Page 70 of The Rook’s Obsession

“I am very disappointed in you,” I grunt, shaking my head. “I don’t even want to look at you.”

He gets up on his knees, whining, panting. And now, much to my horror, I find him getting hard. He’s sniffing, nudging my knee with his nose, running his nose down the length of my calf. It takes everything I have not to shudder and move away. Instead, I allow every ounce of disgust to leak into my voice when I ask, “What is it you want? What do you think I’m going to let you do when you’re such a filthy, naughty boy, who relieves himself in a corner without permission? What do you think I’ll let you do?”

He shows me by getting up on his knees again, one of them on either side of my right foot until he’s basically straddling my leg.

Then he starts to hump. Breathing hard, heavy, fast. Moving his hips, grinding his dick against my leg the way a dog would.

And that’s what does it. I angle my body to make sure the camera picks up every humiliating moment until finally, I can’t take it anymore. “No!” I shout, kicking him away with my other foot. “No! Only good boys get to come, and you’re not a good boy. You are very, very bad, and you are being punished for it. I want you to think about that the next time you decide to be so filthy and naughty. You make me sick.”

And that’s the truth. He does. Not because of this, but because of who he is. Because of everything else. If anything, I’m glad this gave me the opportunity to tell him exactly how I feel about him, even if this is just a role.

I can’t look at him for another second. I drop the leash, then walk toward the door, turning to look back at him one more time to make sure he’s picked up on camera. “I want you to think about what you’ve done,” I snap coldly, the way I’m sure he likes it. “And maybe next time, if you’re a good boy, I’ll let you have what you want. But not tonight, you filthy beast.”

For all I know, he’ll jerk off once I’ve left the room. For all I know, that’s exactly how this was supposed to end.

Really, I can’t be bothered to find out. There’s only so much I can take, and I’ve reached my breaking point.

“You did well,” Nick tells me once I’m on the other side of the door, almost frozen in a daze.

I hope I did. I hope it was enough. Because honestly, I doubt I could ever go through that again. Maybe with anyone else, but not with a man I used to respect and fear in equal measure.

NICK

The night air hits me like a slap when I step outside, but it’s a welcome one. After hours in that place with the dim lighting and the leather and the lack of windows, the open street feels like surfacing from deep water. Milan at midnight is cool and damp. The cobblestones are slick with the kind of mist that isn’t quite rain. I take a breath that reaches the bottom of my lungs for the first time since I walked through that black door.

Ivy is already outside, waiting for me. She stripped the wig off in the dressing room and scrubbed most of the heavy makeup away, though traces of it are still visible around her eyes. Her black hair is loose on her shoulders. The corset is hidden under her long coat, buttoned to the throat. The mask is gone.

She looks like herself, which is of course the point.

“The feed uploaded while you were in the room,” I tell her, checking my phone one last time. The footage—every stomach-turning second of it—is sitting on a secure, encrypted server which Liam’s people set up before we left the States. There are redundant backups in three separate locations. A dead man’s switch is tied to both our names. If either of us fails to check in within a forty-eight-hour window, the footage goes live. Sent to every major news outlet in Italy, every family associate on the list Gabriel provided, and every law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over organized crime in southern Europe.

Vincenzo Russo, patriarch of the Russo family, on his hands and knees wearing a dog collar. Panting. Crawling. Having his nose shoved into his own piss.

It would end him. Not just his reputation, but his life. Men like Vincenzo don’t survive that kind of exposure. The family would disown him. His allies would evaporate. Men who followed him out of fear dressed up as respect would find their fear suddenly pointed in a very different direction, and the wolves who’ve been circling for years would move in before the footage finished its first news cycle.

He knows all of this. He’s spent his entire life making sure no one ever had this kind of leverage over him.

Tonight, that changed.

“He should be out any minute.” Ivy’s voice is steady, but there’s a tightness underneath it. She’s holding herself together the way she always does, through sheer force of will. Whatever she feels about what happened in that room, she’s locked it away and put it somewhere I can’t reach. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I position myself slightly ahead of her and to the left. Not blocking her—she’d kill me for that—but close enough that if things go wrong, I’m between her and whatever comes through that door. Liam’s team is parked two streets over. I texted them our status five minutes ago. They’re ready to move. All that’s left to do is wait in a wide alley between the club and the building beside it.

Finally, the black door opens, and Vincenzo Russo steps out into the night.

He looks exactly like the kind of man who runs an empire. Impeccable suit, silver hair combed back, shoulders set with the rigid posture of someone who has never in his life allowed himself to slouch. He’s smiling, too. A private, satisfied smile, the kind a man wears when he’s just had exactly the evening he wanted. His guards flank him, two of them, both large and both armed. They scan the street with the automatic efficiency of professionals.

Vincenzo takes three steps before he sees her.

The smile doesn’t fade. It drops off his face like something that was never attached properly to begin with. What’s left underneath is a color I can only describe as chalky. Not pale. Deathly white. The blood leaves his face so fast I can almost see it happen, draining downward, leaving nothing behind but the hollowed-out expression of a man who just realized the worst thing he can imagine is standing ten feet away from him, looking him dead in the eye.

“Ciao, Vincenzo,” Ivy says.

His mouth falls open, but nothing comes out.

The guards react before he does. They step forward, hands moving to their jackets, and I feel the change in the air the way you feel a storm coming. The pressure change, the static, the hair on your arms standing up. I move one step closer to Ivy, my hand already resting on the weapon holstered beneath my jacket.

“I wouldn’t,” I warn. My voice carries in the quiet street. Level, calm. The voice I use when I need someone to understand the next five seconds will determine whether they live or die. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing right now, I need you to stop thinking about it.”