7. Contessa
7
Contessa
Outrages upon personal dignity and humiliating, degrading treatment both fall under violations of the Geneva Convention. And I’ve decided, in the long, frustrating hours after he leaves, that Salvatore Mori is a war criminal who should be tried as such.
Salvatore leaves me for hours with nothing to focus on except the unsatisfied heat pulsing between my legs. Ava doesn’t come back to distract me, even though she promised she would.
I wonder what kind of trouble she got in.
. . .Probably not the same kind I have.
I pass some of the time in the bath, scrubbing myself pink as if I can wash off the dirty effect Salvatore has on me. All it does is make me wish these were his hands running up and down my body. I consider sitting in the tub and having a good cry, but I don’t think that would make me feel better, either. Just more pathetic than I already am.
I pass the hours with self-care, making use of the little amenities I’ve been given. I fill up the dressing room with the clothes in my size and pick one of the mini dresses to wear for now.
It’s comfortable and chic, without looking like I’m going to a formal Michelin-star dinner. I take a sash from one of the other dresses and improvise a way to tie up my hair.
For the rest of the day, I am left to sit in the window, stare out at the yard, and think.
I think about being spiteful and finding some way to ruin this little game for Salvatore. I think about playing along and seeing what his wicked plan has in store for me, body and mind. I think about my father, and Kaydence, and the cozy apartment missing me in Greenwich Village with so many half-finished canvases waiting to be filled. Those thoughts let me finally lose myself in something else.
Instead of wallowing in frustration, I finally give in and wallow in my misery.
The fact that I am a prisoner has finally settled in.
There’s an ugly sting in it, as if I’ve proven my father right. He always said— You either learn to live by the mafia rules or you die by them.
Even now I can hear his voice, so perfectly clear, as if he were in the room with me: “I told you so.”
Strangers trickle into the estate throughout the day. I watch from my window as they arrive, carrying luggage with them. It’s strange to think that these people are coming here voluntarily, while I’m stuck behind this glass like a pretty little pet, thinking only of getting out.
I daydream about manhunts and missing persons posters. I wonder if my father is storming through Salvatore’s businesses, tearing through New York like a nor'easter. And then, that same old doubt mutters in the back of my thoughts, trying to convince me that he’s shrugging off my disappearance, writing off my kidnapping as someone taking out his trash for him.
The thought stings in my eyes.
He really did sound worried about me on the phone call.
The sun is setting when the door opens again. I’ve made the daring move from the window nook to the bed. I’d gotten tired of looking out at a world I couldn’t reach. The tread of heavy footsteps enters the room, and I glance over my shoulder to check that it’s Salvatore.
When it is, I roll back over and promptly ignore him.
“Get up,” he says. “We’re having dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten.”
“I haven’t done much of anything. Not that you care. I’m not hungry,” I repeat.
I don’t think this is the mood Salvatore expected when he came back here. He probably hoped I would be on my knees for him, face down and ass up, begging for his touch. If he’d timed it a little differently, maybe I would have been. He’s a couple hours too late for all that.
His footsteps march around to my side of the bed, where he blocks the orange glow of the afternoon sun from view. I stare through his highlighted silhouette.
“Is this a hunger strike, or are you pouting because you got punished?”
“Oh, right, because it can’t just be that I want to choose when I eat,” I say flatly.
He hauls me up by the arm, but I shake him off and march across the room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.
“To wherever you’re having dinner, apparently.”
I can tell he expected me to put up more of a fight, to not walk passionlessly to the door and wait for him there. My feet stop at the threshold I am not allowed to cross.
I can feel his stare, even if I can’t see it. I’ve become familiar with the way he looks when he’s trying to read me, like a poker player glancing up over his cards. I keep my eyes forward, into the hallway. He can figure me out too easily, and looking at him seems to make that x-ray affect so much sharper. If I don’t show him my face, maybe he won’t be able to see so many of my weaknesses.
