by Lana Sky
The genuine excitement in his voice chills me to the core—though it shouldn’t. Hurting me is one of the few things that seems to arouse Domino Valenciaga.
That, and when I dare to step toe to toe with him and play devious mind games of my own.
“And if I’m not lying?” I counter, lifting my chin to hold his gaze unflinchingly. “What will I win?”
His teeth flash in a dangerous smile, his laughter coarse, echoing throughout this part of the terrace. “You’ll earn time,” he says. “Trust me, that’s the most precious commodity you can attain at a moment like this.”
Because he’s the one who decided to leverage my “time” in the first place by selling me. He’s the monster in this equation—I can’t forget that.
Even if I have to pretend to make nice with him long enough to earn as many precious seconds as I can.
“I think I know where you can start looking,” I say, phrasing my wording carefully. I’m not outright claiming to know where Pia’s body is—or if she’s really dead. But if he hopes to find something, I’m the best option he has.
All I have to do is see the world from Roy Pavalos’ cruel, calculated viewpoint. Where most men would see a plain, featureless map, my father would see territory ripe for the taking and various features to exploit.
As long as he worked for him, I’m sure Domino knows exactly how his old boss used to operate. He wouldn’t demand an answer from me if he didn’t think I was capable of coming up with one, either because my father told me or because I happened to guess.
Aware of that, his sly grin falls.
“I’m the best chance you have,” I say, risking provoking him by prodding his weakness outright. I can’t help it. For once, I have some semblance of an upper hand.
For a heartbeat, of course.
A second later, he’s on his feet, approaching me slowly. I shiver as he places one hand on my shoulder. His fingers flex, teasing me with a fraction of his strength, a mere reminder of the damage he’s capable of.
“Don’t think you can jerk me around, Ada-Maria,” he warns, using that same hand to brush a stray curl from my cheek. “I could kill you right now, and never even have to justify why I changed my mind.” He strokes a path up to sink his fingers through my hair, capturing a handful of it. Brutally, he yanks, so hard that tears spring to my eyes. “Understand?”
“Again, you keep hinting that you have no intention of honoring your own offer,” I croak, blinking back unwanted tears. Gradually, he releases the pressure, still keeping his hand against my skull. “Why should I even trust you?”
His nostrils flare, his eyes darkening as if he’s mulling over the prospect of humoring me at all. Too far, Ada, a part of me warns. You can’t push him too far.
My only hope is to reel him back.
“I want to trust you,” I force myself to whisper. The words fall flat, nowhere near convincing.
And yet, he laughs, amused all the same.
“I love the way you look when you try your mind games on me.” He lets me go and moves to stand near the balcony, gazing at the gardens below. “You get this pathetic, hopeful glint in your eyes. It’s fucking sexy. If I were a dumb cunt like the other men you’ve fucked.” This time the warning in his voice rings out loud and clear. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I am. For your sake, Ada-Maria.”
“I won’t,” I rasp, though I think I’m speaking to myself more than him. I can’t keep getting caught up in his game. I need to stay one step ahead. “So what if I do know where she is, Pia? Do you have proof that my father is dead?”
With his back to me, I only have his posture from which to discern his reaction. But it’s… Alarming. He stiffens in a way that has me bolting to my feet, readying for an assault from his end at any moment. I hate these volatile shifts in him. They’re like a storm that comes on suddenly with no warning.
“Proof,” he echoes in an unsettlingly deep tone. “Should I have his body dug up for you, Ada? The pieces, anyway. Or dissect the dogs I had the rest of his remains fed to? I’m sure you thought out exactly how you might be presented with such evidence?”
I’m winded by the grisly images. At the same time, I’m resigned, almost anxious to see them. Anything. It won’t be real until I know for sure.
Only then can I truly grieve.
Or dread the possibility that he’s been lying to me all along.
Without revealing an answer either way, he heads toward the archway leading inside the house. I start to panic, worried he’s about to turn the tables yet again. Leave me waiting.
Instead, he cocks his head, my sole warning to follow.
Eagerly, I trail him through the foyer, past my room, and into his. In neither space do I find any sign of Alexi. Is she still here?
I don’t have the strength to ask. He demands my sole focus, and every brain cell in my skull is consumed with him.
I hold my breath as he approaches the bed. Will sex be the next hurdle I’ll have to jump through?
No. He reaches past the rumpled sheets for a nightstand made of dark wood. From it, he grabs a small, electronic device that I’m sure wasn’t there before. He had it ready for this moment. Waiting.
“Here—” He hands the object to me—a small tablet with a video already pulled up on the screen. A white play button lurks over a still shot of what looks like a reporter in a newsroom. “Watch it.”
My finger shakes as I tap the screen, triggering the video to play.
Within seconds, I get my answers as to my father’s fate.
“Tragedy in Terra Rodea, as more details about a fatal crash involving mayoral candidate Roy Pavalos and his wife Lia, who was declared dead on the scene. Mr. Pavalos has been transferred to a local hospital where he’s still listed in critical condition…”
Thud! My knees hit the floor as the tablet falls from my grasp, clattering across the polished marble. It all comes back to me. All of the fear, and the pain, and the uncertainty.
