I jerk my hand away and try not to let my irritation show.Alpha.It was the title Dino used, demanding it the way most men preferred “boss” or “king.”“In a world of mad dogs, the only rules are laid down by the fucking alpha,”he would snarl.“A ‘king’ is a just a piece on a fucking game board—not even the most powerful piece. An alpha is the fucker playing the goddamn game.”
For once, I agree with Mack; the little bitch better be worth it.
Gritting my teeth, I look for Arno, but I don’t find him by the cage. Or Darcy. The only ones left behind are Mack’s men, who glance warily from me to their old master. I almost consider tugging on their leashes and testing out my newfound role, but another issue takes the forefront.
I turn, even before I hear Arno shouting. I smell the blood first—fainter and more potent than Mack’s. It rides the air before I see the man Arno is leading inside, practically holding him upright.
I don’t think when I plow through the doors of the cage and straight toward Espi. My eyes dart from injury to injury, tallying them up. He has two black eyes brewing. His forehead is cut. His lip is split. His fingers are missing...
I suck in air as the buzzing swells into a deafening hum. Nothing can reach me but the hoarse sound Espi makes when he tries to talk.
“Dan...Danny. Danny.” He tilts his head back, just far enough to meet my gaze head on, and suddenly, everything is as sharp as if cut on a razor’s edge. “They took her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Daniela
My head is floatingon an ocean of blackness, but pain is like a rudder, steering me back toward my body despite how every part of me just wishes to die. It would be so damn easy to let go.
And maybe I could if the devil weren’t whispering in my ear. He calls to me—at least, I think it’s him. I swear I can even hear the guttural cadence of his voice, but when I finally regain consciousness, I recognize the fingers running through my hair with terrifying clarity.
“Welcome back, Mi Bella,” Vinny tells me as he seizes a lock of my hair, tugging hard enough to make me wince.
The brief, searing agony joins the symphony of it playing through my entire body. The lighter notes of pain from my previous injuries meld with the throbbing percussion of the blows Vinny landed. I’m nothing more than a twisted, beautiful melody of pain when I peel my eyes open and face the man who claims to love me above everyone else.
“I’ve missed you.” He runs his fingers along my throbbingcheek, careless of the open wound that burns a fiery trail there. “Look at me.”
I blink so that he knows I’m aware. I see him...and no sight has ever terrified me more.
“This...this was not how our reunion was meant to happen,” he explains, freeing his hand from my hair and placing it on his knee.
The movement draws my gaze down. I’m naked. He’s stripped me to nothing but bruised and bloodied skin against an ivory duvet I recognize as lining the bed of my old cage. With a terrible certainty, I know what he plans to do, even while I struggle to keep my eyes open—one aches badly enough to warn me that, in a few hours, I’ll be lucky if I can open it at all.
“Look at me,” Vinny commands as he climbs off the bed and stands before me. He starts to undo the latches to his pants, taking his time with every deliberate tug on the zipper. “Apparently, you have no issues with being used as a whore.” He sighs at that assessment: twenty-three years of waiting for my “virtue” wasted. “So you shouldn’t mind if Iuseyou like one.”
The words chill me to the core. Desperate for escape, I scan the edges of my room, searching for the familiar shape of my cello, but when I finally find it...the music doesn’t come to me like it used to. I can’t imagine the stage anymore. The notes of that old, soothing melody don’t take me away.
I’m rooted in place as Vinny frees his cock and starts on the buttons of his shirt. My mind spins, hunting for anything to latch onto. I’m a caged bird gnashing her beak against the bars of her cage. The cat is already tugging on the latch...and there is no escape.
Vinny starts to murmur to me, telling me how hard he plans to “fuck” me and which holes he’ll soil. I inhale, my heart quickening with fear as my gaze drifts to the ceiling. He’s already hard. I can hear him stroking himself, grunting with lust.
It’s only when pain flares through my chest that I realize thatmy fingers are prodding an aching wound there. A burn. Vinny must not have been able to distinguish what it really is amid all of my other bruises and scrapes, but my fingertips tread the path of every single letter. I mouth them all to myself in the end, whispering the devil’s name like a prayer.
“...until you scream, and then I’ll take my knife and... What did you say?” Vinny’s tone cuts me to the bone, awakening an old fear, but with my fingers still prodding my brand, it’s easier to ignore him.
It’s easier to sink into the cadence of my own heartbeat and replay a song performed on a more archaic set of instruments than a simple cello—bone, sinew, heat, groans. Lucifer taught me how to play him well. I can taste him. I hear him in my head, overpowering even Vinny’s shouts.
A stinging slap tilts my face onto my left cheek, and I blink as my vision blurs.
“Daniela.” Something sharp sounds near my ear. His snapping fingers. “Look at me.”
I do, still tracing the name of the man who owns me in ways this monster can only dream of.
“What did you say?” His eyes rove over to my collarbone and home in on the burn. He observes it more closely, attempting to puzzle out the meaning of the shapes that he first thought were meaningless. His eyes flash; someone new has tainted his toy, and his cock deflates beneath the strength of that rage. Thatfear. “What the hell is that? What does it say?”
I should cringe and keep silent. A part of me merely wants to escape on the cloud my memories of the devil represent. They encase me more strongly than any Bach suite. I could drown in his taste alone. But stroking the part of me he’s tainted makes me bolder. Reckless. Stronger.
“Dante.”