With one arm in his rough grasp, Salvatore hauls me to his bedroom again. Light spills through the house, illuminating all the dark, shadowy spaces I couldn’t see before. Muffled, rowdy voices rise from the floor below, but Salvatore leads us away from the noise, into his shadowy room, where another door is put between me and the rest of the world.
Out of one cage and into another.
Salvatore’s bedroom is spacious enough that the intimate, table-for-two set up doesn’t look out of place, arranged next to the window where the curtains have been drawn back. The light on this side of the house has already turned purple in twilight, throwing the room into a dusky hue.
He sits me before a plate of braised veal, paired with a glass of wine and a glass of water.
I consider chugging the wine.
“Where’s Ava?” It’s the first and only real question I have for him.
“How should I know?” Salvatore replies, taking his seat.
“She was supposed to come back to my room this morning. She never did.”
“She’ll be back tomorrow.”
I scowl at my plate. I’ve been given a real fork this time, but no knife, and the veal has been pre-cut for me, like a toddler.
“Did you do something to her?” I finally ask.
Salvatore leans back in his seat as he aims his next words like a sniper planning his mark.
I see in the dark corner of his smirk, the glint in his eyes that has nothing to do with mirth.
“Jealousy is a good look on you,” he says lowly. “Afraid I’m fucking my best friend’s little sister? When I’m not busy teaching you how to use your own cunt, of course. I don’t know where I’d find the time.”
I’m about one smart-ass remark from flipping the table over.
“You distracted me earlier. I forgot to mention what I came by your room for,” Salvatore continues, ignoring my visible anger. He acts as if we’re going to exchange pleasant conversations about how our days went. “There was a police report filed for you this morning; Kaydence Lowry?”
Kay .
My reaction shows. I can’t stop it.
“One of your friends from the club, apparently. Our men at the precinct intercepted it, but I need to know if the bitch is going to be a problem.”
“She’s not,” I say, the words fast and automatic. I hardly even know what he’s asking, but the last thing I want is to put Kay in the mafia’s crosshairs. “She won’t be.”
God, of course Kay would lose track of me for one night and march right to the police first-thing trying to make sure I was safe. I love her for it as much as I hate it. The best thing for Kay to do is just…let me go. But I know Kay, and she never will.
“If I could call her—”
“No,” Salvatore says, immediate and dismissive.
“But—”
He glances up, meeting my gaze, as if daring me to make him say the word again.
The plate in front of me becomes blurry. I frantically blink before he has the satisfaction of seeing me cry, trying to calm myself down. The thought of her worrying about me just makes my heart ache. I know she would be so scared and so furious if something happened—no, that something has happened to me.
For a few long minutes, I do nothing but wallow in my own thoughts.
“Eat,” Salvatore demands, motioning to my untouched plate.
“I don’t want it.”
“Do I have to negotiate with you like a child? Eat .” He pushes the plate closer to me.
I eye the wine bottle, wondering how satisfying it would be to pick it up and break it over his head. I push the intrusive thought away. I stare into my plate and try to find the slightest desire to obey him. I pick up my fork.
“Real silverware,” I say snidely. “I thought I wasn’t allowed such a dangerous weapon.”
“You’re not allowed silverware around Ava. If you kill me with a fork, I won’t be angry, I’ll just be impressed.”
“Don’t encourage me,” I mutter, stabbing into a piece of meat with far too much force.
It’s fall-off-the-bone tender regardless and is nearly obliterated with the force I use to poke at it. I make myself eat, taking a tentative, unhappy bite. Then two. A warmth spreads through me, the tension in my body evaporating like steam and softening my death-grip on the fork.
I’m starving.
The fact hits me like a truck. I haven’t had a full meal since my birthday brunch with Kay, and I barely touched my breakfast earlier. The fact that the food is actually delicious only makes it worse as my anger begins to fizzle out, one bite at a time. I hate that something so simple makes me see clearer and less cagey and upset.
Salvatore watches me eat, as if satisfied with himself and my sudden obedience.
“Better?”
“How the fuck do you do that?” I demand, my fork slamming against the table.
Apparently, being fed hasn’t taken all of my anger. “How do you just know everything I want or need or—” I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like Salvatore has a fucked-up superpower that lets him read and interpret my thoughts better than I can myself. “How are you in my head?”
