by Lana Sky
“Ah, fuck! Stop.” There’s a sound like that of flesh striking flesh, but it isn’t violent—more as if someone slammed a hand into their own fist out of frustration. I can taste it, this dangerous tension building in the room like poison. Then, a man somewhere grits out a harsh sigh, and it all scatters at once. “Let her go.”
The hand between my legs doesn’t abate its cruel, searching thrust. I can’t silence the cry that slips loose, verging on the edge of a scream. I can survive anyone but Vinny...anyone. But my aching body isn’t as willing a sacrifice.
“I said let her go.”
The hands recede, and I slump to the floor, trembling and floating and panting. My eyes open once again, and I see him there, lurking just near the mouth of the staircase. A part of me wonders if he ever really left, but his voice isn’t the one that put an end to the party.
“Jesus—fuck, one day, Dante,” the red-haired man snarls. “One fucking day. You come up with nothing, and I’ll fuck her myself and send her in pieces to Stacatto. Understood? You fuck this up...and Parish’s blood is on your hands.”
The blue-eyed predator accepts the challenge with only a nod. He is uncaring, his face revealing nothing. I wonder what he’s promised. What he wanted. Why the men are leaving, spearheaded by a furious red-headed man, who slams his boots against the floor with every step.
“You can leave her here if you want,” he tells the man, Dante, before pushing past him for the stairs. “But I won’t lock the door. If anyone wants her, they are free to have her.”
I shiver, pressing my throbbing cheek against the floor while I try to find my melody again. If anyone wants her, they are free to have her... I hear footsteps approaching me. They’re steady, unconcerned when I try to shift out of reach.
My new attacker catches me easily. He seizes my panties in a fist...and then drags them back up to my hips. The next second I’m in the air, and the world spins for a terrifying moment before coming to a sudden stop—only I’m upside down. My eyes open to a hazy view of the cement floor. It shifts and writhes right before my eyes like a vibrant, gray body of water. My arms sway, dangling before me like pendulums. I’m moving. Though, on second, thought it’s more like moving with someone. They’re carrying me, whoever they are, across the basement and up the stairs. My nose hits something firm, which I assume to be a muscular body shielded by cheap cotton. I inhale sharply before I can stop myself. A mixture of musk and sweat and alcohol.
She weighs almost nothing. I’ve worn coats with more give to them. It’s almost entirely too easy to carry her up two flights of stairs to the apartments. It’s a bitter sort of irony fit to kick someone in the ass; her weight reflects none of the burden that she brings.
I should have let Arno have his way with her. His men would wet their appetites, and Arno might be able to sleep a little easier. Nothing mended a broken heart like a bit of sweet, twisted revenge.
In theory. But men like Vincent Stacatto didn’t play by the rules of normal men—or even the average asshole who liked to think of himself as a monster. They abided by the laws of their own twisted games, and the technicalities were all a mystery to outsiders. The only opponent with any chance of beating them was usually one of the victims they toyed with for fun.
Though she may have worn his ring, the girl harbored no love for Stacatto. It was all in the way she spoke about him. She came alive, for once. Her hazel eyes seared at the thought of hurting him, even at the cost of her own pain.
Not that I gave a damn. Her pain meant nothing to me. After all, the world was a bitch with plenty of agony and unfairness to dish out in spades. Nothing about it was fair. Though, hell, maybe I just liked the thought of putting her little drunken boast to the test? If I willingly fucked another man...that would make him angry. There were plenty of bastards who would pay to see something like that. Though something tells me that she wasn’t lying. Maybe it was that hard, desperate gleam in her eye. Some might call it insanity.
I know that look well, too. I faced it every day in the mirror. I’d even grown to appreciate it for what it was: a cold reminder to never be weak again. I’d bite and scratch and kill if I had to—no one would ever control me.
The thought shakes a dark memory loose, though I push it back to the recesses of my mind where it belongs. She did this. My fingers throb, trembling beneath the urge to punch something. Someone. Rage paints my vision red, but then a pathetic moan scratches my eardrums, and it fades to the dingy light of the hallway.
