“You’re not afraid.”
Well, give the woman a medal. I turn to face her, expecting to find her gaping at me wide-eyed. She stares me down instead. There’s no clue as to whether or not she’s impressed by how easily I blow off a man she seems to fear. In fact, I’d stake my life on the guess that she isn’t one damn bit.
“No,” I say, searching her gaze for any hint as to what she thinks of that. They’re guarded up tight. She’s not so brazen when she’s not in front of a camera, it seems.
“He’s killed for less,” she says simply.
“In front of you?” I don’t know what made me ask. The princess hides bloodied hands beneath her kidskin gloves. Maybe some sick part of me gets off on making her relive it. The horror. The pain. If so, the jagged emotion that runs through my chest when she flinches doesn’t travel down to my cock.
“Yes...”
I don’t expect her to elaborate, but she leans back against the fridge, crossing her arms over her chest.
“He’s killed in front of me before. Sometimes, he makes me play for him while he does it.”
“Play?” I clip the word, so it comes out less of a question, but she answers me anyway. It’s almost like she can’t resist the urge to talk—or at least do something besides sit and wait for the inevitable.
“Cello.” There’s a hoarse, aching note in her voice I can’t miss.
Cello.I picture two instruments resembling the basic shape of a violin, but I’m not exactly sure which is which.
“I taught myself,” she adds, and an unmistakable hint of pride colors her tone. “Where I grew up...we used to live near a community theater, and some days, they offered free lessons. My father was a janitor there, and when I went with him to work, I’d sneak into the music storage rooms and play when—” She breaks off, her lips sealing shut. Her gaze drifts to the corners of the room. She said too much.
“So, this man,” I hear myself say once she’s been quiet for over a minute. “You’d rather die than go back to him.”
She nods, though we both know that it wasn’t a question.
I feel my eyebrow lurch. “So, why marry him in the first place?”
When her cheeks redden, I expect the usual superficial reasons women like her use to excuse their own greed.He took care of me. He wasn’t always like this. I love him.
Instead, she swells up, almost seeming to rise up onto the tips of her toes, and both of her hands clench the rim of the counter behind her. “I had no choice.” The words tear out of her and echo off the walls. It’s the loudest I’ve ever heard her speak. The little lamb’s braying almost holds the edge of a growl now. “If I didn’t, he would—” She stops herself again. Then she cradles her forehead in the palm of her hand, and her body deflates, leaving her about two feet tall. “I used to run away. Before. Sometimes I’d break away in public, where everyone could see. I’d try to leave. Iwantedto run.” She shakes. Her voice quickly deepens to a moan, but she can’t seem to stop the flow of words that overtake her. “Then he brought me ‘gifts.’ Maids. Girls who could barelyspeak a word of English and were only meant to wait on me hand and foot. If I disobeyed him...he would use them to punish me.”
“How?” I know even before I see the expression that crosses her face that the bastard didn’t employ very orthodox methods.
“He’d...hurt them,” she says as if struggling to get the words out. “The first girl, her name was Sabina. He slit her throat when I told him that I didn’t want to go out for lunch.” She chokes on a strangled sob and then swallows it back down. Her eyes gleam. The memories may torment her, but she won’t let him control her here. “I tried to avoid learning their names after that. It was easier... And I tried. I tried to obey him. I tried to keep them alive. God, I tried. Itried.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” I tell her. A mad dog can only control its impulses for so long before the leash begins to chafe—a fact I know better than most. The sky could be too blue one day or the wind too chilly. If he feels the urge, a true monster can come up with any reason at all to take his rage out on someone else.
“H-he didn’t like my hair,” she stammers, proving my point. “My clothes. My face. My posture. Nothing I did kept him happy for long. And, when he gave me his ring...” She bites her lip as if to trap the painful revelations inside. She lasts for about a second before they spill out regardless. “I thought he might finally do it. Rape me.” She lifts her shoulder in a casual shrug as if the thought of violence no longer even fazes her. “God...a part of me almost wanted him to. Maybe then he’d finally grow bored once I had nothing left.”
She stares back at me, a ghost of a woman with soulless, empty eyes. It’s such a stark contrast from the vixen who starred in her own sex tape less than twenty-four hours ago. There is nothing remotely comforting I can say, so I don’t say anything. We merely stare, two dark, twisted animals who refuse to shy away from the brutality revealed in the other’s gaze.
“What about you?” she asks suddenly, like a jackal demandingI let her feed off the carcass of my own suffering the way I fed off hers. “The red-haired man. You defer to him, but he doesn’t own you. Why?”
My eyes narrow at her word choice.“He doesn’t own you.”
“I’m not someone you can own,” I tell her coldly.
“Vinny’s men are,” she counters. Her eyes dare me to prove that I don’t have the name of some master tattooed into my skin.
“If you haven’t noticed, I don’t exactly work for yourfiancé.”
She flinches, and I feel an echoing twinge in my chest that I write off as satisfaction.
“Who is he to you?” she asks, trying to rephrase the question, and only the softness of her voice keeps it from seeming like another haughty command.
“My brother.”