Like a punch, the revelations slam into me, and I sob louder with each one.
My mother is dead, beautiful and sweet and innocent in the grand scheme of my father’s empire. I haven’t let myself think of her until now—I couldn’t. She wasn’t perfect…
But the loss of her guts me. I’m hollowed by the thought of never seeing her again. Never having her presence as a buffer against my father’s criticism.
Because he’s still alive.
Roy Pavalos is still alive.
And I wish Domino would have killed me himself.
Chapter Nine
I don’t know how long I lie here, screaming and screaming. Eventually, he must leave and return because everything goes cold all at once. Wet.
Sputtering, I realize that he threw something on me. Water? It’s cold enough to suck the air from my lungs, rendering me silent in an instant. My mouth is still open though, making noises that scratch from my throat, robbed of all intensity.
“You will have plenty of time to mourn later,” Domino warns in a voice so cold the liquid dripping off me feels scalding in comparison.
I watch, numb, as he sets an empty glass pitcher onto the same nightstand he took the tablet from. With his back to me, he rakes a hand through his hair, and I can sense the irritation prickling beneath his skin. This is restraint from him, I realize.
Because in reality, he wants to do a whole lot more than douse me with ice water.
The full extent of his cruelty—and his hate—feels dizzying to examine in full, now that I have video evidence. My father may not be dead, but in so many ways…
The truth is far worse.
“She loved you,” I croak, once I find my voice again. It sounds like such a childish thing to say, but it’s the truth. I think of my mother and how much she struggled over the past few months. A struggle I did everything in my power to ignore, from drinking myself into a daze to resorting to cocaine. I denied her when she needed me the most.
Selfishly, I think. Because I assumed she alrea
dy had someone to help her through that pain, someone more reliable than I ever could be. As much as he may deny it, Domino ran errands for her when he thought no one was looking—but I always had my eyes on him and never missed the days he’d take her prescriptions to the pharmacy. The nights he’d escort her from dinner when the exhaustion became too much. I used his loyalty to her to justify my indifference.
And he killed her.
“Why?” Tears lash at my vision, blinding me to everything, even common sense. Somehow I’m on my feet, launching myself toward him—but I don’t even touch him before he pivots, shoving me onto the bed.
“This shouldn’t be a shock to you, Ada-Maria,” he points out. “I’ve told you the truth from the start.”
He has. Maybe, all this time, despite his taunts, I truly didn’t believe it.
“Why Mama?” I rasp. “She was a good person. She never hurt anyone. She—”
“She left you at the mercy of a tyrant for your entire life, Ada. Don’t make her out to be a saint,” he scolds, but his tone falls flat. He’s merely saying those words, but they lack the hatred of when he speaks of my father, or even me.
“Why?”
“Why do you think, Ada?” His tone turns cutting and harsh. “She had terminal cancer, was taking enough pain medication to fell a horse, and she suffered the trauma of a ‘car crash.’ A papercut could have killed her at this point. Crying changes nothing. It happened.”
“But my father…”
That news report must be from days ago, I realize. Probably the same night I was abducted. If my father was in the hospital in critical condition, I doubt Domino would have been able to obtain his body in time to roast over an open spit.
“Still in critical condition,” Domino says, now facing the windows that portray storm clouds moving across the horizon. “Last I heard, the bastard is still peeing out of a tube and breathing with the aid of some very expensive machinery. The DA is still hot on his ass, though. He’ll be in for a rude awakening, dead or not—”
“So… You lied.”
I’m on my feet again, and this time I feel my palm connect with his shoulder hard enough to sting.
“You bastard!”
He doesn’t waste effort to restrain me this time. He merely turns, leveling me with the full brunt of a glare so chilling I stagger back in the face of it.
“Tell me, Ada, are you truly this gullible? Sometimes, I will admit that it is hard to tell.”
“You’re sick.” I’m sobbing in earnest, barely able to get the words out completely. The full breadth of his lies is mind-numbing. Insane. And twisted. “Who was that?” I demand, swaying on my feet. I have to brace most of my weight against the nearest wall just to stay upright. “On the spit?”
“Oh, that?” he shrugs as if I asked him about the brand of clothing he’s wearing. “That was a clever arrangement of pork. Very convincing if I say so myself.”
Too convincing. It strikes me that I honestly don’t know which is the lie.
My head is spinning, my throat constricting. The food from earlier jolts in my stomach, heavy and repulsive.
Purge.
The impulse is so strong that I’m already racing into the hall by the time he catches me, looping an arm around my waist. His strength imbibes that limb with the sturdiness of an iron bar, driving every ounce of air from my chest in one blow.
I wheeze, finding myself slung into the air, my legs kicking helplessly at nothing.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Domino growls, his voice emanating somewhere near my head.
I blink, finding that the floor is whizzing by below me, but I’m suspended against a firm, moving surface heading swiftly in the direction of his bedroom.
“No,” he repeats, dropping me without warning.
I brace myself for a brutal impact and land on something soft instead. The bed. Scrambling for purchase, I watch him approach the door and slam it shut.
