Dimitri (The Italian Cartel Book 1)

by Shandi Boyes

  My eyes snap to Dimitri’s when he growls out, “If I’m forced to repeat myself, you won’t leave this room until your ass is dribbling blood like the bullet hole between Mitis’s brows.” He shifts on his feet to face the only solid surface in the room. “Chest flat on the desk, ass high in the air. I won’t ask you again.”

  Ignoring the tremble of my thighs—which I’m confident are shuddering with an equal amount of excitement and worry—I spin around to face the desk. Spit seethes through Dimitri’s teeth when I curl over the sturdy material. The high rise of my dress is already indecent, but my stretch to reach the other side of the desk makes it outright immoral.

  My butt cheeks are showing, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t force my hands to tug at the hem. I could use the excuse that Dimitri is towering over me, so even the spectators who paid top-dollar for a prime spot will leave tonight grumbling about bad seats, but what excuse do I have for the wetness between my legs?

  Unexpected hotness races through my veins when Dimitri lifts the hem of my dress, so it sits on the lower half of my back. He doesn’t take the time to notice the only underwear Alice supplied me with for the next four weeks are lace thongs, he just takes a step back, breathes noisily out of his nose, then spanks my right butt cheek.

  The brutal crack his palm makes with my backside verifies he didn’t hold back with his hit. It doubles the heat teeming between us and has me torn on whether I should sob or curve my knees inward.

  I’ve never been spanked before, but I’d be lying if I said it was more painful than enjoyable. It’s an odd feeling that rapidly explains why people crave it along with hairpulling. It’s naughty but oh so good.

  “Grind your pelvis against the desk, Roxanne. I don’t want to miss.” Dimitri’s voice has me wondering if he’s enjoying this as much as me. It’s hot and edgy and has me so eager to reacquaint his hand with my ass. I stretch my toes to the max, seeking the hand he’s pulling back in preparation for his next smack.

  I call out when his second hit has perfect aim. It doesn’t just add to the fiery burn racing across my butt cheeks, the tips of his fingers encroach an area thudding as fast as my heart rate.

  By his third spank, I’ve forgotten we have an audience.

  By his fourth spank, the fact this is supposed to be a punishment has slipped from my mind.

  By his fifth spank, I’m grinding against the desk as per his earlier request, needing something to take the edge off the tension in my clit. It’s buzzing like crazy, verifying my madness. I’m being used as a gimmick like my mother was, showcased as if I’m a dirty whore, yet, I feel the most alive I’ve ever felt.

  I’ll do anything for this to continue, anything at all.

  I will even beg.

  “Again. Please.”

  My words are separated by big, needy breaths, but Dimitri has no issues hearing them. He spanks me again, his hit so exquisite, an orgasm crests at the peak of my core, threatening to topple at any moment. I just need one more spanking, one more brief touch of his fingers on my drenched panties, or better yet, the quickest flick of his thumb against my clit, and I’ll be done.

  But instead of doing any of those things, Dimitri lowers the hem of my dress, demands for me to immediately return to my room before he pivots on his heels and exits the sex chamber without so much as a backward glance.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dimitri

  Damn Smith and his ability to reach me at any time.

  Damn foreign dignitaries who prefer to watch instead of participating.

  Damn my whiskey-soaked veins that had me refusing to listen to a rational thing my brain has to say.

  And damn Roxanne and her delectably fine ass.

  When she begged for me to spank her again, my cock sat so snugly against the zipper in my trousers, it took everything I had not to whip it out and plunge it inside her drenched cunt. She was so wet, every spank had evidence of her arousal glistening on the top of my fingertips. Even smacking her ass six times didn’t see its redness overtake the wanton heat on her cheeks. She wasn’t embarrassed I was punishing her in a room full of spectators, she was too turned on to care we had an audience.

  Roxanne’s non-existent morals had me wanting to forget my objectives. I almost took her right on the desk, as destitute of standards as her greedy cunt. If Smith’s desolate tone hadn’t snapped me from my trance, I guarantee my cock would be coated in her juices right now. I only went into the sex pod because of the urgency in his tone, just like I left it for the exact same reason.

