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I obviously ended up sounding sharper than I’d meant to, because she looks at me and arches her brows.
“Worried about me, Saint?” she asks, a little dryly. She picks up the sandwich and takes a bite, even as she squirms. “Angelo and Victor happened to me, that’s all.”
She’s bruised up—around her throat in particular, and there’s a cut along her breast from where Angel had sliced into her skin. I’m not sure if I’m fighting my protective instincts or my arousal as I gaze at her. The marks prove she belongs to us, but I want her safe, too.
“Angel’s calmed down a lot,” I tell her, “So you don’t need to worry about him anymore. I mean, don’t go out of your way to piss him off, but for now, he’s focused on tracking Ricci.”
“And what about Victor?” she asks in between bites.
“What did Victor do to you?” I ask, frowning. I want to take the sandwich and feed it to her.
She turns a little, shifting so I can see her ass. I stare at the dark mottled bruises along her cheeks. She must be in so much pain, but I guiltily reach out and stroke the bruised flesh. I feel her tense under my touch.
“Victor spanked you?” I try to imagine it, and I wish I’d seen it. I’ll have to go back to check the security footage, although it won’t be the same as being in the room and hearing her cries and moans.
I want to be too indignant to be aroused, but my cock loves the idea of seeing her bent over Victor’s lap with her ass in the air, taking each slap he gives her. Because of course she’d be in his lap. He would want to control her every way he could, humiliate her, and that would only be possible if she was totally at his mercy.
“Yes,” she says, sounding… strange. She doesn’t seem angry, and she won’t meet my eyes.
For a while, I just watch her eat. There’s something very vulnerable about her right now, from her bruised skin to the way she keeps her body small. Angelo and Victor scared her badly.
When I notice her shiver, I pull the nearby blanket over her shoulders. “You’re still cold?”
“A little bit,” she replies. She looks up at me with those gorgeous, troubled eyes and says almostshyly, “Do you think I could borrow your shirt for a little while? It’s hard staying tangled in blankets all the time.”
I’m torn between wanting to keep her naked, the primal part of me enjoying that she’s always within easy access without clothing on, and wanting to play the role of white knight. Not to mention, if she wears my shirt, she’ll smell like me. I won’t have to mark her as viciously as Angel and Victor have, but it’ll mark her as mine all the same.
I pull the shirt I’m wearing over my head and offer it to her.
She smiles at me and shifts the blankets so she can put it on. Part of me regrets losing the view, but mostly, I’m just pleased to see her in my clothes again.
“I know we’ve been a bit rough, but you don’t need to worry anymore,” I say, rubbing her shoulder through my shirt. “Especially with Victor. He’s not a violent guy, not like Angel, so I think spanking will be the worst of what he does.”
Her eyes darken. “He’s already done more than that,” she says, and there’s a distinct note of bitterness in her voice. “And he’s threatening to do even worse.”
Worse than that? Nothing I saw compares. He’s been pretty gentle with her, all things considered. “What do you mean, threatening to do more?”
Lucia stares at me for a moment. “You mean you don’t already know?” Her smile twists into something ugly, and she pulls away from me. “He’s talking about trading me directly to Pavone.”
What the hell? Victor definitely didn’t mention that to me. That’s a huge change in plans if it’s true, and one that makes my blood go cold. But Victor usually has a reason for everything he does. “Well,” I say cautiously, “Does it make much of a difference? You’re engaged to Pavone, so you’d end up with him either way, right?”
She jerks back even more, even going so far as to get off the bed like she can’t put enough distance between us. “Yes, it makes a fucking difference,” she hisses at me, her eyes blazing with fury. “In one scenario, I still have a chance of surviving. You’re not stupid, Saint. I know you’re the one who dug up the videos on Elena Pavone. But do you know what he did to his third wife? His first? If Victor trades me directly to Pavone, I’m as good as dead. And that’safterhe tortures me even more than the three of you have.”
I’m annoyed that she’s calling what we’ve done together torture. She got off with all of us, didn’t she? And she’s the one who agreed to sleep with us. But she isn’t wrong about Pavone in general. “Elena cheated on him though,” I answer weakly. “Just don’t… be a slut, I guess. I know Angel was on your case about that, but you’ve got self-restraint.”
Lucia closes her eyes for a moment, and I watch as her lips move while she silently counts to ten. She finally opens them, but she looks no less livid than she did before. “So she deserved to have acid splashed onto her face and turned into a subject for his torture and snuff porn because she cheated on him?”
It’s a trick question, and I know it. “Of course she didn’t deserve it, kitten, but what did she think was going to happen? Pavone’s old school. He wouldn’t suffer that kind of humiliation.”
“Oh mygod, Saint. Are you even listening to yourself?” she asks. Without waiting for a response, she goes on, “So if you’re going to slut-shame and victim-blame, fine. Tell me how it was okay for him to slaughter his third wife because I told him I wouldn’t sleep with him while he was married. Go on. Tell me,” she dares.
That’s news to me. I know the third wife died, but the official story is that some rival group broke into his house and murdered her. “Are you sure? You’re beautiful, but…” I notice her scowl deepen. “I want to believe you, but there’s a police report and everything about a break-in. Her death was… okay, not a tragic accident, but it wasn’t Pavone’s doing.”
“So it’s just… fine that he texted me a picture of her mangled body to tell me he was single now?” she asks dangerously.
I’m sort of glad she doesn’t have a weapon on her, because the way she’s looking at me…
I try to make sense of all this though. “So you’re telling me Pavone, what? He wanted to fuck you, you said no, and then he murders his wife? And somehow you got engaged to him afterward?”
