Page 158 of Savage Don

He’s claimed me. And in a way, I think I’ve claimed him, too.

It’s a powerful feeling. But it’s one that’s being undermined by my current situation.

With my arms tied behind my back; with my ankles tied together; with this hood over my head, I’m helpless.

But I’m not hopeless.

Ray is still out there. He’ll rescue me.

He has to.

“You never wanted me either,” I mumble under my breath. Slowly, thoughts of Ray dissolve from my mind. Their quickly replaced by heavy memories from my childhood. I was rarely ever more than a set piece in Father’s life. A supposedly valuable captive.

“That’s not true,” I hear Father say. “You had your uses. But you quickly outgrew them. Much like your mother. There was something about the two of you that was just… broken. But that’s my fault. I guess I’m just drawn to women who can’t obey authority.”

There he goes talking about Mother again. His smugness makes me sick to my stomach.

“Fuck you,” I rasp. My aching heart suddenly pounding. “You never deserved either of us.”

“I’d argue it was the other way around,” Father sighs. “I’m the one who deserved better. You’ve met Giorgia Sabatino and Marta Camporese before, dear. You see how those women submit to their powerful husbands. Those dons might not have a quarter of the power they once did, but they still rule their households with an iron fist. Me, though? It took an Irish bastard buying you just to learn that my own daughter had been defying me, sneaking out to school behind my back. Just like your mother had been before I sent her away…”

Just like that, my pounding heart freezes, gripped by icy dread.

“Mother was sneaking out, too?” I hear myself whisper. Somehow, even through all of the darkness and the lost years, I feel the slightest hint of something tragic grow inside of me.

A connection.

To her.

To my mother.

“Yes,” Father confirms. “At first, I thought she might be cheating on me. But your mother wasn’t the type. No…” A cruel chuckle escapes Father’s throat, and the taunting laugh echoes around in the darkness that surrounds me. “What a sick joke. She… well, I guess there’s no holding back anything now—she was sneaking out to go to school, just like you.”

“… What?”

The full extent of the revelation sends a bullet through my icy heart, shattering it into a thousand different shards.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I suppose,” Father says. “Just like you, she somehow got away with it for almost two years. I guess I wasn’t a very attentive husband. But can you blame me? Our marriage was one of pure convenience. It was supposed to grow my power, but soon after we married, her family lost everything. Then, all I had was a wife who would rather get lost in a textbook than please her husband. That’s no kind of life for a red-blooded man like me.”

The shards of my falling heart tumble down through the darkness, ripping open my soul on their way into the empty abyss.

“You’re not a man,” I hiss, my voice trembling. “You’re a fucking pig.”

“And you’re just like your mother,” Father remarks. “Unfortunately, that means you’ll also suffer the same fate.”

His words punch me in the gut so hard that I nearly keel over. But my restraints are tied too tightly to move anywhere, and I can hardly breathe as I try to process what he just said.

“You… You’re sending me to the asylum?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to kill you,” Father says, and I can sense his smirk even from behind my dark hood. “But you’re of no use to me right now. Not like this. Not while you still have this rebellious disorder. Not while you still have hopes and dreams. Maybe, in a decade or two, when all of this dust has settled, and I’m in the position where I belong, I’ll able to take you out and sell you off to some upstart don for the price of his loyalty. Your… disability will be explained easily enough. We’ll say you had an accident, and have been at a nice treatment center for the impaired, recovering ever since. Should we call it a spa? Not that it matters. I’m sure whatever explanation I come up with will be enough for whoever I choose for you. As long as you’re still warm enough to fuck and alive enough to bear an heir.”

Father’s little speech has so many twists and turns that it feels like I’ve been thrown into a hurricane.

What the hell is he talking about? Heirs? Dons? Disability?

“I’m… I’m your daughter,” I choke, the emptiness inside of me growing so fast that I’m afraid I’ll be engulfed by it at any moment.

“You’re a nuisance, just like your mother,” Father snaps. “There’s something wrong with the way your brains work. Something that makes you wild and un-lady like. That won’t last long. I’ve already set up an appointment for you with the same doctor who lobotomized Laura all of those years ago. He’s quick and discreet and…”