  He doesn’t interrupt me unless it’s urgent. Saving Roxanne from a man who’d cut her up like an animal was urgent. It better be the same case this time around as my patience is stretched as thin as the thread struggling to hold my cock’s reaction to Roxanne’s moans.

  My fucking God, my cock twitches just recalling how delicious they sounded. They’re as delectable as the scent of her skin mingled with mine, and the very reason I need to put more distance between us than I have the past three days.

  Pulling Roxanne into my chest four days ago was one of the stupidest things I’ve done. Ever since then, instead of my focus remaining on freeing Fien from her nightmare, it continuously shifts to ways I can eradicate Roxanne’s. I’m not prioritizing my time on the right person, and the injustice is both souring my mood and worsening my daughter’s chance of survival.

  That’s why I stepped into the room with guns blazing. I was mid-conversation with a man who knows the whereabouts of every gangbanger in the country when Smith updated me on Roxanne’s location. I tried to tell myself she’s a big girl who can get herself out of the riskiest exchange, but the longer the movie on how that would go down rolled through my head, the higher my blood pressure spiked.

  It was within danger territory, only two stomps away from the man who could possibly know Roberto’s location, and it wasn’t going to settle until I took my annoyance out on the person responsible for its incline.

  A public spanking seemed like the ideal punishment.

  Roxanne’s multiple sketchpads should have told me differently.

  If I was being honest, I’d say a part of me knew how she’d reply to my arrogance. Her willingness to please would usually stop my eagerness in its tracks. However, there have been a handful of times my cock has overruled my head. Roxanne has been in the picture for every one of those days, so who’s to say it wouldn’t have been the same this time around?

  “Roxie was right—”

  I hold my finger in the air, halting Smith’s update midsentence before shifting my eyes to Rocco. He’s standing in the corner of the command center. His fists are clenched at his sides, and his jaw is tight, wrongly believing I used Roxanne’s fucked-up childhood against her. He’s all for fucking, has been from the age of thirteen, but if it involves marking a woman’s body with anything but his cum, it’s a no-go for him.

  He wasn’t up in the viewing chambers watching Roxanne’s punishment firsthand, but Smith has eyes and ears over every inch of this compound, meaning he didn’t need to be in the room with me to get a bird’s-eye view of Roxanne’s punishment. He just needed to hack into the camera in the button of my shirt.

  The tightness of Rocco’s jaw slackens when I say, “Make sure Roxanne gets to her room in one piece. I’ll be up to check on her in a bit.” I don’t know why I added the last half of my statement. Most likely as a warning to Rocco that he won’t have time to nurture her like he’s hoping.

  It won’t stop him from ribbing me about the possibility, though. “Want me to rub some cream into her welts for you, too?” He doesn’t wait for my growl to work its way up my chest. He just smirks, gives me a one-finger salute, then exits the room with a pompous flare I usually relish more than hate.

  It doesn’t have the same effect tonight. I’m hard, pissed as fuck, and fighting not to shake off my funk with a few lines of coke and an endless number of whores. Returning to the drug-fucked idiot I was before I became a father won’t help anyone
, but some days, I wonder if it would make life a little easier to take.

  Do you have any idea how gutting it is to know your enemies have been fucking you in the ass for almost two years? Weak. Pathetic. An incapable man. There are a few words I’d use to describe myself when the negativity enters my mind with a refusal to leave until I’ve killed a man. Considering it’s almost daily lately, you can imagine how high my death count now sits. Trying my hardest not to become the monster my father wanted me to be, sees me becoming exactly that.

  After working my jaw side to side, I shift my focus back to Smith—for the most part. “Put Roxanne’s room up onto the main feed.” It’s playing on a smaller monitor on my left as it has been the past three nights, but I want to avoid eyestrain while stalking her to see if goosebumps prickle her skin when Rocco is within sniffing distance. They’ve become close the past three days, and I don’t fucking like it. It agitates me to no end, much like my continuously deviating mind.

