Natalia

 

I sat slumped beneath the piping. My arms had gone numb a long time ago from being chained behind my head. My mouth was sore and aching. Sticky liquid looped between my lips. I hovered somewhere between awake and asleep, too horrified to face reality head on. I couldn’t. Not after what had just happened.

 

The incessant sound of water splashing one drop at a time into the puddle collecting on the floor beneath the leaky pipe was driving me insane. I groaned, if only to let the sound of my agony cover up the torturous, repetitive noise.

 

I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there. The man in the sweatpants had been gone for a while, though. I only knew this because his cum had dried on my lips. I felt numb. Broken.

 

The door swung open and the first thing I saw was him again. He gave me a sickeningly warm smile and a taunting wave of his fingers, like I was an old friend he hadn’t seen in a while. I fixed my eyes on him. I didn’t have the energy to talk or to curse, but I tried to let him know with my gaze just how much I hated what he had done to me. He only laughed harder.

 

Then I saw who he had with him.

 

Nicholas was bleeding from the head as the man dragged him by his arms. I heard a low mumble coming from deep in his chest as he was pulled next to me and locked up just like I was, his hands twisted behind his back and suspended from the pipe above.

 

He looked at me with dazed eyes, then blinked hard. His pupils refocused. “Natalia…” he murmured. His lips were busted and swelling. The blood dripping along his chin fell to the floor. It was fresh. They must have just beat him. I wondered how he had gotten here, what had happened to him that he ended up restrained here next to me. Wasn’t he a Esposito? Why would Alessandra chain him beside me? I wanted to understand, but I was too deep in shock to even begin processing the possibilities.

 

“You’re one stupid son of a bitch, do you know that?” said the fat man in the tank top to Nicholas. “You didn’t think once that you were being played? You were just a pawn, man. Just a tool getting used. Goddamn. Makes my heart hurt seein’ you strung up like this.”

 

“Fuck…you…” Nicholas sputtered.

 

He straightened up and chuckled, shaking his head from side to side like a parent would when their child just didn’t understand something. He caught sight of me and a twinkle popped up in his eye. “Well, hello, darling,” he said in a faux-polite tone. “I ain’t seen ya in a minute. Sorry I had to go so suddenly. But, you know, duty called.” He prodded Nicholas with a toe. “This one had to be attended to. He went and made a real doggone mess of things.”

 

“You traitor,” said Nicholas.

 

“Me? No, I would never! Well, okay, that’s a lie. I would, and I did. I stabbed you in the back, I guess you could say, couldn’t you?”

 

Nicholas growled and yanked at his chains. They rattled against the pipeline but refused to give way.

 

“Tut, tut, don’t be doing that, Nicholas,” he said. “I already had to discipline your girlfriend here. Don’t make me do something worse to you.” He licked his lips lasciviously and gave me a heavy wink.

 

Nicholas looked at me. I tried to hide my face, to wipe it on the sleeve of my clothing. I didn’t want him to see me like this, but it was no good. He peered through his pain-induced haze and saw the evidence of what the man had done to me. How he had used me.

 

I saw the blood drain from his cheeks. His eyes deepened, hardened. They grew even colder. He turned his gaze to the man standing in front of us. When he spoke again, his voice wasn’t wavering anymore. It was hard as rock, impossible to ignore or to deny. “You’re going to die for what you did to her, Luca,” he said, one clearly enunciated word at a time. Drip, drip, went the water from the pipe, adding more and more to the puddle.

 

Luca pulled a gun from the back of his pants, cocked it, and stepped forward to press it against Nicholas’s forehead.

 

“No!” I managed to say, finally breaking through the numbness that surrounded me like a heavy blanket.

 

“Quiet, Natalia,” Nicholas said firmly. He didn’t break eye contact with Luca. “I’m going to kill him.”

 

“No, Nico, you’re not,” he hissed. “I’m going to kill you. First, I’m going to rape her again, while you sit here and watch. Then I’m going to put a fucking bullet through your skull, you smug son of a bitch.”

 

“You’re wrong about that, my friend,” Nicholas replied.

 

Here he was, locked up, a gun pointed at his face. But suddenly, out of nowhere, I remembered what he had told me in his apartment. I protect what’s mine.

 

Despite everything around me, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the crazy thing was, I still believed him.