Goddamn, she’s drunk. I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t puke down my back. I can hear her moaning, the sound aimless—though, on second thought, she’s trying to form words. They trickle out of her, garbled and meaningless.
“Shut up,” I tell her while palming the door to my apartment with one hand. I’ll be lucky if Arno doesn’t kick me out for daring to interrupt his grand little scheme. A part of me wants to take her back to the basement and leave her there for whichever horny prick happens upon her first. I toy with the thought, prodding it with more conviction than I’d like. I turn...
And then I’m staring into a mirror. The other Dante stands at the mouth of the staircase. He wears a hoodie that barely contains the dark hair spilling out from the hood—the first clue that I drank too much of Arno’s shit, and I’m hallucinating. He has my nose. My eyes. They even reflect the same hatred that I reserve only for myself and a few other choice bastards.
“So, you really are out.” He doesn’t sound like me, at least. His voice is softer with a higher pitch.
Recognition hits me like a punch, and I stagger a step forward. “Es...Espi.” The kid’s all grown up. It’s more jarring seeing him in person than only in a picture. Espisido’s taller now. Give him a few extra inches, and he’d tower over me. It’s a humbling, irritating realization. There used to be a time when I’d tuck him into bed. Fight his bullies on the playground. Kick his ass when he dared to get out of line.
Now he runs around with men like Arno. His picture is in a police file with my name on it. So much has changed in only five damn years, but some shit never does. His eyes narrow when I take another step toward him. Then they flicker over the woman I have slung over my shoulder. The half-naked, drunk, groaning woman who can barely lift her head up.
“You’ve certainly wasted no time,” he says. There’s a backpack hanging off his shoulder, stained with a million splotches of different colored paint. The zipper is partially undone, and I can make out metal cans filling the bag to the brim. He’s been out tagging, but his little hobby takes a backseat to the hostility lurking in his words.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I know what it fucking means. Fuck, I wonder if he knows...if Arno’s told him about his sick little revenge plot. If he knows about Parish. With a grunt, I set the woman upright and let her stumble against the door to my apartment. She flinches, bracing both hands against the wooden surface.
“The walls...” she mumbles, her accent strangling her words. “The walls are bleeding.”
“Quite the charmer, she is,” Espi says snidely, eyeing her bare back as she struggles to keep her balance. At least the theory that he knows is shot—the kid was never malicious enough to mock a dead woman. From the back at least, she looks like the average party girl who had too much to drink. I can only hope that he doesn’t get a good look at her mangled ear, or her face, or the blood that speckles her skin in all the wrong places.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I say, changing the subject while I shift sideways just enough to block the woman from view. I scan the hallway with narrowed eyes. Which door belongs to his apartment? How long has he scuttled in and out of the pub, trying to avoid me?
Espi shrugs, adjusting his backpack. “I know. Apparently, you can’t take a fucking hint.”
“Hey—” I take a step forward and grit my teeth, cutting off a violent remark. Focus. “We need to talk,” I say instead, sounding somewhat calmer.
“Talk?” Espi meets my gaze and scoffs. “It’s about five
years too late, Dante. I don’t—”
The sound of retching cuts him off. We both turn to find the girl slumped over on her hands and knees. She gags, but her stomach has nothing left to spit up.
“I think she needs you,” Espi says, nodding to her.
But she can wait. “Espi—”
He turns and races down the stairs before I can stop him. I start to follow, but the damn girl tries to gag again, making herself choke.
“Fuck...” I waver between the two of them for all of three seconds. Concern for Arno’s floor wins out. I’ll track down Espisido again, and next time I’ll make him talk. For now, I content myself with kicking open the fucking door to my apartment and dragging the woman inside by her arm.
I let her go the moment her feet are clear of the doorway, and she slumps over the placemat. “Get up,” I tell her once I get the door shut and wrestle the locks into place.
Her body twitches as she attempts to move. The only part of her that succeeds is her left foot, which jerks against the floor. Sighing, I leave her there and take off down the hallway, peeling off my shirt when I enter my room. I toss it onto the floor, and then I fish out another from the pile of my stuff in the corner. With it clenched in a fist, I kick off my shoes and switch on the light. It floods the room, chasing away the shadows and serves as a buffer against the anger raging a silent war at the back of my mind. For now.
