AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was seriously deranged. I didn’t want Valentino to leave me in his big bed alone; I wanted his arms around me and holding me close. My throat closed. I’d never tell him that, not in a million years. He was destroying me in ways Sean had never been able to.
That I cared about him was totally fucked up. His soul held shadows that must torment him at night. Or maybe he didn’t have a soul anymore and killed for pleasure as much as he killed for the mafia he worked for.
I’d heard rumors about the Agostinos. Ethan was don now, but only because he’d murdered his own father. I shivered. If the Agostino don was willing to kill a family member, what hope did I have for their enforcer not to kill me?
Valentino was loyal to his don, he wouldn’t betray him. I didn’t have a future. I was nothing more than collateral damage.
My lashes fluttered closed as weariness overtook all my thoughts but one. He should have let me drown.
When I woke I knew it wasn’t my present reality. I was seventeen again, and locked in one of the bedrooms of the monster who’d bought me. But awareness quickly faded as emotions sucked me in.
I had to get out of there!
Tears streamed down my face as I pried at the window until my fingers bled. That there were steel bars outside the pane and nothing but forest outside that I could see didn’t stop me from trying to break free. I knew if Sean touched me I’d never be the same again.
All I wanted was to be home again with my family, dreaming about my future and the life I’d have. But it was my family who’d sold me for money, and now my dreams were nightmares, my life and my future taken away from me.
A key scraped the lock to my bedroom and I turned to face the door with my heart banging frantically inside my chest before the man I hated with everything I had stepped inside. He smiled, the scar dissecting one side of his lips enhancing his cruelty, his clean-shaven, pock-marked face devoid of any warmth.
“Don’t be scared,” he said with a lewd wink. “I’m not here to hurt you. We can both have fun.”
“I-I don’t w-want to have fun with you,” I said shakily, looking left and right for a way out even though I knew there was none. “I-I just want to g-go home.”
“This is your home now.” His eyes sharpened, and I didn’t miss the cruel glint in them. “Perhaps I need to teach you a lesson so that you never again forget where you live.”
He slipped his belt free from his pants, his eyes now burning with equal parts lust and malice. I whimpered at the way he brandished the belt, at the way he fondled the lump in his pants as he approached.
“Please d-don’t hurt me, I’ll be good,” I pleaded. “I’ll do whatever y-you say.”
“Look at you, begging already.” His laugh was crude. “By the time I’m done your spirit will be crushed and your defiance thrashed.”
The belt whipped out faster than I imagined possible, its buckle hitting my ribs and a scream erupting from my throat before it as quickly disappeared as the pain lacerated all the way to my soul.
I jerked awake, sitting up as I sucked in unsteady breaths, my eyes hot and my face even hotter. I jerked back as Valentino seemingly materialized out of nowhere, though it took my brain a second to realize he’d been standing in the doorway, with the hallway light the only illumination.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said quietly. He sat next to me on the bed, his gaze holding mine. “You were having a nightmare about Sean.” He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I want you to be honest and tell me everything he did to you.”
I shook my head. “I-I don’t want to talk about him.”
His eyes turned steely, intense. “Everything,” he repeated.
My breath shuddered out, and I nodded bleakly. What did it matter? It wasn’t as though I didn’t relive the past trauma in my dreams. And though a quiet, intense fury emanated from Valentino, I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me. “Sean started following me in his car when I was sixteen.”
Valentino squeezed my hand a little harder, imparting reassurance.
I cleared my throat. “My sisters weren’t scared at all, they presumed some rich man was stalking them, but I knew in my heart it was me he wanted. That same black car followed us off and on for a whole year, before Sean showed up at our family home on my seventeenth birthday and took me away, bribing my parents with money to stop their outraged cries.”
“They were poor?”
“No. But they weren’t rich and were always looking for ways to elevate their social standing.” I sniffled, my heart heavy. “I guess Sean’s money bought them that.”
“You’ve never tried to contact them?”
“No, why would I? They sold me out, betrayed me.”
He nodded. “How did Sean treat you?”
My laugh came out as a hiccup. “Not like the princess you might expect. He used his belt on me the first night he took me away, making sure he bruised me black-and-blue before he raped me. He wanted to break me physically and mentally. He-he nearly succeeded.”
