“Get out,” Shane spoke the words softly, but with full sincerity.
“Things could get messy, O’Mara. You should think carefully about—”
Shane waved a hand. “Don’t make me repeat myself, Peretti.”
The other man swelled up like a toad, and his anger made his handsome countenance ugly. Mia had always found him ugly though, knowing what lurked inside the monster. “You might not live to regret this decision, O’Mara.”
Shane’s grin looked sharp at the edges. “I’ve lived to regret all kinds of things I’ve done, Peretti. Keeping Mia won’t be one of them.”
Aldo pinned Mia with his gaze. “You’re only making this worse for yourself, Mia.”
She couldn’t hide her repulsion. “Knowing what you want, there is nothing that could be worse.” Her words rang with sincerity and she moved closer to Shane. Despite the things he had done to her, he was the safest choice, and she knew he would protect her from Aldo. It humbled her to know she needed someone else to defend her, but a cursory glance at her stepbrother revealed his sick hunger for her had only deepened over the past few years.
With an angry hissing sound reminiscent of a startled goose, Aldo Peretti turned on his handmade Italian loafers and stalked from the room, his goons running to keep up though they had longer legs.
She sagged with relief when the front door slammed a moment later, but it didn’t take long for that feeling to fade. As soon as Shane’s hand fell on the back of her neck, she stiffened.
“It’s time for a talk, Mia.”
How she dreaded the idea, perhaps even more than the thought of submitting to Shane’s sexual advances without protest. One involved baring her body, but the other was a complete stripping of everything that shielded her soul. Her stomach churned with nausea as she turned to look at the man with whom she had made this dark bargain.
As she faced him, trying to arrange her thoughts and figure out how to begin once Bruno closed the door, she wondered for a brief second if she had made the right decision. Was it better to stay with the devil she barely knew rather than face the one she knew all too well? Only time would tell, and there would be a surplus of that. Now that she had agreed not to resist him, would he ever let her go?
7
Mia’s mouth was dry as she tried to explain the sordid history with Aldo Peretti. “I guess you should know I’d never even met Aldo until the day of the wedding. I’d only met Stefania a couple of times at that point.” Shane sat in his chair, tugging her down to sit on his lap with his legs pinning hers together. She couldn’t move. “I wasn’t thrilled to have a new stepmother or stepbrother, but Vadim didn’t care about my input.”
“Your father strikes me as a selfish man.”
She had to bite her tongue to resist the urge to point out he shared traits with her aloof father. “It didn’t take me long to warm to Stefania, but I never liked Aldo. He made me…uncomfortable.”
“How old were you?” Shane took her hand, squeezing gently.
To her great surprise, she found the touch comforting. “Twelve. He was nineteen. He shouldn’t have had any interest in me, but he seemed to go out of his way to try to engage me in conversation or spend time with me.” She swallowed. “At first, I thought he was just trying to be a nice guy and a good stepbrother.”
His eyes narrowed. “When did that change?”
“The first night he came into my room.” She shuddered. “It was my thirteenth birthday, and he came to give me my present. A secret present.” Nausea churned in her stomach, and she tightened her grip on his hand without thought. Mia winced when his hand tightened as well, and she realized he was holding back his reaction. She appreciated that, knowing she needed his calmness, even if it was fake, to get through this.
“What did he give you?”
She closed her eyes, remembering the horror of waking up to the sight of Aldo standing over her with his penis in his hand. “He performed for me, telling me I should be proud of how turned on I made him now that I was a woman.” She spat the last word, unable to hide the contempt she still felt eight years later. “I was still a little girl and terrified of the sick fuck masturbating in front of me. After he came on my bed, he left.”
The gentle brush of his lips against the top of her head was his only response.
“I didn’t know what to do. I kind of ignored it, hoping it had been a nightmare or something.” She drew in a deep breath. “Denial worked for three days…until he came back and did it again.”
“What did you do?”
“I was scared of him, and I was afraid of my father. I had never liked spending time with Vadim. Perhaps even as a child, I’d realized what he was.” Mia curled her nails into her fist to keep her voice calm. “He didn’t progress beyond that for a few months. It was like he enjoyed scaring me and denying himself. Maybe it gave him a thrill.”
He brushed his thumb across the knuckles of the hand he held. His voice was gentle against her ear. “When did that change?”
“I’m not sure, but maybe six months after it started. That night, he made me touch him, putting my hand under his as he—” Mia took a deep breath, still able to vividly recall the feel of her stepbrother’s cock in her hand for the first time. “I was terrified that he would do something worse, so I tried to talk to my dad the next day.”
“What happened?”
She lifted a shoulder. “He was too busy to care about what I was trying to tell him and sent me away. I thought about telling Stefania, but it was her son, and she was starting to get sick.”
