“I need you to go back,” he ordered.
“Go back where?”
“Go back to that night. The night I had you chained from the dining hall ceiling. The night I gave my brother permission to torture you.”
I tried to shake my head, my cheek rubbing against the silk of the sheets. “I can’t. I don’t want to go back.”
“You have to.”
I heard the belt slice through the air, and then pain seared my skin. This time I cried out, but then his hand was on my burning flesh, gently rubbing in circles. Pleasure and pain, two things that followed Castello and I wherever we went. It was something we would never escape.
“Do you remember what was going through your head that night?”
I took a deep breath. “I was scared.”
“What else?” His hand dipped between my legs, softly teasing my sensitive flesh before dragging his fingers all the way up the slit of my ass.
Again…pleasure and pain.
“I remember hoping you would save me.”
“After I was the one that put you there?”
Images flashed through my mind like flashcards straight from hell. “I wanted you to save me.”
Fingertips travelled over my tied hands and up my spine, sending shivers throughout my body. “Do you know what I was thinking as you hung there naked and vulnerable?”
Did I want to know?I kept quiet.
He twisted my ponytail around his fist. “I sat at the table next to my mother, listening to her stressing the importance of you dying. I sat there listening to every hateful word she had to say about you, and all I could think about was how you would look hanging from the ceiling of my bedroom, naked, and for my eyes only.”
I swallowed, his mother’s face popping up inside my head like a virus. Would I ever forget the hate I saw in her eyes that night, right before she tried to slit my throat?
Abruptly, he pulled my head back, and my muscles protested as the chain held my head in place. His cheek pressed against mine. “That was the moment I realized killing you would no longer be as easy as I imagined it would be.”
He let go of my hair, and my head fell forward just before I felt the sting of the belt across my upper back.
The pain triggered it all. The familiar sting on my back made all the memories come back. Until now, Castello knew my back was a hard limit for me because of what Vico had done. Because of the abuse I endured, the humiliation.
“Castello, what are you doing?”
Another lash, and tears sprung from my eyes, only to be soaked up by the silk blindfold.
“I need to break you, little mouse. That’s the only way you will be strong enough to survive me.”
A gentle finger traced over the spot the belt had collided with my back. “I need you to acknowledge your pain.”
“Why?”
“Because only then will you be able to turn your pain into power.”
Two more lashes across my back, cracking against the sensitive flesh of my arms. The pain was indescribable, just like it was that night.
That night…
Vico’s dark eyes…
His hateful words.