34. CHIARA
The sweet sound of Ezekiel’s screams is like music to my ears as I watch my husband take his fingers one by one. “You should have heeded Chiara’s warning,” Killian chides, snapping the garden clippers closed and watching as his pinky finger falls to the ground. “When a woman tells you she is married to the most powerful man in the country, only a fool would assume that is an invitation to fuck her.”
Ezekiel cries out, sobbing so much that snot falls into his mouth, and I cringe, wondering why I was so afraid of him. Next to Killian, I’ve never seen such a pathetic little man, and yet, this misery of a man held power over me. But never again.
“Please,” Ezekiel begs as blood pours from his hand, pooling on the ground beneath. “I swear, I didn’t know. I never would have touched her.”
Using the garden clippers, Killian backhands him, and I watch as teeth fly from Ezekiel’s mouth, shattering against the wall of the cell. “Are you calling my wife a liar?”
“No. NO!” he panics, his eyes desperately flicking between me and Killian. “I knew. She told me, and I—”
“You what, Ezekiel?” Killian prompts in a tone that makes my skin crawl, but fuck, I love it so much. “And I suggest you be honest with me, otherwise, I’ll keep you here for years, replaying the same torture over and over again.”
Ezekiel frets, his whole body shaking as blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth. “She told me she was yours and that you’d kill me when you found out she was being sold again, and I said—” he pauses, and knowing exactly what he said, I can’t blame him for his hesitation. Once those words are out of his mouth, he’s a fucking goner. “I said that if you were gonna kill me anyway, I might as well get something out of it.”
Killian moves like lightning. One minute the clippers are in his hand, angling toward the next finger, and the next, the handles are protruding from Ezekiel’s stomach, the tip buried so deep I can’t even tell what type of tool it is.
Ezekiel roars in agony, the sound of his pain mirroring the cries of his guards coming from the adjoining cells, and I’m not going to lie, most of the brutality I’ve seen today has had me nodding along in excitement, but even this one has me cringing.
“Damnnnnnn,” I groan.
Killian turns and meets my stare, his brow raising as a stupid grin stretches across his face, and for the first time since meeting him in that terrifying auction house, he’s giving me golden retriever vibes. “You like that one, Angel?”
I can’t help but grin back at him. “That was messed up, even for you,” I tell him. “Just one more inch and he would have swallowed it whole.”
“That’s what I was going for, but my hand was in the way,” he says as Ezekiel groans behind him. “You’re welcome to give it a go if you think you can do better.”
My gaze shifts to Ezekiel, taking a moment to consider what kind of revenge I would find the sweetest, but when it comes down to it, I’ve always been an eye-for-an-eye kind of girl. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as though I’m going to violently ram a dildo up his ass for an hour straight. The more brutal punishments I’m happy to leave for Killian, but everything else . . . I don’t see why I shouldn’t enjoy taking part.
Pushing off the edge of the metal bars, I stride toward Killian and watch as the curiosity flickers in his dark eyes. “Do you have a knife?”
He silently nods and pulls a switchblade from his pocket before handing it to me and backing out of the way, leaving me to take the reins. Nerves begin creeping into my veins, slowly at first until they’ve completely consumed me, and before I even start, I glance back at Killian. His simple nod of encouragement is all I need to remember who has the power here.
“As much or as little as you need, Chiara,” Killian’s soothing tone fills the cell, sending waves of confidence crashing through me.
I take a breath, and as I slowly let it out, I take one final step, settling in front of the man who abducted me twice. He sold me as a piece of meat, chained me, cuffed me, held me down and raped me. Suddenly, my morals no longer exist.
Ezekiel stares at me, his gaze narrowed to slits as I contemplate how I want to play this. “You treated me like an animal,” I say as calmly as ever. “A toy put here for your sick entertainment. You held me down. You sliced my clothes from my body and forced yourself inside of me while I sobbed in agony.”
My voice wavers, and I pause, needing a moment to find my composure before continuing. “Do you recall how many times I begged you to stop?”
Ezekiel doesn’t respond, but I didn’t expect him to.
“Thirty-six,” I say. “Thirty-fucking-six times. I counted every single one of them because it gave me something else to focus on apart from your brutal attack, but now I’m the one with the power, and it’s your turn to beg. It’s your turn to crumble at the hands of someone else, to feel every ounce of your dignity be stolen from you, even if I have to come back here every damn day to make it so. You haven’t scarred me, Ezekiel. All you’ve done is prove to me exactly what I’m capable of surviving.”
He still refuses to respond, and it’s clear that he doesn’t fear me in the way he fears Killian, but he will learn to soon enough. However, to be fair, he kinda has a pair of garden clippers hanging out of his guts, so that could be putting a damper on things.
Wanting to start out slowly, I raise the hem of my shirt and show him the slice his men made in my torso when they began cutting me out of my clothes. My cuts are stitched up now after spending the majority of the night being tended to by Killian’s doctor, but they’re still just as painful as they were when they first happened.
“You see this?” I demand. “You left a scar on my body. Twenty-three of them, in fact. And now, you will bear the same scars so when you descend into hell, even the devil will know what a pitiful, little man you are.”