The girl’s still where I left her when I return to the hallway. She doesn’t react when I toss the clean shirt at her. She’s still curled up on her side with her back facing me. That mane of dark hair encircles her limbs like ebony netting.
“Get up,” I snap, my voice catching on the edge of a growl. “Get into the bathroom and change.”
The walls have a better chance at obeying me. I nudge her shoulder with my foot, and she whimpers. A string of words trickle from her throat, but they’re impossible to make out. Clenching my jaw, I sink to one knee and wrench on her hip so that she’s facing upright.
Then I stiffen. Her body alone, that’s what I focus on. She’s got nice curves for a stuck-up little princess. Her hips are narrow but flare out from a slender waist. Her breasts aren’t too bad—not too large, but not nonexistent either. The curls between her legs match the same fucking shade of ebony as her hair. She’s shapely, though a little on the scrawny side. She has a mole on her hip. There’s a bruise on her thigh. A scar on her left ankle.
It’s wrong. It’s sick. But I ogle. I stare. I shamelessly eye every part of her body but the section that calls to me the most. I can’t ignore it for long, and true disgust is harder to swallow. The bastard marked her: seven indigo letters are etched into the skin just under her breasts—tattooed there.
V I N C E N T
They’re uneven and sloppy as if hand-carved. Some of them are a deeper shade of ink than the rest. It’s hard not to picture someone holding her down when she struggled and digging the needle in even harder as punishment. She guards her imperfection well, even when drunk out of her mind and half-conscious; one of her hands scuttles across her chest to shield the letters.
“Get up,” I snarl drawing back, though I wind up lifting her anyway. She moans when I drag her into the bathroom and maneuver her into the tub. Her eyes seek mine out, vacant and empty as I flick on the showerhead with one hand and reach for her waist with the other.
Her gaze drifts down toward where my fingers aim. Her lips move. Sound comes out. Da...dum...da...la... She’s fucking humming. It’s a frantic sound like the kind a kid makes when things are in danger of not going their way. I can’t hear you. This isn’t happening.
I snatch my hand away and turn my back on her, leaving her beneath the spray. Hopefully, some of the blood will run off her. Some of that stench along with it. Nothing spoils the mood like the aroma of pain, fear, and desperation—she reeks of all three. The stink floods my nostrils while I enter the hallway on a hunt for a spare towel.
I find one in a small closet, along with a bar of soap and a stack of spare washrags. When I return to the bathroom, she’s still curled at the bottom the tub, drowning beneath the shower spray. Her hair clings to her body, shielding most of it from my sight like a makeshift cape. She barely stirs when I grab her wrist and yank her upright. I can only force her to sit, but somehow, I manage to wrestle the soap into one of her hands and a rag into the other.
Her eyes are glassy, and she mimes the motions, washing more of the air than herself. Either way, I’m satisfied when the last drop of what little suds she manages to work up wash down the drain. Then I cut the water off and turn for the door, aiming to leave her there.
The fuck if I know why I don’t. Maybe it’s the threat of one of Arno’s men potentially taking his boss’s words as an open invitation to get some free ass. She’s safer in the bedroom, where I can keep an eye on her, than here. It’s the only course of action that makes sense. No one is going to invade my space on her account and catch me off guard.
The light paints a harsh picture when I finally carry her down the hall. Her face is a mess—Arno might have held back from causing serious damage, but not by much. Too many of her secrets are bared to me when I let her fall onto the mattress. The letters on her chest stand out in stark contrast against her pale skin. There are other bruises and marks on her legs, too old to have been caused by Arno or myself. The duct tape on her ear glimmers silver. I can still see it even when I flick the light off and take up a position by the door, my back braced against the wall.
Arno gave me a day. A day to come up with a better way to torture Stacatto. A day to avenge Parish’s death. Another day to play nursemaid to the little bitch in the black dress.
I sigh gritting my teeth and close my eyes. I should have stayed in fucking prison.
