by Mariano, Sam
Knowing what I know about his family’s business, I doubt she’s so much a paid housekeeper as an unpaid domestic worker. I don’t know for sure, Dante never confirmed, but I know Mateo’s housekeeper is unpaid, and that woman is as devoted to him as Sonja is to Dante. I don’t know if the women are crazy, they’ve developed Stockholm syndrome, or the lives they led before were really so bad that being owned by the Morellis is a step up in life for them. Whatever the case, they’re indoctrinated, so I expect my exit will have left a bad taste in Sonja’s mouth that will be quite evident when I see her again.
Much to my chagrin, it doesn’t take long for the reunion to happen. When I get to the kitchen, I see the older woman standing at the sink, hand-washing dishes despite the top-of-the-line dishwasher installed beneath the counter. I approach warily in case she hasn’t noticed me yet, but my movement catches her attention. Sonja flicks a glance in my direction only long enough to acknowledge and dismiss my presence, then she returns her attention to the plate she’s scrubbing clean.
“Is he here?” I ask, my voice sounding rough even to my own ears.
Sonja’s tone is brusque with a hint of annoyance. “No. He’ll be home for lunch. You slept through breakfast.”
In the old days, regardless of her feelings toward me, Sonja would’ve offered to whip up something if I wanted it.
“I’m not hungry anyway,” I lie, seeking out coffee instead. Dante always had some with breakfast, strong and black, so bitter it made my toes curl, but there is none left in the pot for me this morning. Maybe there was, but Sonja dumped it out just to be spiteful when she realized I was awake.
I could be just as petty and ask her to make me a fresh pot, but I’m too tired to battle with Sonja today. Going to the fridge, I grab a bottle of cold water instead.
Since real breakfast isn’t an option, I grab an orange out of the fruit bowl. I consider taking it over to the table, but I don’t want to stay in here with Sonja.
“I’m going outside for a few minutes.”
“Don’t go far,” Sonja warns, leveling a look of censure over her shoulder.
“I’m not even wearing shoes, Sonja.”
I hear her muttering at me, but I don’t wait to hear what she says. Dante’s house is huge—not as big as his brother’s, but it’s not meant to house as many people so Dante doesn’t need an entire compound. Still, it’s significantly larger than anything a single family really needs. Sonja lives in a small gardener’s cottage on the property so she’s never far in case Dante needs something.
There are several living rooms, but I head to the one at the back of the house. Sunshine spills into the room from the many windows. Dante’s house is situated right on the lake, and from here, I have a perfect view. When we first bought this place, the lakefront back of the house was a real selling point.
The “back yard” is fenced in to protect the babies we expected to have someday from wandering down here, but the yard is so large it’s sectioned off. The fenced in, kid-friendly area is more of a side yard, and the actual back yard is back here on the lake, an adult haven. When I open the towering back door, it leads out to a massive stone patio off the back of the house. It overlooks the lake and our private beach, accessible via the stairs off the back patio. Two loungers are still set up where they used to be with a little table between them. Dante and I would sit out here in the evenings, talking about our days and watching the water. Sometimes we would go on evening rides on his boat, and it was so convenient—we barely had to leave the house to go.
Curling up on the chair that used to be mine, I alternate between studiously breaking off a piece of my orange and gazing out at the smooth, blue water.
It feels so wrong to be sitting here in my favorite peaceful place. I don’t deserve to have peace. Dante sure as hell doesn’t. A wave of exhaustion rolls over me just thinking about it though. I know Dante murdered my fiancé, I know I am morally obligated to be miserable and make him miserable in tribute to Declan, but I’m glad he’s not home because I just don’t have the energy right now.
I should have brought wine. Instead, I sip my water and finish my orange. I stay outside until Sonja comes looking for me. I figure she is just checking to make sure I didn’t waste my time and hurt my feet trying to escape, but then she calls out and tells me Dante is on the phone for me.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” I tell her.
