“And then what?”
“I ran,” I whispered. “But I didn’t know where I could go. And I wasn’t fast enough.”
He was quiet for a long time. “And then?”
“And then…” I glanced up at him. A muscle jumped in his jaw. But I couldn’t look at him as I said it, so I stared at the center of his chest. “And then he made me suck him off.” His breathing was deep and even beneath his black shirt, and somehow it helped that he was so calm. My mouth twisted in disgust as I remembered. “I threatened to bite it off, but he told me he’d put a bullet in my head.” I drew in a shaky breath. “I didn’t want to do it. I swear I didn’t. But I decided being dead was infinitely worse than being forced to give some guy a blow job, so I stopped fighting.”
After a few seconds, Luca asked, “Did he hit you?” When I hesitated, he said, “I saw the bruising on your cheek when you first got here.”
“Yes. A few times.”
“What else did he do?”
I looked away as I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Did he rape you?”
Stunned by the bluntness of his question, I shook my head. “No. He wanted to. He tried. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.” Memories filled my head, and it was almost like I was there again, hearing Mario’s grunts and curses as he wrestled me onto the bed and tore the clothes from my body. I blinked fast, bringing myself back to the here and now.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “He couldn’t?” There was a spark of genuine curiosity in his eyes. I’d have been hurt if I didn’t also hear the underlying fury in his voice.
I thought about it for a few seconds. “I think he wanted…no…I think he needed me to be her. And I’m just…not.”
He appeared to steel himself in preparation for my answer before he asked the next question. “What about his men? Did they”—there was the slightest hesitation—“touch you?”
I shook my head. “Not really. He wouldn’t let them. I think he has some kind of twisted sense of loyalty because Nicole was my sister.” I didn’t tell him they were only allowed to touch me when he needed them to hold me down. “I heard you on the phone,” I told him quietly as I finally found the courage to look straight at him. “I heard what you said.”
He gave me a pained stare. “You understand I couldn’t let him know what you mean to me? If I had…Veda, he would’ve killed you. I couldn’t take that chance. I was trying to buy myself some time.”
I nodded. “I know.” Luca was right. Mario would’ve carried out his threat to put a bullet between my eyes. But I still couldn’t help but wonder…
“Is there more?”
I shook my head. Oh, there were other things I could tell him. I could tell him how after the scene in the shower, I would wake up in the morning to Mario masturbating next to my bed and coming on my face, his other hand under the silky gown I slept in and his fingers shoved painfully inside of me. I could tell him how sometimes he would stare at me for a long time as we sat at the table, until the sight of me—looking so much like Nicole and yet not being her—made him so angry he would drag me out of my chair and throw me across the room. I could tell him how I was his brother’s emotional punching bag for the guilt that ate him alive inside. How I knew that, in his own sick way, Mario had really loved my sister and felt like he’d had no choice but to kill her once she exposed their engagement on national television, and therefore, his location. And how, even knowing that, I felt no pity for him.
But telling Luca all of that wouldn’t change what had happened. It wouldn’t change Mario’s future. He knew enough.
“Thank you for telling me,” he told me.
“What are you going to do?”
His fists unclenched, my shirt falling to the floor as he flexed the stiffness from his long fingers, then raised them to the top button of his shirt. Slowly, his eyes never leaving mine, he slid the button through the hole, then moved on to the next one. “Right now, I’m going to fuck you, Veda. Because I have to. Because you’re mine. Because I can’t stand having you so close to me and not being inside of you any longer.” He paused. “Because you need this, too.”
I stared up at him. His jaw was tense. His eyes like an arctic glacier. “What if I don’t want you?”
He cocked his head, one side of his mouth lifting into a cocky smile, his blue eyes dark with something I’d never seen there before. Possession. Yeah, there was that. Even more so now that I told him everything that had happened. But it was more than that. Hatred. The desire to hurt something…
It scared me.
Would he let me go if I insisted? I almost laughed out loud at the naive girl inside of me who thought there was any chance of that.
As I watched him reveal himself to me, the fire that had burned down to embers with his endless questions flared to life again. He was right. I needed this. I needed him to help me forget. To replace my memories with Mario with new ones. Yet part of me was disgusted with myself for letting him get back under my skin so easily. The other part wished he would hurry it the hell up before I talked sense into myself, took my shirt back, and walked out of this room.
But underneath it all was the shame I felt. “How can you stand to look at me?” I whispered.
Cold blue eyes dropped down to my chest and then fell lower. He didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer. “Take those off.” He nodded at my sleep shorts as he shrugged out of his shirt and started unfastening his pants.
“Luca…”
“Take them OFF or I’ll fucking rip them from your body.”
Trembling with equal parts fear and desire, rage heated my blood. I was tired of being ordered around. Tired of being a pawn in his game. Tired of feeling helpless. I drew myself up to my full height and lifted my chin.
Luca stared at me with the eyes of a predator about to devour its prey.
“No.”