VEDA
I’d forgotten what it was like…
To be possessed by Luca.
How it made me forget where I was and everything he’d done. Everything that had happened to me. Even when I wasn’t half lit on vodka, it was like this. The moment he kissed me, everything else disappeared…except for him. The heat of his mouth. The possessive grip of his hands. The way he curled his big body around mine until the only thing in my world was him. His smell. His heat. His taste. I wanted him to crawl under my skin until there was no one and nothing else in the world except for us and the raging fire in our blood.
And this is why there were no warning bells that went off when his large palms slid down over my hips, squeezing my ass as he moaned in my mouth before sliding up under my shirt to spread across the bare skin of my back. It was why I didn’t panic when I felt a touch of cool air on my stomach just before he pulled my tee up and off. And it was why I arched my back, offering him my swollen breasts without remembering what he would see. My nipples hard and straining for the feel of his tongue.
It wasn’t until my lust-hazed brain realized he’d gone utterly still that it all came crashing back to me.
The pain.
The blood.
The screams.
“What the fuck is this, amore?”
His voice was deathly quiet. I don’t think I’d ever heard him sound so emotionless. And yet…not. I realized I was shaking, and this time it was terror that held me. His thumb brushed over the skin near the top of my left nipple, just high enough to touch the still healing wound, and I flinched before I could stop myself.
“Veda.”
My name was a softly spoken command I couldn’t resist, and I slowly raised my tearful eyes to his.
“Who did this to you?”
But I didn’t have to answer. It was quite obvious who had carved the letter “M” into my chest. The perfectly straight lines started just above one nipple, went to my collarbone, and ended at the other nipple, with the upside-down peak in the center of my breastbone. He had taken his time. He’d wanted to make sure he didn’t fuck it up, since I’d now be wearing it forever.
That’s what he’d told me as three of his men held me down. It had happened the same day he’d made that horrific phone call to Luca, threatening to kill me. Mario’s eyes had been as crazed as the things coming out of his mouth. His hands had been rough on my naked breasts, the knife sharp enough to cut deep into my skin, but dull enough to feel like a branding iron as he slowly dragged it through my flesh. I’d screamed until I was lightheaded. I’d screamed until I had no voice, and even then, I didn’t stop.
And when he was done, when I was lying there with my shirt ripped away, broken and bloody on the floor, wretched noises coming from my sore throat as I’d sobbed, he’d thrown my shirt and bra at my face and left me bleeding on the floor.
It seemed to set something off within him. For three days after, he ranted and raved as he’d paced around the apartment. Every time I happened to cross his path, he’d tear my shirt open so he could stare at the bloody mutilation he’d left on me. Sometimes he’d hunt me down to do it, and he’d always find me. When it scabbed over, he’d tug at my skin with his fingernails until it bled again, staining my clothes. There was nowhere for me to go. Nowhere to hide. Even his own men stayed out of his way.
Finally, on the last day, he told me to get my shoes on, then tied my hands in front of me and threw me into the back of the same van that brought me here.
We drove for a long time, and then they dropped me in a rural area in the middle of the night, pushing me out of the van so hard I’d stumbled and fallen to my hands and knees. Dirt flew into my face as the van spun around and left me alone. I watched them leave, their faces seared into my brain.
The freshly opened wound on my chest screamed with every move I made, and my eyes shifted around nervously in the dark. I used my teeth to loosen the knot and untie the rope around my hands. My breasts and stomach were wet with half dried blood from being tossed around on the floor of the van, and I pressed my shirt to my skin and tried to mop up what I could. Then I started walking the same way the van had gone, barely reacting every time I heard the crack of a branch or the flutter of wings. I was in survival mode, my thoughts carefully blank, other than finding help.
I didn’t have to go very far before I came to a small house. Stumbling up to the door, I knocked until I couldn’t feel my knuckles anymore. As I did, I constantly looked over my shoulder, thinking this was all just too easy. He was changing the rules of the game, and it terrified me. He was going to change his mind and come back for me.
I nearly fell through the doorway when an average-looking man with broad shoulders and deep-set brown eyes opened the door, his wife right behind him, still pulling on her robe. I nearly fainted with relief when I recognized Lisa. She loaned me a new shirt—long-sleeved and black at my request, to hide any bleeding until I could clean up better—and after I washed off in the little bathroom off the hall, I made her swear she wouldn’t tell Luca I was injured. The shirt I’d been wearing I shoved down into the bottom of the half-full trashcan. I couldn’t say now why I did that. I just knew I didn’t want him to see it.
When I came out, she took me into the kitchen and offered me some tea. I didn’t know she had called Luca until he showed up at her door. But she kept her word and didn’t say a thing to him.
Looking at him now, I knew it was foolish of me to think I could hide this from him forever. I reached out with a shaking hand, needing to steady myself, but he took a step back, my shirt still bunched in his fist, his cold stare fixated on my mutilated body.
Part of me wanted to turn around and cover myself so he wouldn’t see how ugly I was now. But another part of me—a larger, pissed off part of me—wanted him to see. So I clenched my fists at my sides and forced myself to stay exactly where I was, my cheeks heated and angry tears in my eyes. Let him fucking see. Let him see what his brother had done to me. How he’d scarred me forever, and not just on the outside. Let him see what the stakes were for this god forsaken game they played between them.
Luca was eerily quiet, his face expressionless, his eyes never leaving the initial carved into my chest. But I felt his fury, and I saw the burning need that had brightened his blue eyes turn to icy rage.
“What else did he do to you?” His voice was deceptively calm.
My answer was automatic. The same thing I’d been telling myself over and over again. “Nothing that won’t—”
“DON’T tell me that.” He cut me off before I could finish. “Tell me what he did. Everything.”