Chapter Five
The rest of the night I dance in a kind of trance, only vaguely aware of the flashing lights or the applause. The hands that reach for me, stroking and grabbing, barely register tonight. The hurt and shame I feel after being made to fuck his boot are too strong. I can see why Candy likes to shoot up before she goes onstage. I wish she was here so I could ask her for a hit.
There’s shock too, and that helps.
It’s dreamlike. I’m not really here, undressing and shaking my ass for strangers. I’m not even awake.
The sky is already a murky orange by the time I leave. A fine mist hangs between the buildings, a cross between fog and morning dew. The Grand is closing. Blue is ejecting the last customers, and they wander away, tripping their way over the uneven cobblestones, bleary and already hungover. Half the stones in the driveway are gone, pieces of the building’s façade missing, as if we’re in some battle-torn country. And we are. Wars are fought and lost on this street.
The well of the central fountain contains only dried leaves and cigarette butts. Whatever statuette once adorned the center pillar has long since been cracked off, leaving only a jagged edge jutting up. It’s a fitting centerpiece for the courtyard and the Grand as a whole, broken and proud.
I’m still in a trance as I head to Candy’s apartment. The numbness helps me here too, dulling my fear as I step over the bums and scary-looking men slumped over in the stairwell.
My knock echoes off the faded green walls.
She doesn’t answer.
“Candy,” I say, pressing my face against the door, hoping she’ll hear me. Still no answer. I try the doorknob just in case, but it’s locked.
Worry churns in my stomach. If she OD’ed on something behind that door…if she went home with some guy and he tied her up in the basement… there are so many ways she could get into trouble. So many ways to get hurt.
I know that from experience.
“Candy.” This time it’s a whisper. I know she won’t answer. Whether she’s high or just gone, she’s beyond my reach.
Silly to think I could help her, when I can’t even help myself.
I climb over the men on the stairs, hopeless and distracted. I almost don’t notice the man who holds the door open for me. In fact I’m already turning toward the sidewalk outside Candy’s apartment when I feel the prickle on the back of my neck. The same one I felt the first night he showed up at the strip club.
I freeze. Every muscle in my body locks tight.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” comes a masculine murmur behind me. A familiar male voice.
My heart pounds. My hands clench around the handle of the duffel bag.
“Honey,” he says softly. And there’s none of the mocking this time, even though the name is fake. He sounds mostly concerned.
Oh God, it’s him. I’d hoped I was wrong. He may say he’s not going to hurt me, but no man shows up uninvited to a stripper’s room with good intentions. I don’t turn, don’t face him. I speak to the empty sidewalk instead. “What are you doing here?”
“I followed you.” He pauses. “It’s not safe here.”
A chill runs over my skin. How did I miss him? And what else have I missed? Time on the run has given me certain skills, but I’m not a spy. I’m an heiress. A principessa. At least that’s what I was trained to be. I can host a dinner party for the most wealthy, lethal men in the country, but I don’t know how to spot a tail. I don’t know how to fight one.
I swallow hard. “What do you want from me?”
A blowjob? A fuck? These are the only things I have to give.
His sigh caresses my temple, gently ruffling my hair. “I just want to talk.”
That makes me scoff. He may stalk me, and I may fuck him, but at least we can be honest about it. “Then why are you in my space?”
Politeness is a ten-dollar bill tossed onto the stage. But for this, stalking and holding open the door in a parody of gentlemanly manners, he can get out of my personal space. He can stop making my heart beat too fast and my skin feel clammy and hot.
After a pause, he steps back. Not far, but enough that I can breathe again. I turn to face him—and again I’m struck with that sense of déjà vu, of recognition. Have I met him before? I would remember that face, the hardness of his features, the hint of vulnerability in his dark eyes, but all I have is a strange feeling, like I trust him even though he’s a stranger.
Obviously it’s a feeling I can’t trust.
I consider running for it, as useless as that would be. He’s too fast for me. And I don’t want to see what he’s like when he gets rough. And besides, I’d run the risk of leading him to the motel room—and to Clara.
It’s not like I could call the cops on him—at least not without answering a lot of other uncomfortable questions. Instead I let him ease the duffel bag away from me when he moves to take it from me. Without asking, of course. He slings it over his shoulder in a dark parallel to chivalry. He’ll let me go when he’s ready to.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” His gaze remains on me as we stand in front of Candy’s shit-hole apartment building. This building, this ground had seen violence before. I can feel it vibrate through the concrete. And it probably will again—I just hope it won’t be today.
I press my hands together, hating how helpless I feel. “Then let’s walk. In public.”
When he doesn’t answer, I head back toward the club. He falls in step beside me.
Public is a generous term for the street. No one would come running to help if I screamed. But it’s better than letting him follow me home. A whole lot better.
“Relax,” he says, somewhat dry and almost sad. “If I wanted to fuck you, I’d have met you in the club.”
And if he’d wanted to kill me, he could have done it a hundred times by now. He’d followed me here. I’m still alive. But I can’t relax. Not while I’m wondering whether he followed me any other night and what he saw. Who he saw. “Plenty of guys would like a freebie.”
