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She jumps, deer-in-headlights eyes on me. There’s only fear in them now.
“You want to be my enemy, Little Kitten?”
I watch her throat work as she swallows.
“You got it. Enemies until the end. Know that you’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life.”
Only when I push off do I hear her audibly exhale.
She wobbles and slides down the wall a little before locking her knees to stay upright.
I fist a handful of hair to make her look at me. “You just make sure you look pretty for me and you say those two little words. Because if you don’t, I’ll break your brother’s neck in front of your eyes and throw his broken body at your feet. Are we clear?”
She stares at me with terror in her eyes. Stares at me like she’s looking at the devil incarnate. And maybe she is.
“Are we fucking clear?” I scream and she whimpers, cowering. Cowering away from me. And fuck me.
I release her, slam a fist into the wall.
I hate myself right now. Hate myself because what have I become? What kind of monster am I?
“Ah, fuck you Scarlet! Fuck you for doing this to me!”
27
Scarlett
“Fuck you for doing this to me.”
Right.
Because I made him threaten to break my brother’s neck. I made him into this crazy man who has a personality disorder.
Who’s scary as fuck.
I suck in a shaky breath. He wants me to look pretty tonight? That’s not happening. My eyes are puffy and red, skin blotchy from crying all day long and over what? Him? God. Something is seriously wrong with me. Maybe it’s me with the mental disorder.
“I need a friend, Scarlett. Just one friend.”
I pick at my cuticle and try to forget how he looked when he said that. How he sounded.
How much more screwed up can things get?
Someone knocks on the door and I expect Lenore with another tray of food. She’s tried twice now but it’s not that I don’t want to eat. It’s that I can’t.
It’s close to five so I guess it’s a soldier making sure I’m getting ready. I’ll be ready. I won’t look pretty but I’ll put on a dress and show up and say those two words. Period.
“Come in.”
But when the door opens, Noah’s standing there looking fresh from the shower, wearing clean clothes and smiling at me.
“Noah!” I hop off the bed and run to him, jump into his arms. I swear he’s grown taller just in the last few days.
He hugs me back. “You’re going to crush my ribs,” he says.
“Oh, God it’s so good to see you.” An onslaught of tears springs from my eyes.
Alec clears his throat. “Chopper leaves in half an hour. Your brother will bring you to the roof.” He looks at Noah who nods.
“What’s this? Are you working for him already?” I ask my brother.
Noah doesn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Cristiano wants to know if you need anything,” Alec says.
“I just need him to go to hell. Can you tell him that for me?”
He clears his throat. “Thirty minutes.”
Once the door is closed, Noah walks in a circle, taking in the room. “Have you been living in this lap of luxury while I’ve been in that cell?” He picks up a plastic toy and cocks his head to the side. “How old does he think you are, like five?”
“It’s his sister’s room. And he moved the lock to the outside. That’s why I’m in here. You agreed to work for him?”
“What choice did I have? And besides, he hasn’t been horrible to me. Better than my own brothers, at least.”
“Well, shit. Isn’t he wonderful then?” I grin sarcastically, probably looking like some maniac. “Because our brothers set the bar pretty damn low, Noah.”
“This is our world, Scarlett. It’s been our world. You need to stop fighting it and figure out a way you can live inside it.”
“I’ll never stop fighting him.”
“Our family murdered his family. Tried to kill him.”
“No, not our family. Diego and Angel. Not us. Not our parents.”
“Well, I can see where he’s coming from.”
I snort.
He sits on the bed, tests it. “Nice. I got a room down the hall but it’s pretty bare bones.”
“Lucky you. Is your lock on the outside?”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re alive. We’re alive. He’s going to marry you. You’ll be his wife.”
“For the cartel. He is using me to get to the cartel.”
“Doesn’t matter. It means something to him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s different than it was when it was Rinaldi. I know how Rinaldi was to you.”
I feel my face burn. Does he know what they did too? Did our uncle enlighten my kid brother to my humiliations? I scrub my hands over my face but when I open my eyes, I’m still here, in this little girl’s room. Still trapped in this nightmare.
“Cristiano, even the way he talks about you is different,” Noah goes on and it’s like we’re living in two different worlds.