“I don’t care,” she snips.
I roll my eyes but nonetheless climb off my chair and head back inside the house. Dante still has a landline. Sonja lifts the phone to tell him she found me—like I was missing—then hands it over. I feel a bit like a sullen teenager in the presence of a stifling authority figure when I take it from her and put it to my ear.
“What?” I demand.
Sonja shakes her head at me and mutters something in a language I don’t know. I’m sure it was insulting.
Dante’s voice is warm on the other end. “Good morning to you, too.”
“I woke up in your bed, so it’s not a good morning,” I inform him.
“You could’ve woken up in a ditch, then it’d be worse, wouldn’t it?”
“Jury’s still out,” I mutter. “If you’re going to make me stay here, I would at least like my own room. I know you have the space.”
“I do, but we’re not going to sleep in separate bedrooms, Colette. That’s not how this is going to go.”
“How do you think it’s going to go, Dante?” I ask him, leaning against the counter. “I’m not your girlfriend. I’m your slave. Just one more defenseless woman whose life you’ve stolen like it was your right.”
“Poor you,” he says, dryly. “Make sure Sonja gets out the mop to wipe up all the tears you must be crying all over the marble floor.”
“Money isn’t everything. You should know that by now. I’m as much a prisoner in this big, expensive house as the girls you sell.”
The line falls silent, but I can practically hear his annoyance at me for referring to his criminal activities over the phone. Even though I hate him, the sharpness of his voice makes me flinch when he snaps, “I won’t be home for lunch. Tell Sonja when you’re hungry and she’ll make you something.”
I don’t care that he won’t be here, not really, but since Sonja just finished telling me he would be home for lunch, I argue. “Sonja said you would.”
“Sonja was mistaken,” he states.
“Will you be home for dinner?”
His tone is entirely noncommittal, forcing me to earn company I don’t even want. “Perhaps.”
Gritting my teeth, I do my best to ignore impulses that have lain dormant for so long, I thought they were gone. Dante generally chose to be nice to me, but he can play me like a fiddle when he wants to. An unpleasant symptom of part of his job being to train women to want to please him, he knows how to dangle his approval in front of you like food in front of a starving dog, to make you crave it and him, even when by all rights you should want to rip his head from his shoulders. The Morelli men of my acquaintance are all very manipulative and adept at bending the wills of weaker minds to align with theirs.
My mind isn’t weak anymore, though. I swear it to myself, shaking off the old instinct. Refusing the temptation to worry that I’ve displeased him, the errant thoughts already skating across my mind that I could fix it if only I said or did some certain thing.
No. I am not his pet, not this time. I’m not here to do his bidding or make him happy. I don’t need or want his approval. I’d rather he got sick of me and realized this has all been a mistake. He may have wasted Declan’s life, but at least I could save the rest of mine.
Not that it feels like that’s worth much anymore. The guilt holds me under, makes me feel terrible for even drawing breath when I’m the reason Declan is gone. He was a lawyer, a protector of innocents, and now he’s gone so this vicious criminal can have me.
If one of us had to die for my stupid involvement with Dante Morelli, it should have been me
. I’m the one who made these choices, and no one else should have paid for them.
There’s relief in my cocoon of sadness because at least there I don’t have to think. I curl up with it as I successfully resist Dante’s attempt to control me, as I offer back an apathetic, “All right.”
He’s better at this than I am. Seeing my rebelliousness for what it is, he ups the ante by disconnecting the call without so much as another syllable. Displeasure sinks in my gut when I realize he hung up on me. I swallow it down, along with the vague sense of embarrassment. Sonja is standing right here watching, so she knows I didn’t say goodbye, but I replace the phone on the hook anyway.
A smug smile pulls faintly at the wrinkled corners of her mouth, like she’s satisfied that he hung up on me. Straightening my shoulders like it doesn’t bother me, I grab my water. I could go back outside, but all I want to do is curl up in bed by myself, so that’s what I do.
