning to place it.
“Think...Arno...another method.” His words come in bits and pieces like the clues to a puzzle I’m too dumb to solve.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone and grown a heart on me,” someone snidely retorts, but his ton
e is cautious. There’s a true monster in this pit of beasts, and even this animal knows when to tread carefully. “Want me to give her back to fucking Stacatto on a silver platter?” He’s shouting, and I shudder at the words give back. I’d rather die than go back.
I arch into the hands at my sides, hoping that their owner will let his lust override any objections. Use me. Kill me. I can’t go back.
“...Just want...to think about other options. Use this to your benefit. There’s another way to make him pay.”
“How?” It’s a violent, bellowed plea that a part of me seconds. Tell me how. How can I win? How can I screw the Devil himself?
I don’t hear what is said next. The panting of the man crouched over me drowns out all else. He strokes me sloppily, grazing my hip with his nails. It feels like an eternity before another softly spoken word breaks the monotony.
“Your choice. Don’t say I never gave you business advice.” I’m unsure just what makes me peel my eyes open. He stands out like a panther in a jungle of weeds. Tall, broad shouldered. Fearless, he heads for the stairs as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. I’m just a speck on his peripheral vision, too insignificant to merit a passing glance. My eyes follow his ascent through the door and up the narrow staircase beyond it. Then the man at my backside shifts.
“Arno? We...we uh doing this or what?”
The red-headed man’s reply comes without hesitation. “We’re doing it. Who’s first?”
My eyes drift shut again. I will my head to float and separate from my body. I need to be far away. I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m...painfully trapped inside my skin, forced to feel every inch of the hand that dips into my panties and plunges between my legs.
Panic dances through my skin, riding the sharp tendrils of pain. My stomach, overflowing with alcohol, rebels. You’re not here, Daniela. You’re not here. You’re not—