And with that, I step even closer, and press the tip of the blade right to his torso before digging it deep. Ezekiel clenches his jaw and groans in agony as I simply stand back and look at my handiwork. It’s certainly much deeper than the cut that was left on my skin, but nobody said it had to be fair.
Moving on, I lift my gaze to his chest, and as I plunge the knife into his skin, the burden of his abuse begins to lift off my shoulders. Each cut takes away just a bit of the shame, and I go on and on until every last scar is mirrored on his body.
I let out a heavy breath, turning to face Killian. His deep gaze locks on me, and the pride behind those dark eyes fills me with the deepest joy. Without a second thought, I know that I will do everything within my power to see this look in his eyes every damn day for the rest of my life.
His phone is wedged between his ear and shoulder as someone speaks to him, and to be honest, I didn’t even notice his phone ring. He walks into me, his hand falling to my waist as he finishes his phone call, and the moment the phone slips away into his pocket, he lifts his other hand to my chin and leans in. Killian brushes the softest kiss upon my lips, and I savor every second of it, erasing the horrible memories and replacing them with ones like this.
“You know,” I say, barely even aware of the dying man behind me. “It’s almost comical how just a few days ago, the thought of these cells terrified me, but now . . . they seem to offer some kind of twisted justice.”
“It does,” he agrees before nodding toward Ezekiel behind me. “Are you finished with him? Or would you prefer I keep him alive?”
I shrug my shoulders. “It’s your call. I’m done with him. I don’t plan on ever coming into this cell again, as long as he occupies it, of course. As for you, if you feel what’s been done here today isn’t sufficient, then by all means, have at it. I don’t care if you wish to keep him down here for an hour or a lifetime. It’s up to you.”
His eyes sparkle with excitement. “It seems I’m the one who needs to fear you, not the other way around.”
I scoff. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Killian DeLorenzo.”
He laughs before a wave of seriousness washes over him, and I feel a heavy weight drop into the pit of my stomach. “That was Cristian on the phone. We found them, Angel. Sergiu and Monica. They’re in South France in an underground bunker,” he tells me. “Now, I know you’ve already had a very long day, so the choice is yours. You can stay here and heal, or you can come with me. Either way, my jet is ready to take off.”
My brows arch. “You have a jet.”
“Of course I have a jet,” he says. “I have three.”
“Three?” I scoff. “Why the hell do you need three?”
“Why wouldn’t I need three?”
I gape at him, realizing he’s absolutely serious. He simply doesn’t comprehend how three jets would be excessive, and all I can do is smile at him as I look up into those dark, deadly eyes. “You know, I’ve never been to France.”
“You’d like to come?”
“Do I get to dress for the occasion?”
“Absolutely.”
“And will you take me to see the Eiffel Tower afterward?”
“If you wish.”
“And the Colosseum?”
His brows furrow. “That is in Rome, Angel.”
“Oh, I know.”
He lets out a breath, clearly working out my game plan. “Of course, Chiara. Any other stops you’d like to make along the way?”
My grin is bigger than ever before, instantly sending an ache deep into the apples of my cheeks. “Why don’t I make you a list?”
Killian laughs and lowers his hand to my back before leading me out of the cell, neither one of us bothering to stop and glance back at the mess we’ve left behind. We make our way out of the cells and back to the main house, when we pass the doctor who spent the early hours of the morning stitching me back together and offering me the little pill that could prevent any unwanted pregnancies from my night of hell.
Killian stops and meets his curious gaze, clearly knowing there’s more work for him to do. “Cell three. Find a way to keep the bastard alive without removing the sheers and that big property you’ve been looking at for your wife and kids is all yours.”
His eyes bulge out of his head. “Certainly, Sir,” he says before pausing and thinking better of it. “How long will he be required to live?”
“I’ll return in . . . a month. I have business to attend to tonight and then I’ll be taking Chiara on a European vacation. See what you can manage in the meantime.”
The doctor is wise enough to nod and do everything he can to please Killian, but there’s no denying the dread in his eyes. I’m certainly no doctor, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize that those garden cutters will cause some pretty insane infections, and considering the likelihood that they punctured the stomach or intestines, the chances are high. But hell, if there’s a possibility of getting the new home his wife and children have been wanting, then why not give it a try? I know I would.
The doctor scurries off, realizing the quicker he can start dealing with his new assignment, the better his chances are, and I’m left to go pack a bag. “A month? Really?” I ask as Killian helps me up the stairs.
“Does that seem too soon? I can make it two, but I can’t guarantee Ezekiel will still be breathing when we return, and I really haven’t finished with him yet.”
“You’re insane,” I tell him. “A month is huge.”
He grins, and as we reach the top of the stairs, I take off into my room. When I walk into my closet, I turn my ass back around. “Killian,” I question, striding back out into the big seating area between our rooms. “Where are all of my clothes?”
“My room,” he says, watching me from an armchair. “It didn’t feel right having you so far away. You’ll sleep in my bed from now on, Angel. In my arms. Nowhere else.”
A flutter blooms through my stomach, quickly spreading throughout my body and leaving me a trembling mess. “I’d like that,” I tell him, and then before I get carried away, I stride into Killian’s bedroom and prepare to put this war to rest for good.