Has he followed me home? I have to assume he hasn’t. I have to believe she’s safe, otherwise there’s no point to any of this.
“I’ll always pay,” he says, and I know he’s teasing a little. But a little bit not. “Cross my heart.”
It’s more than money now. It’s also distance. He’s drawing a line in the sand. He’s telling me he needs that line just as much as I do. “And tip,” I add. Because I can tease too.
His smile always dawns like the morning, slow and warm, wiping away the night’s chill. “Not just the tip, though.”
Oh my God. I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling too. “So what did you want to talk about?”
“Lots of things,” he says, catching my hand. “Like who you’re afraid of.”
I flinch. I’m afraid of Byron. I’m afraid of my father. I’m afraid of everyone. “What makes you think I’m afraid?”
“I know a girl in trouble when I see one. And you’re it.”
“So you’re here to save the day?” More likely he’d get himself killed. Yeah, the man is obviously tough—but my father has a fucking army at his command. Kip should find some other girl to stalk and harass. A different one to use. He should find a different girl to protect. “I can’t be what you want.”
A grim smile flickers over his face. “You really don’t know what I want, sweetheart. You’d be a lot more scared if you did.”
* * *
Six months ago
I’m still facedown on the desk, being pounded, when I hear the door open. I tense. What if it’s a guest? But then I hear the cadence of my father’s gait—one light step, one heavy, one creak of his cane.
Oh God. I pray that he leaves.
Byron doesn’t stop fucking me. His thrusts don’t change at all, not faster or slower. He fucks me like he has forever—and he does. My father can’t stop him. My father won’t stop him.
One light, one heavy, one creak of his cane. My father’s coming closer.
He must see me by now, must know what’s happening. And yet he keeps walking nearer to us. He rounds the desk. Light, heavy, creak.
And stops.
“Sir?” Byron’s breathing is heavy, the word clipped short. It’s a parody of respect, the word sir, as he fucks the man’s daughter over his desk. As his cock invades me, splitting me open.
“Byron.” My father sounds tired and impossibly old. “Our documents. Look at them.”
The documents are crushed in my hands. They are smeared with my mascara that smears across my cheek. They are ruined.
“Almost done,” Byron says on a grunt.
I shiver from disgust, that my father is here watching this, that my fiancé doesn’t seem to mind. I am something worse than a future wife or a beloved daughter. I am a pet, forced to beg and roll over for my dinner. And it’s not even disgust at my father or at Byron that hollows out my stomach—it’s disgust for myself. I let them do this to me. I don’t fight. I can’t fight. It’s not only me who’ll get hurt if I do.
A hand hovers over my head, shaking, trembling. Not Byron’s hand. It’s my father’s.
He always shakes now. The doctors say it will only get worse. It started in his hand, then moved to his legs. That’s when he started using the cane. He would have lost his life too. In his business any sign of weakness can be fatal. Competitors move in, take over. But no one came to kill my father because Byron stepped in.
With my father’s blessing, he’ll take control of the family’s businesses. His marriage to me will solidify the deal in the eyes of the more traditional mafiosos, smooth the way so less people fight it. And my father will get to live out his life in the empire he built, safe and sound and stroking the hair of his daughter as she gets fucked over his desk.
Every cell in my body revolts against his touch. But I remain still and outwardly calm. It’s a skill I learned early in life—facing a monster and showing no fear.
I’m surrounded by monsters.
Byron grunts and digs his fingers into my flesh. He pulses inside me, and I know he’s coming. Finally.
He pulls out with a wet sound. A warm swipe against my ass cheek quickly cools as he wipes his dick dry on me. The sound of a zipper fills the quiet room, then rustling as he puts himself to rights. My dress flips down.
As I lift my face, a piece of paper flutters back to the desk, unstuck from my cheek. My father strokes my hair one last time, and then his hand falls away. It feels like a strange ceremony has just taken place, the weight of it heavy in the air. The way a regular father would hand his daughter to her new husband at her wedding. But my father isn’t normal. He’s a Mafia don. The last in the line of the prestigious Moretti family. And he’s given his blessing to the union.
I stand and catch myself on the desk before I fall. My legs are weak, like a baby deer struggling to hold myself up. It’s Byron who pushes me up with a soft pat on my ass.
My father doesn’t meet my eyes. Instead he busies himself straightening the papers on the desk.
Byron sits and gives me a bland smile. You’d never think he was inside me one minute ago. “Go back to the party. We have business to discuss.” He pauses, then adds, “Enjoy yourself, darling.”
We aren’t in love. I hate him, and I think he might hate me too—for being born into the right family. Just with the wrong gender. If I’d been a man, I would have taken over the business in my own right. As it is, the other families require a man to lead, to respect. It’s not only my cunt that keeps me docile, though. I don’t have the heart to fight, to lead, to kill like they do.
Like Byron does. I’m terrified of him, but we’ll be married in a matter of months.