I wake up in the lair of a beast. His scent irritates my nostrils, though for some reason my lungs heave to breathe him in. I’m nauseated by his flavor, but my belly is a shriveled ball, devoid of anything left to force out through my mouth in protest.
I don’t know how long I lie there. How long before my eyes manage to peel open one by one and light stabs at them like jagged pieces of glass. I’m naked. Damp sheets create a shocking sensation that I can feel against nearly every part of my body. My head throbs, and it’s almost ironic—my fingers prefer the strings, but my brain apparently has taken up percussion. It hammers out an unsteady rhythm against the inside of my skull.
I can’t decide if I’m alive or if this is that eternal torment in hell that Bibles warn about. An agonizing few seconds pass, but I still don’t know which destination seems more appealing, Hell or Vinny? Then I see him. My vision is a colorless blur, reducing him to nothing more than a splash of shadow against an otherwise gray surface—but those eyes shine through, unsettlingly clear. Through the chaos of my thoughts, a single name comes tumbling out. Dante. A part of me scuttles away from it the way a roach escapes the light. It’s a terrible thing to learn the name of a monster. I’ll settle for choosing a made-up one to call him instead.
I blink until his dark features form into more solid lines. In the pale light that comes in through the window, he almost seems harmless. Lucifer. He used to be an angel, I remember. God’s favorite before he fell. I’ll call him that.
Lucifer doesn’t react when he sees that I’m awake. He eyes me coldly, and then he turns his gaze to the empty wall behind me instead. Broken women are such a poor way to start the morning off, who could blame him?
He sits a few feet away with his back braced against the wall. There’s something on the floor beside him. Two almost invisible cylinders...white caps...light blue labels. Before my mind can settle on an identity for them, he bats at one with the flat of his hand, and it rolls toward me.
Water! I lunge for it, bringing a million different agonies to life. I try to ignore them as I capture the bottle in a trembling hand and wrestle off the cap. I’m too exhausted to pull myself upright, so I tilt my head instead and allow the water to pour into my open mouth like a funnel
. More of it winds up dribbling onto the sheets than going down my throat, but I manage to drain most of the bottle in seconds. Before I can even choke down the last drop, Lucifer nudges the second bottle toward me.
I reach down to trap it in a fist while easing my body upright this time. God. The world pitches and sways beneath me. It’s like I’m on the merry-go-round my brother and I used to frequent as children. My throbbing head even manages to tap out a lively beat.
Staring down at the blankets twisted around my legs, I inhale. Then I bring the bottle to my lips and greedily take in every last drop. The moment I do, Lucifer stands and inclines his head toward the doorway that leads out into the hall. The command may be silent, but it’s no less authoritative than one of Vinny’s shouts. Come. Now, Daniela!
I glance at my pathetic, bruised body. I’m naked, except for a pair of black underwear that survived my trip from Vinny’s town car. Other than that, pale skin and numerous imperfections paint a morbid picture. I hate the fact that he’s seen me like this. His eyes have traced Vinny’s brand without a shred of emotion. If only I could be as indifferent to it.
“Come on.”
He’s impatient, lingering on the threshold of the bedroom like an animal uncomfortable with being locked in a cage, even one of his own making.
I eye the gray carpet while my tongue shoots out to trace my bottom lip and returns with the flavor of blood. Standing has never felt like a more impossible task. A part of me just wants to ignore him and lie here until these men finally settle on a use for me. I’m so tired. At least Vinny rarely delayed his punishment. Retributions for breaking his rules came swiftly—he didn’t like to play around with his food. Unless, of course, he was in a mood.
Setting the empty bottle aside, I brace one of my hands against the floor and attempt to push off that way. I manage to clear the mattress about an inch before my arm gives out and I land on my side, croaking out a gasp of pain before I can smother it. Lucifer watches as I grit my teeth and try again. God...the pain...I can taste it. The left side of my face aches. The room’s still air assaults the tender flesh there like a repeated blow. My eyes water. Focus, Daniela. For a second, I imagine that Vinny’s here, sneering down at me from the man’s position.
