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“I agree, damn it!” Con snapped as he threw up his hands. “But we need to find a way to send some other message that he’s taken.”
“He’s not leaving our sides, so it doesn’t fucking matter!” Vaughn shouted back. “Those assholes won’t approach him if he stays with Luca!”
I sighed as the back and forth continued. Not one of the men wanted me to wear the collar, but I knew what it would mean if I did.
It would mean I was Luca’s property.
The picture had been the start.
But the collar would cement it.
It would make the whole scenario more convincing, and since I’d overheard the men talking about how rumors were swirling online that Luca wasn’t a true “believer,” we were already at a disadvantage going into the party. As it were, Luca, and me by proxy, would probably be carefully watched for any signs that our relationship wasn’t what it was supposed to be.
There’d still been no contact from the Stylianos character who’d supposedly had the lead on Gio at one point, but there had been multiple offers from other men to purchase me. Vaughn had warned me that they’d made it look like Luca was open to selling me for the right price, but it was only in the hopes of forcing Stylianos’s hand. If the sick man thought he was going to lose me to someone else, he might be more inclined to make himself known.
I glanced at the box again.
It’s not real, I reminded myself. And it could be what brings Gio home.
I climbed unsteadily to my feet and went to Luca’s desk. None of the men seemed to notice me, so I tuned them out. For all the determination I’d felt just seconds ago, the moment I flipped the lid up on the jewelry box, my resolve fled.
In a big way.
Close it.
Close it!
My brain kept screaming the order at me and I knew I could.
It was a choice like any other. And it wouldn’t make me a coward. None of these men would look at me that way.
I left the box open and wrapped my arms around myself as I studied the piece of gold jewelry. It wasn’t exactly a necklace, but it looked nothing like the dog-style chain Father had put around me so many years ago and had one of his men weld together with a blowtorch while another had held me still, not caring about the screams of pain I’d let out.
Or the tears I’d shed.
Or the pleas to stop that I’d repeated over and over.
I’d thought the worst of it over when the blowtorch had been turned off.
But my humiliation and pain had only begun.
“Aleks.”
My brain tried to shut out the memory as the familiar and oh-so-perfect voice filtered through me. I felt rather than saw Vaughn’s hands on my arms as he came up behind me. He reached past me to close the box, but I stayed his hand.
“It doesn’t look anything like the other one,” I murmured. It was actually quite beautiful, and I guessed whichever of the men had purchased it had spent a small fortune on it. The links were very delicate and I suspected the whole thing could be ripped off one’s neck with little force.
It was almost ironic.
Father had welded a collar on me so I couldn’t remove it.
But this collar was meant to show that the pet who was wearing it could have removed it themself but was too well-trained to do so. And while I knew there was a whole other lifestyle where men and women chose to submit to another person, nothing about the world we were going into was about submission by choice.
“I made too much noise when Father put the collar on me,” I said softly. “And I cried and said no… he didn’t like when I did that. He said I was supposed to know better – that he’d paid a lot of money for me to know better than that. I tried to apologize, but he didn’t like that either.”
Vaughn’s arm went around my collarbone and I felt his lips brush my temple. “It’s okay, Aleks, you don’t need to talk about it.”
I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered. “I’m fighting back,” I reminded him.
He kissed me again and I felt him nod against me.
I knew the other men were still in the room and I figured they hadn’t left because they would have had to move past me to get out. Maybe they’d been afraid they’d frighten me into another blackout.
I wasn’t sure.
But I didn’t want or need them to leave.
Because I wasn’t embarrassed about what had happened to me.
I hadn’t done anything wrong and I hadn’t deserved it.
I understood that now.
I wasn’t sure I would have if Vaughn hadn’t given me my own chance to “wake up” like Gio had woken him and Luca up.