When he faces me…
It’s like my brain flips some internal switch. Anger gives way to a terror unlike any I’ve ever felt. It’s all-encompassing and draining, leaving me slumped on my side as he advances.
“I won’t let you play the hysterical victim, Ada,” he says coldly. “Scream. Cry. Commence with your fake mourning—after you give me what you promised.”
Fake mourning.
“She was my mother,” I croak, my face still damp with tears. Fresh ones continue to fall, dripping from my jaw onto my collar. If I close my eyes, I could imagine them to be droplets of blood.
Though in all honesty, this is no different. I’m bleeding in a way that feels as real as if I’d been stabbed through the chest. Some of it is shock, I think.
To really see her smiling photo paired with that tragic headline. That makes it so much more real than having him taunt me with her death.
It hurts.
But if I’m being honest with myself, I’d admit that some of this emotion stems from another source entirely, one more primal than pain and love.
It’s fear.
My father is still alive, and yet Domino has kept me here for over a week without anyone coming for me. It doesn’t make sense.
It feels so much more unsettling than being faced with what I presumed to be his body, turning on a spit. Roy Pavalos is never caught off guard, never. He is never without a plan or some kind of insurance policy to make sure that, no matter what, he comes out on top.
What the hell has Domino unleashed?
And why?
“Did you hear me, Ada-Maria?” His voice intrudes on my thoughts, and I blink to find him watching me with an intensity that puzzles me more than the fact that my father is still alive.
“W-What?”
“Where is the body?”
Whose body? is my initial response. Then I remember…
Pia.
I promised to give him a place to look.
“In hell,” I snarl. “Where all of you belong!”
It’s the wrong thing to say. I don’t even see him move before my throat is between both of his hands, crushed like a stress ball.
I see stars. Death feels so imminent that I don’t even have the chance to feel the full extent of the fear I should be experiencing. I just stare up at the ceiling, waiting for my vision to finally cut out once and for all.
But he merely intended the violence to serve as a warning. Barely a second passes before he releases some of the pressure, allowing me to choke down the minimum amount of air to stay conscious.
“Think carefully, Ada,” he cautions. His voice shakes, betraying just how close he is to losing control. I’ve never heard him like this.
Unstable. Enraged. Unpolished.
“Give me what you promised, or I swear to God you will regret it. Your mother will soon become a distant memory, because I will put you through a living hell before sending you to meet her. Do you understand?”
I do. His voice alone conveys as much. He means every word he’s saying; I can’t deny that. Even as I pull back far enough to see his handsome face sculpted by rage, bathed in the gray overcast light filtering in from the windows.
I can see understanding dawn across those very features as I open my mouth and spit at him.
Wham! One moment I’m on the bed; the next, I’m on the cold, hard floor in a place that I sense isn’t the main bedroom. The lighting is different here, the flooring polished enough to display my reflection in pitiful relief.
I’m shaking; my eyes resemble black holes; they’re so swollen. But my appearance is nowhere near as frightening as that of the man looming over me.
He waits until I look at him before he moves, crossing over to an oval-shaped tub paces away. We’re in the bathroom, I realize with a start.
Which means…
I see his arms strain as he wrenches on the faucet, sending the water streaming into the tub’s basin. Somehow, I can easily read his intentions. It’s like our minds are in sync, one and the same. I know exactly what he intends to do.
<
br /> Kill me.
Kill me slowly.
Run! I scramble onto my hands and knees, my eyes on the door.
He’s already gaining on my position before I can even make a move. Cruelly, his hand latches onto a chunk of my hair, using it to drag me across the room to the tub. Then he yanks me onto my knees, forcing me to bend over the rim as the water churns below.
I can’t even suck in air before I’m submerged. The shock is more terrifying than the fact that I can’t breathe. All I can do is fight with everything I have.
I feel my legs kick against the floor as my fingers claw at his hand, nails scraping against his flesh.
He’s too strong. When my head is suddenly wrenched above the water’s surface, it’s entirely of his own will. I might as well be a gnat fighting against a mountain.
“Where is she?”
I sputter, more intent on breathing than compiling an answer.
With a growl, he shoves me down, and I’m under again.
Never, in my life, have I felt anything like this. My pulse is a thundering beat hammering through my eardrums, my lungs on fire, every nerve screaming, on red alert.
And yet, internally, somewhere in between his next vicious reprieve as he yanks me above the water, I realize that there’s no point in fighting. Let him win this round.
So, I make myself so limp he doesn’t seem prepared to resist.
“Shit!”
His voice echoes in tandem with a sickening thunk! Pain washes through my skull as pressure fills my nostrils. But this doesn’t feel like drowning.
It hurts too damn much. But then a flood of warm, hot liquid spills over my face, filling my nose and seeping into my mouth. He must be pouring it onto me, I realize, because I’m staring up at the ceiling now, choking on the substance that my brain belatedly identifies. Something far too thick to be water…
Blood.
“Ada, shit—” He grabs me, hauling me upright. This time, his method of suffocation comes in the form of a delicate, white substance that he presses frantically against my nose. “Tilt your head! I said, tilt your fucking head up!”
