Page 48 of The Kingpin’s Bride

Camilla. She’s four. She calls me Rena, too. Dario took her the night I refused the private rooms. He sends photos to keep me obedient. That is the only reason I begged you to keep him alive. Please. Put her somewhere he can never reach. I will give you every heir the Families demand if you just keep her safe.

The words pressed against the back of my teeth until my jaw hurt. I did not say them. I kept writing.

Line sixty. Line eighty. My fingers cramped so hard I had to pause and flex them. Matteo’s gaze sharpened. I lowered my head and continued before he could decide the count needed to restart.

The praise part of the line started to feel almost true in the worst way. I felt grateful that he had not left me with Dario's knife. Grateful that the collar was his instead of the club’s. Grateful that the man who had bought me at least looked at me when he used me.

The humiliation part sat heavier. My pussy officially existed to take his cock. I was nothing without his claim. Every signature carved the truth deeper into my bones.

I was so scared of him. I was also aching for him in a way that made me hate myself.

The way the tattoos moved when he breathed. The sharp line of his jaw under the low light, under his beard. The quiet power in how he held the leash like it had always belonged in his hand. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever been terrified of. And he knew it.

By line one hundred and twenty my hand was shaking badly enough that the letters slanted.

Line one hundred and sixty. The words had stopped meaning anything and started meaning everything at the same time. I was writing my own ownership in black ink while the evidence of that ownership .stared at me

At line one hundred and ninety I had to stop and shake out my hand. Matteo did not speak. He simply waited. The silence itself was a command. I picked the pen back up. Line two hundred.

Freaking finally.

I set the pen down.

My fingers were locked in a claw. My wrist burned. The page was a dense block of the same sentence, some lines neat, some stained with smudged ink. I could not look at it without feeling sick. Matteo took the journal from my lap and scanned the final lines. When he was satisfied he set it aside with the diary.

“Good girl,” he said. Those two words again. “You will keep writing. I must say I enjoy it. Like I told you earlier, I want it to be longer and more precise. I want your thoughts and how you feel to be written in that book. If not, you’ll give me two hundred more sentences.”

I nodded once, too exhausted to speak.

He studied me for another long moment. The white clothes he seemed to love so much were discarded on the floor. My open body sitting on his dark sheets. Something shifted behind his eyes again.

I gathered what little courage I had left.

“Can I send him a letter?” The words came out small. “Dario. Or a phone call again. Just something. So he knows the rules have changed. So he understands he can’t…”

I stopped before I said too much. Matteo’s expression did not change, but the air in the room tightened. He took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and turned it once between his fingers. “You want contact with the man who put a knife to your throat and tried to take what belonged to me.”

“I have some questions,” I whispered. “I really need answers.”

I could not finish. The real reason sat between us like a third person in the bed. I needed to hear Dario’s voice long enough to ask, without asking, whether Camilla was breathing. I needed a letter that might contain one careful sentence he would understand and Matteo would not.

Matteo was quiet for so long I thought he would refuse outright.

“You may write a letter. Or you may make a call. One. Not both,” he said. “If I decide even one phrase is coded, the contact ends and Dario dies that same night. Do you understand me, wife?”

Relief and terror crashed together so hard I felt dizzy. “Yes.”

“Choose.”

I swallowed. A letter could be reread, examined, held against the light. A call was faster. A call might let me hear background noise, a child’s voice, something, anything that told me she was alive.

“One more call,” I said. “Please.”

Matteo nodded once. “Tomorrow. Don’t think about him too much. That’s an order.””

“Okay.”

“Sleep if you can,” he said, at the door. “It will be time again soon. And tomorrow you will speak to the man you are so desperate to keep alive. Under my rules. Try not to forget who owns the air in your lungs while you break my rules next time.”