Complete silence.
“Spank me! Punish me any other way. Please.”
The silence was only amplified by my sobbing.
My mind teetered on a dangerous cliff of sanity. I would fucking have a nervous breakdown right in this damn room if someone didn’t come and help me. I couldn’t be alone.
“Don’t leave me alone!”
Collapsing to the floor, I sat on my outer thigh so the butt plug wouldn’t have any pressure on it and allowed the tears to fall. I glanced back at the camera and pleaded with my eyes.
Why did I bother?
They didn’t care. I deserved this in their eyes.
And maybe I did. I knew the day I decided to work for the Bennato Brothers that I was making a deadly decision. I wasn’t some naive girl who didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I knew.
And now I was paying the price for it.
Chapter Seven
Hailey
I was so lost in my misery that I didn’t hear the door to my room open. It was the dark clothing belonging to Thomas that caught the corner of my eye that notified me that he had heard my plea.
Thank God. He was here. I wouldn’t be alone any longer with my dark thoughts. The mental game the brothers were playing was just as bad as the plug rooted in my ass.
Looking up at him with tears streaming down my face, I begged, “Please, Thomas. I know I messed up. I know I did. But I can’t be tortured like this.”
“Torture?” he asked. He smirked. “You have no idea what torture really is.”
“Call it what you want,” I choked out. “I beg you to take out the plug. It’s too big. And the handcuffs. I don’t need these.” I pushed my confined wrists toward him to emphasize my appeal.
“I saw what you did. Are you insane? If you were a man, my brother would have killed you right then and there.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” I said as I tried to control the hysteria that made my voice sound so high-pitched that I didn’t even recognize it. “I was just so angry.”
“You don’t get the luxury of being angry while you’re here. You lost that right the minute you decided to try to screw us over,” he said with very little sympathy or care present on his face. So cold and stoic.
“I can’t do this. I can’t do this,” I sobbed. If I had any dignity left, it was gone. Vanished. Melted away in the tears falling down my face. “There is no way I can survive this. I can’t. I’m not strong enough.”
He knelt down beside me and looked me straight in the eyes. “You need to take a deep breath and calm down. You’ve gotten yourself so worked up that you’re going to have a panic attack.” He placed his fingertip on my cheek and stroked softly. “Calm down. You’re going to be just fine.”
I shook my head. “I don’t deserve this.”
“What do you deserve then?” Thomas asked. “Do you think Stefano and I should just ignore what you did?”
“No, but—”
“Would you rather we just had you knocked off so you were no longer a problem for us?”
“No,” I answered as I looked down toward the floor breathing in and out as calmly as I could.
He moved his fingertip and gently ran it along the handcuffs. He dipped his finger between the metal and flesh and said, “There’s plenty of room. It’s all in your head. And I saw that plug. It was small.”
“I know you and your brother have a good heart. I know that there is a part of you locked inside that is good,” I said, continuing to cry.
“You’re wrong on that.”
“I saw it. Every single month I saw the large donations to all the charities when I did the finances. You both gave away millions and never asked for the recognition. It was simply out of the kindness of your heart.”
Slowly he stroked his fingers through my hair, never taking his eyes away from mine. “The minute you believe that either Stefano or I are kind, you put yourself at risk. Why? Because look at what you just did. You didn’t fear Stefano, and you should have. Can we be merciful? Yes. Can we treat you decently? Eventually.”
“How long do I have to be cuffed? Plugged?”
He shook his head. “Stefano put them on, and in, which means Stefano is the only one who can decide that. My brother and I never contradict each other. One brother’s dictate is also the dictate of the other. If one of us make a rule or does anything, the other one always backs each other up. It’s how we run our empire. What one says goes.”
“Then bring him back here. I’ll beg him.”
He swiped at a loose hair that hung in my eye and tucked it behind my ear with the most loving of touches. His kindness caused a whiplash of emotions in my struggling psyche. He went from cruel to tender and affectionate in a matter of seconds.