“Where’s Amadeo?” I ask, panic making my voice higher. This isn’t how Amadeo operates. Bastian? Is this Bastian’s doing? Is it Bastian who has ordered me to be brought here? He hates me. Thinks I’m interfering in his relationship with Amadeo. Would he go around Amadeo to hurt me?
“Down there.”
“Tell him to come up.”
He shakes his head, mutters something, then shoves me forward. I cry out as I fall down half a dozen steps before catching myself, gripping the handrail hard to keep from falling down the entire flight.
The voices stop, someone’s high-pitched, maniacal laughter the last to die out as they turn to look at me. I take in the scene, and full-blown panic sets in.
“I was told you needed humbling,” the soldier above me says as he stalks down the stairs separating us. He takes my arm and hauls me to my feet to force me down the rest of the way. I’m reminded of the church. Of the guards my brother had arranged and how they’d disappeared. How alone I was with the brothers and their men. How at their mercy.
“Let me go!”
“Okay,” he says with a chuckle and shoves me down the last two steps so I land on my hands and knees on the concrete floor.
“What’d you bring us?” someone asks as I survey the scene. The large, mostly empty basement with too many dark corners to consider. The space at the center is lit by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. A large poker table on an old area rug is littered with cards, chips, and liquor bottles, and around it sits about a dozen men. Just beyond it is a table loaded with more booze and a cooler from which someone takes a beer, icy water dripping over his hand as he twists off the cap.
Nowhere do I see either Amadeo or Bastian. Only these men. Soldiers, some with guns in shoulder holsters, others with weapons laid on the table by stacks of chips. Music still blares from speakers, but apart from that, the men fall silent.
“Up,” the man who dragged me here says, digging the toe of his boot into my side.
I look up at him and see the closed door beyond him. I’m the only woman in here with a dozen soldiers. Some stupid, naïve voice in my head reminds me that I have Amadeo’s protection, but it offers no comfort. I know well how little that can mean when a woman is alone in a room full of men.
My vision falters, a blur of another room. Another time. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. Cold sweat breaks out over every inch of skin. It’s dread. It’s realizing just how powerless you are truly.
“What’s this?” someone asks, standing to get a better look at me. I’m standing, I realize. I don’t know when I got back on my feet, knees locked so I don’t collapse.
“A gift for you.” He turns to me. “Compliments of Amadeo and Bastian.”
My heart thuds heavy against my chest. They wouldn’t have. No. They wouldn’t. Not even Bastian would do this. They aren’t this cruel. This evil.
Balancing the scales. An eye for an eye. A rape for a rape?
No. They wouldn’t.
“We need a girl to serve,” someone says.
“Just serve?” another one asks, making a lewd gesture with his tongue and two fingers. The others laugh and look back at the hulking man standing between me and the stairs.
“Let me leave,” I tell him in a voice I don’t recognize. “Please.”
“Oh, the princess can be sweet when she wants.”
“Let me go.”
“I don’t think so. You heard the men. We need a bitch to serve.” He points at a table stacked with bottles of liquor. “Get my friends some fresh drinks.”
“And a lap dance,” one of them calls out, which the others find hilarious.
“Where’s Amadeo? I want to see him. He wouldn’t…” I trail off, though. What was I about to say? That he wouldn’t have allowed this? Why wouldn’t he? Why not give his men something to sink their teeth into. To make them grateful to him. There is unrest within the family. I know that. I saw it for myself. And I’m just collateral. The daughter of the man he hated enough to desecrate his corpse. The sister of the man who he believes raped his sister.
“Get moving, bitch.” The man shoves me toward the liquor table, interrupting my thoughts, and I stumble forward, then pass the men, giving the table as wide a berth as possible.
I pick up a bottle of whiskey and step on something sticky as I make my way to the men around the poker table in my bare feet. I hadn’t been wearing shoes when he came to get me, and it hadn’t occurred to me to put any on. I glance at the stairs and see the one who brought me down lean against the far wall and light up a cigarette. He’s huge. All of them are. He’ll catch me if I try to run for it. And if he doesn’t, one of the others will. So I begin to refresh drinks, which I end up sloshing on the first guy who tries to pull me down onto his lap.
“Now, that’s no way to serve, is it?” he asks.
The men glance at each other, and the one closest to me takes the bottle from me as another one begins to tug the zipper of my dress down.