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I was wet already—but he’d known I would be. I hated that he did, especially before I did. Getting spanked and enjoying it was a form of capitulation all on its own, but that he also wanted me to beg? And to mean it?
They should’ve been easy demands to meet. Swear to keep his secrets, plead him for mercy, and receive a punishment that terrified me not because of the pain it might inspire, but because of the pleasure it definitely would.
I had betrayed his trust. I’d put him, Jaz, Alejandro—the entire household, the entire town—at risk. I understood. He couldn’t let that slide.
And any fool could say and do what was necessary to save her own life. If my mother was watching, God rest her soul, she would understand. Any idiot could see that being taken over one knee like a petulant child was a thousand times preferable to a permanent tattoo.
But my spine lengthened instead of bowed. It occurred to me that was what Cristiano had been teaching me to do. To show strength and fight back. And I’d warned him I’d use it against him.
“No,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked against my hair.
Submit on my knees or learn what it meant to have my loyalty forced. I’d wear the tattoo like a badge of honor. I clung to the deep-seated knowledge that even though Cristiano’d had plenty of opportunities to hurt me already, he hadn’t. “You can shove me down, but I won’t beg.”
“You put my men at risk, along with every single person in my household.”
I bowed my head. “Then do what you have to do.”
His hand disappeared from my backside. “If you’re trying to provoke me, you won’t like the result.”
Except, I wasn’t just denying his loyalty to prove he couldn’t demand it. And my trust in him would never be absolute just because he’d kidnapped me. I was hit with the realization that there was a deeper, more powerful reason holding me back.
I could never willingly let Cristiano have me in the ways he demanded . . . and it had nothing to do with his actions over the past few weeks, or with Diego.
“You want my devotion and my loyalty, but they’re based on trust and respect,” I said calmly over my shoulder. “I have neither for my mother’s murderer.”
“I already brought him to you,” he said through his teeth. “I hunted your mother’s murderer. I put him on his knees and handed Costa the gun. For closure. For Bianca. For you.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe with everything I’d learned about him tonight, I should’ve known with complete certainty that he wouldn’t have hurt my mom on purpose. And perhaps it’d been an accident, or perhaps he’d given the sicario access, or perhaps a million other possibilities. But as long as I had even a shred of doubt, I could never fully trust Cristiano.
I turned to face him. “I can’t know for sure.”
“I can. I do. I’m not her murderer. She didn’t die because she was shot in the stomach—she bled out. Do you know how long that takes?”
I blinked at the ground, unprepared for this argument. “Several minutes,” I said, having looked up as many details as I could remember over the years.
“At the very least. Could be ten, fifteen minutes—or more.” He took my arms and drew me close. “What fool would stay at the crime scene that long? I walked in moments before you did.”
“You were cleaning out the safe—”
“All the money in the world is useless if I’m dead.”
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see that?” I wriggled free of him, backing up until I hit his desk. “Even if the sicario wielded the gun, someone else gave the order—but who?” I asked. “As long as I have questions about your involvement, I will doubt you. A wife cares for her husband in sickness and health, she lies with him willingly—she loves him. I will never do any of that for a man who could have killed my mother.”
The skin at his collar reddened as his chest expanded with an inhale. He turned his head over his shoulder. “¡Adelante!”
As the door opened and heavy boots pounded the floor, closing in on us, my nerves flared—but they were anchored by a shameful thrill of excitement. Cristiano knew how to make me enjoy a spanking, I had no doubt. But he would never suspect being marked this way spoke to a terrifying—and utterly confusing—desire in me.
I tried to see around him, but his shoulders were too wide.
A bald, lumbering man with a chest-length red beard and a black bag over one shoulder stepped into my peripheral vision. He pulled on a glove and snapped it into place. “Where do you want it?” he asked in a low, rumbling voice as rubber snapped against skin.