8
Dante
All morning I looked forward to going home to Colette for lunch. First time in years I got to do such a simple fucking thing, and she had to ruin it.
Colette used to love when I made trips home to see her. I always worked a lot, even more back then than I do now. Now Luca handles a lot of the workload, but back then, that stolen hour made all the difference. When she knew I was coming, she usually dolled herself up and made our lunch herself instead of letting Sonja handle it.
Now she acts like a fucking brat and forces me to avoid her.
I have to eat somewhere, though, so I shoot Luca a text and let him know I’m stopping over and I’m hungry. By the time I get there, he has one of his girls preparing us lunch.
“I thought you were eating at home with your woman today,” my friend and associate, Luca Delmonico, remarks from his seat at the table.
“That was the plan,” I admit. “Unfortunately, my woman is being a pain in the ass today and I didn’t feel like dealing with it.”
Luca shakes his head in disapproval. “Sounds to me like you’re being too nice to her.”
He doesn’t know the finer details of my relationship with Colette, but he was behind the wheel of the car that drove her fiancé off the road, so he knows the gist of our situation. Leave it to Luca to suggest that murdering Colette’s fiancé and kidnapping her was me being too fucking nice.
“I’m not being too nice to her,” I mutter, dropping onto a chair at his kitchen table.
“Yes, you are,” Luca disagrees. “She doesn’t fear you. Doesn’t respect you.” I don’t know if he’s looking to demonstrate what he thinks my relationship should look like or it’s a coincidence, but he suddenly leans forward and grabs a fistful of brunette hair, yanking the girl kneeling on the floor by his legs up closer to his face. “Did I say you could look at me, whore? Did I give you permission to do that?”
Shaking her head desperately, fear in her eyes, she says, “No! No. I’m sorry.”
He yanks her hair harder, lifting her several inches off the ground. As she whimpers, his voice drops low and he demands, “You’re sorry, what? How do you address me?”
“Master,” she says breathlessly, tears welling in her eyes. “No, Master, you didn’t say I could look at you. I’m so sorry.”
He slaps her across the face and releases her hair abruptly so she hits the ground hard. I glance at the girl, note her labored breathing as she hunches over and rubs her scalp, but she knows better than to abandon her position, so she quickly pushes herself back into the kneeling pose Luca likes.
Flicking a glance in my direction as he leans back in his chair, Luca says, “This one can’t listen for shit. Good thing she’s pretty, because she’s a fucking moron.” Looking down at the girl, he says, “Look at me. You’re a moron, aren’t you?”
Her cheeks heat with embarrassment, but she nods her head. “Yes, Master.”
I shrug and tell him, “She’s still pretty new.”
“She’s stupid.” Looking back at the slave girl at his feet, he tells her, “I don’t want to look at you anymore. Go wait for me in my bed, naked. I’ll be in shortly.” She starts to stand, but he puts a hand on her shoulder to stop her and gives his head a firm shake. “Crawl.”
I watch the girl clad only in underwear crawl across the floor and down the hall, then I glance back at Luca. “That is not what I want my relationship with Colette to look like.”
“Doesn’t have to be so cold. You’re warmer than I am. You have feelings for her, that’s fine. But she should know what you’re capable of. She should know how lucky she is that you love her, ‘cause it sounds like she forgot.” His lips curve up faintly and he suggests, “Send her to me for a week, I’ll make sure she’s grateful to have you when I return her.”
I know he’s not serious, because he knows what I did to the last guy who touched Colette. Luca doesn’t have feelings though, doesn’t understand possessiveness. To him, if it would mean training Colette to act right, it would be worth letting another man work on her for a week and saving myself the hassle. He is 100% not relationship material—a fact my younger sister learned the hard way.
“I’ll pass, but thanks for the offer,” I tell him dryly.
He’s not invested either way, so Luca merely shrugs. “The longer you let her act out, the less she’ll respect you. You’ve gotta let her know the way things are going to be, let her know she has no choice so she better get on board.”
