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“Welcome home, Mariella.”
ChapterFourteen
The house is immaculate. Though nobody else is here, he clearly had someone come through to prepare for our arrival. The kitchen is stocked, the floors sparkle, and there’s not a speck of dust on any of the furniture.
Each room is layered on top of another. I saw that from the drive up. The living room is on the bottom level, and simple in style with no TV. Right above it is a room that seems to be half office half den. There’s a desk in the corner, complete with a computer and printer, but it also holds a large armchair, coffee table, and flat screen TV mounted to the wall.
The kitchen and a small dining area are on the bottom level, with a formal dining room right above it.
The two bedrooms are on the back side of the house, one on each floor and both facing a creek. My room has a connecting bathroom, so I assume his does as well, because the only other bathroom I saw downstairs was a half bath.
Once I’ve unpacked and come to terms with the fact that this is my new home for the foreseeable future, I send Autumn and Noah a text and fill them in on the place, and then I open the sliding glass doors and step onto my balcony. When I look down, I see that Vicente has an identical patio right below.
When my stomach growls, I find my way downstairs and start going through the pantry and refrigerator. Whoever he had come out here to make sure we had food was thorough in their shopping. They also left out a pork roast tenderloin, so I pull that out of the fridge and gather some vegetables and seasonings.
Vicente is nowhere to be found, and I lose myself in my own head as I cook. I don’t think about the circumstances of my situation, or why I’m in this house far from my own. I don’t reminisce about the night at the club. I only worry about making sure I make this pork as moist and delicious as possible. I want the vegetables to be cooked and seasoned to perfection. I just want a nice meal and a full glass of wine to sit down with when I’m all done.
It’s almost an hour and a half later when I plate the meal, surrounding the tenderloin with the carrots, potatoes, and celery. I slice the pork into sections and smile at my creation. It looks beautiful and the aroma is intoxicating. I set the dish on the table nearby and go on the hunt for some wine. When I don’t find a wine fridge or rack anywhere nearby, I assume he has some sort of fancy cellar instead and start opening some of the doors. I find a couple closets and a laundry room before I pull open a door that has descending stairs.
I lean in and look for a light switch, wanting to illuminate the dark room, but I don’t find one. I begin to think, to hell with the wine, I’ll just have water, but curiosity gets the better of me.
With a quick glance around, I step down. My hand trails along the wall as my other holds on to a railing. Figuring my eyes will eventually adjust, I keep going, hoping to find a switch at the bottom.
When I get to the end of the stairs, my thoughts run rampant. He’s a killer. He could have bodies down here. No, he wouldn’t be that stupid. He has people to get rid of them. Maybe he has weapons in this room. Perhaps it’s where he holds secret information, and I’m just putting myself in a position where he’ll never let me leave because I’ll definitely know too much.
I turn to flee back up the stairs but my eye catches sight of something. A bed? Is this just an extra room? I take a few more steps inside and find a small lamp on a table. When I turn it on, the light glows red. There’s a bed made up with black covers and a bench at the foot. A chest of drawers stands against a paneled accent wall, and everything seems fairly normal, except when I get closer to the bed, I see the restraints at the corners.
I open a few drawers and find similar items to those I saw at ENMY—a pinwheel, flogger, paddle, and some other things I’m not sure about.
My body gets hot and I realize I need to get back upstairs. I quickly turn off the light and rush up, closing the door behind me.
I breathe a sigh of relief when I get back to the kitchen and find it’s still empty. With a glass from the cupboard, I fill it up with water from the fridge and place it on the table next to my plate.
My heart continues to race in my chest and I take a few deep breaths to calm myself down. He doesn’t know I was down there. Is that why my heart is racing? It’s not like it’s a surprise. He does own a sex club, and he did use a couple of things on me in one of those rooms. He probably wouldn’t care if I knew about his own personal room.
Maybe it’s because I remember what it felt like to have him rolling that pinwheel along my skin, and the sharp but exciting pain of the paddle against my clit. Perhaps it’s the fantasy of what it would be like to be restrained on that bed while he used his collection of sadistic toys.
I squeeze my legs together before shaking my head and snapping out of my sick fantasy. Why do I want to sleep with him after knowing what I know? Before, I could chalk it up to ignorance. He was just a sexy, powerful businessman. Now I know the truth, and yet it’s changed very little. I’m more fearful of him, but there’s also something exciting about that, and I’m beginning to learn I’m a little more fucked up than I ever thought.
In his lifestyle, it’s to be expected, right? You’re not in the mafia without having to get your hands dirty, and the people on the other side of his rage probably deserved it. What’s the saying?You live by the sword, you die by the sword.
“Jesus, Mariella,” I mutter to myself, rubbing my forehead.
I’m making excuses for a man—for myself—so I can be okay with having filthy fantasies about him even though he’s taken the lives of others.
“You okay?” Vicente asks, standing on the other side of the table.
My head snaps up. “Yeah. Fine. Uh. I made dinner.”
“I see that. Smells good.”
I start scooping food onto my plate since I was too zoned out to do it before. “I couldn’t find any wine.”
“Come here,” he says, walking past me and into the pantry.
“I looked in here.”
“Not well enough.”
