A huge smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, Tatum. It certainly didn’t sound that way last night.”
I stiffened. “What are you talking about?”
He leaned down, the tip of his tongue dragging all the way up my cheek my body on the verge of convulsing. He moaned softly before whispering in my ear, “It was me.”
He stood up straight, his eyes searching my face. I couldn’t…dear God.
“You?”
“It was me, Tatum.”
Denial shook me at the core. “No.”
“Yes. Last night, at The Capital, you came against the wall…and it was my cock inside you. Not my brother’s. Mine.”
I vomited. I coughed and gagged as images of the night before flashed through my mind like a goddam Powerpoint presentation. Carlo laughed while he stood to the side, watching me throw up. The more I thought about it, the more my stomach churned…yet the more it started to make sense.
That was why it felt different. Not because of the drugs…because it wasn’t Castello.
“I’ve missed this pussy.”
“No matter what my brother does, he will never erase…us.”
He wasn’t talking about Vico. He was talking about Castello.
Carlo’s laughter sounded like the squeals of demons as it echoed through the room. I kept vomiting until there was nothing left inside me. Tears streamed down my face as I wept, sobbing while everything started to sink in.
Everything hurt. My soul cried while my heart withered into nothing but dust. The pain, the betrayal, the lies. All of it came crashing down and choked the life out of me.
I didn’t even realize that Carlo had left the room until I heard the familiar sound of air escaping a tube and the door moving into place, camouflaging itself within the walls.
I was alone.
I was hurt.
And I knew nothing would ever be the same again.
Chapter 24
TATUM
I didn’t know for how long I’d been sitting here huddled in the corner. Time stood still. My mind had gone completely blank as I stared out in front of me. Nothing mattered anymore. There were so many lies, so much deception, it felt as if I could no longer distinguish the difference between what was real and what wasn’t.
Castello was gone. No one knew where he was.
Would he find me?
Would he manage to save me, see through his brother’s lies?
And what if he did?
What if he managed to save me, to rescue me and hold me in his arms again? What would he do if he found out about what Carlo and I did? Would he believe me when I told him I thought it was him? And what kind of woman would that make me? What kind of woman didn’t realize the man buried inside her wasn’t the man she had claimed to love with all her heart? The father of her child.
Castello would never forgive me. Even if he saved me, he would leave me as soon as he found out the truth. I knew him. I knew that knowing another man was inside me while I claimed to be his and only his would ruin him. Every time he looked at me, he would see me getting fucked by another man. The thought alone killed me. God, it killed me softly, slowly, turning my soul into nothing but shards of brokenness.
The door opened, and the sound brought me back to reality, back to the dreaded room I saw in my nightmares for so long.
“Right where I left you, I see.” Carlo came strolling in with Vico and another man I didn’t recognize.