“You’re the last man I’d ever ask for relationship advice, Luca.”
“Good,” Luca says. “Relationship advice sounds like something women talk about, not men.”
“Speaking of women, how are things going with the brunette with the big teeth?”
Shifting to business mode, Luca sits forward. “I was about to give up on her, mark her for prostitution since she’s not good for much else.”
“But you’re not now?”
Sighing, he says, “She’s pregnant. Hopefully the kid gets my teeth or it’ll be born looking like a beaver. I don’t know what they were thinking when they acquired that one. Low quality shit like that is for scrappers, not us. Don’t know what we’ll do with her after she pops the kid out, but just keeping her alive that long is gonna be a job. She’s mouthy, got a real bad attitude. Real pain in the ass all the way around. Might have to send her to Ivan’s house for a few months; if she stays here, I’m liable to kill her before she delivers.”
For all his internal flaws, Luca is a very well-made man on the outside. Strong features, a good physique, good teeth, very healthy. In all the time I’ve known the man, I don’t think he’s ever been sick. Women tend to find him attractive, especially the ones who mistake how uncomfortable he makes them for attraction instead of what it really is—when you encounter a dangerous psychopath and every instinct you have screams at you to get the hell away from them.
“The pretty, stupid one will be good though,” he tells me, looking more optimistic. “She cries a lot, can’t say I enjoy fucking her, but she may toughen up over time. Like you said, she’s still new.”
“Well, try not to get that one pregnant,” I offer, a bit dryly. “She’s got the right look and she seems trainable. We can get a good price off her.”
Luca nods his head. “That’s the plan. I use condoms with her, don’t want to risk it.” He glances up as the underwear-clad girl who was cooking comes over, keeping her eyes down as she puts two plates of food down in front of us. Luca grabs her chin and forces her gaze to him, uttering some three syllable s-word in a language I don’t know. The girl promptly drops to her knees to take the place of the one he sent away.
Casually as can be, Luca grabs his fork and starts eating. “You should bring your girl over for dinner one night. Maybe once she sees what her life could look like, she’ll be a little more grateful.”
I’d never let Colette’s life look like this, and she knows it. She might be pissed at me for ordering the hit on the lawyer, but I don’t think I could ever be mad enough at her to make her live in the kind o
f hell Luca’s girls live in. These aren’t relationships, they’re trainees, and despite Colette’s ignorant claim that she’s as much my slave as these girls are Delmonico’s, she’s dead fucking wrong. Delmonico’s girls would never dream of saying the shit Colette says to me. They know if they did, he’d throw them across the fucking room.
Colette just doesn’t know how good she has it, that’s all. Luca’s right. Maybe I should bring her over here one night, let her get a look at how much worse it can be since she seems to think she has it as bad as anyone. Curled up in fucking luxury in my giant-ass house while Delmonico’s charges sleep two to a mattress used by loads of girls who came before them.
I treat her like a fucking queen, and maybe she needs to take notice.
9
Colette
Dante doesn’t return home until late that night, and when he comes in, I pretend to be asleep so I don’t have to talk to him. I’m so lost in my misery, it doesn’t even occur to me what day it must be until Dante comes in the following afternoon, throws open my walk-in closet door, and steps inside. He emerges with a black dress in one hand and a pair of heels in the other hand.
Meeting my gaze, he dangles the outfit and says, “Time for you to shower and get dressed.”
“Why?” I ask, not moving from my corner of the bed.
He sighs, looking no more excited than I am for whatever this is. Then my stomach drops when he finally answers, “Family dinner night.”
Family dinner night. My blood runs cold as memories of the last one I attended wash over me, finding my friend dead and Mateo traumatized—or, so I imagined.
“At your brother’s house?” I ask, even though the answer is clear. I push myself up and move my legs over the side of the bed. “I have to go to that? Can’t you go by yourself? I don’t want to see him.”