  “What was Roxanne right about?” My clipped tone warns Smith I’m at the end of my teether. If his findings tonight aren’t associated with Fien, we will exchange blows. No fear.

  My attitude gets sliced in half when Smith replies, “Roberto. He was at Joops like Roxie said.” He twists his laptop screen around to face me. It has a still image of a much older and fatter Roberto on the screen. Just like Roxanne’s composite drawing, I’m confident it’s him. “As you know, we couldn’t get anything off the restaurant’s surveillance cameras. They were wiped before you realized Audrey had left your side.” His comment isn’t an underhanded swipe at my stupidity, he doesn’t do anything underhandedly, he’s merely relaying the facts as he sees them. “I worked credit card transactions for Joops. I didn’t get anything significant, so I shifted my focus to cell phones.”

  “Which also came up blank?” I interrupt, pushing him along. We’re having this conversation with my dick pressed up against the zipper in my trousers. The sooner it’s over, the better it will be for all involved, and I’m not going to mention the jumping of my blood pressure from watching Roxanne’s arrival to her room. Rocco doesn’t drop her off and leave, he walks her inside like they’re returning from an intimate date. It frustrates me more than it should, but there’s no denying the obvious.

  Even Smith has noticed a change in my temperament. He tugs at the collar of his shirt as if his temperature is rising as rapidly as mine before moving at a steadier pace. “Yeah, they didn’t come back with anything either, but I was working off pings for pre-2010 circuit phones, assuming not even six-year-olds get around with flip phones these days. I should have realized the rules don’t apply for some people.” He tosses an outdated and cracked phone onto the desk between us before nudging his head to a bank of monitors on my right.

  This kills me to admit, but it takes me a good three to four seconds to shift my eyes from the monitor broadcasting Roxanne’s room to the one Smith wants me to look at. Roxanne and Rocco are moving toward the bathroom—the only room in this compound without a motion-activated camera.

  When a bloody and bruised man bound to a rickety chair in a dungeon-like room confronts me, my annoyance deepens. Rocco wouldn’t have roughed-up Roxanne’s dad unless he has some sort of feelings for her. He gave me that exact same line when I ordered for Ian’s whereabouts to be unearthed. This is what I meant when I said Roxanne is distracting me from what really matters. The absence of the two men I sent out to bring her father in was barely felt, but the time I put Smith on the case to discover his current location was most certainly noticeable. Every second he hunted the demon of Roxanne’s past added a second to my daughter’s captivity.

  Can you understand now why I can’t tell which way is up?

  “What did you find on Ian’s phone?”

  With the smile of a man at the top of his game, Smith nudges his head to Roberto’s photo. I’m about to ask for further information, but within two keystrokes, Roberto’s blurred image zooms out until he’s nothing but a speckle in the background, and Roxanne’s big green eyes take up a majority of the screen. Because she cried off most of the gunk she had coating her lashes, the greenness of her eyes is mesmerizing.

  “Who did he send that to?” The image is attached to an outgoing text message. I don’t give a fuck who may have seen Roberto in the background of this image, it’s the text attached I’m getting worked up about. He’s offering his daughter for sale, asking how much he can get for her since she’s reached prime breeding age. It appears as if Roxanne was only spared because his purchaser was too slow with his calculations. His offer of fifty thousand dollars was received two minutes after Roxanne’s teary exit.

  I feel as if our search is going in circles when Smith replies, “It was a burner phone, but its last ping was off a cell tower a few miles out of Ravenshoe.”

  “Did Ian receive a down payment for Roxanne? A contract? Anything we can seek similarities from?” The fact Ian said ‘breeding age’ has my interests immensely piqued. It could be a coincidence my wife was taken when she was eight months pregnant, but Roxanne’s constant thrust into my life the past two years has me looking at any angle.

  Smith slumps low into his chair. “Not a thing. He either had an attack of the conscience or…” His words trail off as aware as me that Roxanne’s father would have only pulled out of negotiations if a better offer was placed on the table.

  “Where’s Roxanne’s mother?”

