I cringe backward, trying to disappear into my seat because I know I’ve gone too far.
Damian pulls out my chair, turns it so I’m facing him. He leans toward me, hands on the arms of the seat, trapping me. His face is inches from mine.
“I thought you were smart,” he says.
I swallow.
“There’s only one thing you need to know about me. Only one thing that has anything to do with you. I make the rules. I make all the rules. And my world is the one you live in. Wrap your brain around that fast because the next time I punish you, I won’t go as easy as the last time.”
I’m trembling, the tiny hairs on every exposed part of me standing on end. Damian is too close for comfort; so close, I smell aftershave and whiskey and fury.
“Get up,” he says, straightening, cracking his neck. “I’ve got a lesson to teach and you’ve got one to learn.”24CristinaThe drive to the penthouse is silent as I sit alone in the back of one of the SUVs. Damian is riding with a man named Tobias, a big brute with a scar along his face. One of the men who was at my Uncle’s apartment the night he came for me.
I consider what Liam told me during his visit. Details on who the Di Santo family are. On what they do.
The family goes back generations, more than four hundred years. The one in Upstate New York is the seat of the family, but they have several more homes all over the world.
I learned about Damian’s mother, the young wife of Benedict Di Santo. I try to imagine him with a wife and can’t. All I can think is that he probably forced her to marry him.
Damian has a twin brother, Lucas. He was also in the accident that night, and his injuries were far worse than Damian’s, apparently. No one knows if, after being moved home, he even survived because there’s been no word of him outside the family in several years.
But the most troubling piece of information is the work they do. They own a large fleet of ships. And the bulk of their income comes from their involvement in trafficking arms and other illegal goods with links to various mafia families using those ships for transport.
I asked Liam about my father and the foundation, but he didn’t know much about that. Apparently, my uncle is being pretty tight-lipped, which makes me tend to believe Damian is telling the truth. Because what reason would he have to lie to me now?
I think about Damian paying my uncle to essentially raise me. I guess he couldn’t be bothered with a child. Only wants me now that I’m a woman.
But those thoughts all dissipate as one of Damian’s men walks me into the apartment building. The SUV Damian was riding in must have split off from our entourage at some point because there are only two when we arrive.
Once inside the apartment, the man who escorts me up stands guard at the door, hands folded one over the other trying to give the impression he’s not watching me. I take off my coat, drape it over the back of a chair and take in a deep breath.
What am I supposed to do? Wait for him here? Is he even coming back? Does he expect me in his bed when he gets back?
Does he expect me to spread my legs for him?
I won’t. I’ll fight him. I will.
After standing there for a minute feeling like a fool, I walk down the hall toward the master bedroom where I’d left my clothes earlier. I’ll at least change out of this dress and maybe then just go into the other room he’d let me sleep in earlier and lock myself in.
That’s when it registers, though, that Damian had been inside the room when I’d woken up. I’d locked the door.
He must have a key.
Bastard.
Really, though, did I expect he wouldn’t? Did I expect I could lock him out?
I walk into the spacious closet in the master. I smell him in here. His scent is all around me.
I wonder if he stays here often because he keeps a lot of clothes here. I walk past the row of suits. There must be a dozen of them all by the same designer. It’s an exclusive Italian brand I’ve heard of.
My clothes are stacked where I’d left them earlier. I reach back and unzip the dress. I have to shimmy out of it because it’s pretty tight, but I manage to pull it off without tearing it.
I step out of my shoes as I reach up for the hanger and jump when I hear the bedroom door open, then close.
Holding the dress up against myself, I turn to face the closet door, and not a moment later, Damian comes into view.