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And even if I hadn’t, what now? Buy her? Keep her?
Keep her.
“You’re a fucking imbecile, Dominic,” I muttered to myself. I stood, walked the few steps to the center of the room to unscrew the lightbulb from the ceiling, and plunged the room into near darkness again. It took a moment for my eyes to readjust.
Keep her, and do what with her? I’d question her about the brand. Find out who’d done it. Why they’d done it. Then what?
This was the drawback to my line of work. I never knew who hired me, and they never knew who they hired. An anonymous world of monsters.
I reached for the phone in my back pocket, closing the space between me and her, and began to dial a number I hadn’t dialed in way too many years. I pulled the blanket back over her, taking in her sweet, innocent face—at least in sleep—and walked out of the room, locking the door behind me. I looked down at the phone display. One digit more and the phone would start ringing. My heart pounded, and my hands felt clammy. I hit End. I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Instead, I opened up my laptop and took a seat at the kitchen table, where I typed in Mateo Castellano’s name on the Google search field, already knowing what I’d find.8GiaLight filtered through the slats of wood covering the bedroom window. My eyelids felt sticky as I blinked them open, my mouth like cotton, and my head heavy. A combination of the drug and life.
Sitting up, I dragged the blanket up and tucked it around myself. Why did he have to keep the room so cold?
I scratched my head. That was when a small movement near the bed startled me. I gave a little involuntary gasp.
Death sat somber in the chair, no mask, his eyes dark, his gaze heavy upon me. Watching me.
Every hair on my body stood on end, and my heart fell into my stomach. What was he doing here? How long had he been watching me sleep? Why? How would he torture me today?
I curled my fingers around the blanket and waited.
“Who sent you to me?”
I pulled my legs underneath me and sat on my knees, covering as much of myself as I could.
“Who branded you, Gia?”
I had to swallow several times to get my voice to work. “Why?” The question made me sound weak. Vulnerable.
“I know who you are.”
I stared at him, at this man who held me prisoner. This cruel captor who gave and took as he pleased, who both scared the hell out of me and also drew me like no other. His face, an angel’s face, was etched into the hardest stone, his eyes of steel, colder now, the pleasure he took in mocking me no longer glowing like embers of a dying fire. An anger, a hatred replaced it, and that fire was burning bright, ready to consume. To obliterate.
It was a terrifying thing to see.
“What does it matter, who I am?” I asked, my heart pounding, knowing the thin ice I walked on, waiting, watching to see what this brought.
His expression didn’t change.
“Who sent you to me?”
It was as though he held his breath.
“Victor Scava.”
This seemed to surprise him, because it took him a minute to continue.
“Did he brand you?”
I nodded.
“Under orders from whom?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know that he took orders from anyone.”
“Why did he do it?”
Emotion coursed through me, memory and feeling and loss. Before me sat one of the men responsible for my suffering. I didn’t know if he was involved with Mateo’s torture or death, but I did know I owed him nothing.
Gathering my courage, I raised my head high.
“Why do you care? Why do you get to ask any question you like, when you won’t even answer the one I’ve asked you?”
“You still want to know my name? It’s that important to you?”
Maybe he was right. Maybe I should have been asking a different question. But I nodded and narrowed my gaze.
“Dominic. My name is Dominic”—hesitation, then—“Sapienti.”
Even in the dim light, I saw his eyes shift when he said his last name, and I knew it was a lie.
“Dominic Sapienti,” I said, watching him closely.
He nodded once, blinking as he did, and I felt sure I was right.
“He branded me because I wouldn’t fuck him.”
That seemed to catch him off guard. His forehead furrowed, and a crease formed between his eyebrows as he processed my information and waited for me to continue.
I raised my own eyebrows. “You seem to enjoy eating my pussy. I guess he wanted to too. So does it make you more of a monster, since you took it without my permission, when he could have but chose not to?”
“He chose to brand you instead. To mark you permanently. He then sent you to me, knowing what I’d do to you, what you’d have to go through before being sold to some animal. I’d say his actions trump mine in the monster arena.”