  Air hisses between Smith’s teeth as he shrugs. “If she’s still alive, she’s clever at hiding her tracks.”

  “Or making tracks that don’t require a credit card.”

  Smith jerks up his chin, agreeing with me.

  After a beat, I shift the direction of his focus for the third time this week. Although it appears as if I’ve got him working on the ghosts of Roxanne’s past, this will benefit Fien as much as it will Roxanne, so I’m okay with it. “Find Sailor’s last movements. As much as we wish it were different, no one just disappears. Everyone leaves tracks. Center your focus around the time of Roxanne’s meeting with her father. I don’t care how much of a deadbeat she was, no mother would sit on the sidelines when her daughter pops up on the radar for the first time in almost a decade. She was either at that restaurant watching or fighting for the chance.”

  Smith twists his lips, shocked he hadn’t considered that angle. I give his slip-up some leeway. He isn’t a parent, so he shouldn’t be expected to think like one.

  “And him?” He once again nudges his head to Roxanne’s father, Ian. “Rocco made him shit his pants. If we don’t do something soon, the guests might start complaining. That’s the last thing we want. They already have their knickers in a twist from having the location of their ‘working holiday’ changed last minute.”

  I take another moment to ponder. It does little to ease the tick of my jaw. “Send Clover down to pay him a visit. Tell him not to kill him. Just drive him to the brink of death. He hurt Roxanne, so, at the end of the day, it’s up to her whether she wants him dead or not.” I wasn’t supposed to articulate my last sentence, but I’m glad I couldn’t hold back. It felt good passing the responsible baton to another person even if it was for only a second.

  “Before you go,” Smith says just before I dart through the door as fast as I barreled through it only minutes ago. Roxanne and Rocco are still in the bathroom. It has me super eager to leave, although not as eager as I am to pummel someone when Smith adds, “I know you want my focus on Roberto, but something in your father’s schedule deserves mentioning.”

  I hadn’t meant for my quest to find Roberto to diminish his inquiries on my father. His shadiness deserves more than a once-over.

  When I lift my chin encouraging Smith to continue, he hands me a sheet of paper. “A credit card scanned at Slice of Salt the night Audrey was taken was used to buy a ticket to an event your father is hosting. I didn’t think much of it until I noticed the recipient’s address. She’s originally from Ravenshoe.”

  “She? The purchaser is
a female?”

  When an agreeing hum vibrates his lips, I scan the name of the person attached to the credit card search. Usually, we immediately discount any women who come up in our searches. However, Roxanne’s comment from days ago still rings in my ears. It’s right up where her begging moans will now be. “Because your daughter’s captor is a woman.”

  “Get me tickets to this event.”

  As his fingers tap on his keyboard, a smile tugs on Smith’s lips. The reasoning behind his smirk smacks into me like a wayward missile when he asks, “The event is a couples-only event. Would you like me to put Roxanne’s name down as your plus one?”

  My eyes dart between the feed from Roxanne’s room, the dingy one holding her father captive, and the last still image I have of Fien before I shake my head. “I’ll call in a favor with a friend.” I can’t have Roxanne distracting me like she did tonight, so for that reason, and that reason alone, I have to pull back the reins of our ruse.

  It could be my raging heart having me mishear Smith, but I swear he says, “It’s your funeral,” as I bolt out the door of his wired-up hot box.

  My first thought is to race up to Roxanne’s room to see what the fuck she and Rocco have been doing in the bathroom the past ten minutes, but my blood is too hot to give that thought proper consideration. I’m seeking answers, and since only one person can give them to me, I take a left at the base of the stairs instead of climbing them.

  Smith wasn’t lying when he said our guests would soon start complaining about the smell coming from the basement. The man bound to a chair in front of the boiler is in desperate need of a shower. He stinks like shit, piss, and vomit, and once I’m done with him, he’ll also smell like death.

  I’ve paid millions of dollars to keep my daughter safe.

  He tried to sell his for fifty-thousand.

  That means we can’t be friends, and I’m more than happy to show him how I treat people I don’t class as friends.