He doesn’t flinch at all at my outburst, my words bouncing off his stern demeanor.
“Reading people is what I do,” he says, as if I am not the first person he’s explained this to. “I measure people. What they’re capable of, what motivates them, what they lack. And then, when I find that thing they want or the problem they need solved, something only I can give to them, I do it. When the time comes, they’ll be expected to return the favor. If I couldn’t decode people, I wouldn’t be any good at this, and I am good at it. And let’s be honest with ourselves, you’re not exactly a difficult case.”
I almost ask what he means, but it’s embarrassingly obvious. Salvatore has my inexperience and my virginity under his thumb, has fashioned himself as the key to my locked-up pleasure.
“And I’m the only one who gets the short end of the stick. I don’t get anything I ‘ need ,’” I drape the word in vehement sarcasm, “you just take everything from me instead.”
Salvatore’s eyes sweep up and down my body, before he answers, utterly certain of himself, “Don’t play stupid, Contessa. You’re getting exactly what you need.”
Any clever retort withers up on my tongue.
I try to press him about my father, or any news of my family, but he doesn’t allow it. We resolve to eat in silence. I pick at my food, thinking bitterly over how medieval all this is. My father might not be a good man, he might order hits and break laws, but he isn’t out in the street kidnapping women.
I study the man across from me, trying to find the truth about anything my father might have said about him. The Moris’s have always been non-traditional, always pushing the boundary just enough to get themselves ahead, but toeing the line close enough that the other families will still abide it.
My father inherited his hatred. The rivalry has spanned generations. The old school mafia, back when the families were more unified and organized, operated like a society of its own. They had a proud reputation for not dealing drugs. Booze, laundering, racketeering, hits.
Those were all fair game for the mob, but drugs were largely regarded as being beneath them. Not the Moris’s. Gambling regulations tightened up and prohibition ended, but drugs only became more lucrative, and the Moris’s were out ahead of the curve.
My family watched their influence be whittled away from them, punished by their own principles. The traditional families were caught in a famine, while the Moris’s had a feast. Over time, it earned them influence, allies, and unfathomable amounts of money. Eventually, everyone adapted to the new way, or they died off.
Except my family. We held on, stubbornly, through the generations—even with all the odds against us. I guess we were the underdogs. That’s how my father always told the story, anyway, and how it was probably told to him.
The hatred between our two families is just in the blood now.
It makes me feel a little strange, sitting here and eating a meal with this man who should be torturing and starving me for just a few syllables on the end of my name.
That was how my father always made them seem: the lawless of the lawless.
After dinner, Salvatore sends for whisky, trading empty plates for a bottle of single malt.
He pours himself a glass. I’m not offered one. I can’t tell if this means Salvatore plans to ship me back to my room or if he’s not done with me yet.
“Did you think about what you did today?” he asks, as he pours himself a glass.
“I didn’t do anything, actually,” I say, laying the double-meaning on thick. “Unless you mean napping.”
He takes my answer too calmly, sipping at his drink. He lets the silence burn like a fire—a fire that’s slowly creeping closer and closer to me, waiting for me to yelp. I’m stricken with the sinking feeling that I’ve given the wrong answer.
“…Do you want an apology?” I ask tersely.
I really don’t want to give him one.
Judging by the stare he gives me; he isn’t expecting one either.
“Why is my smart girl suddenly asking stupid questions?”
That voice is back, the same one he uses when he touches me, the dark, low cadence that makes me listen and cling to every word. The order is all wrong this time—Salvatore has kept his hands to himself, but at this tone, my body responds like a trained dog. The unresolved ache from this morning stirs again. He continues.
“No, I don’t want a fucking apology. I want you to do better .” The criticism grinds salt against a wound, the sting harsher than I expect. “I want you to tell me that you understand your role here, that you can be what I need you to be. That you’re a capable wife.”
I can’t let him keep playing these games, twisting my urge to please him up with his dark vision for my very real future.
“Are you surprised that a woman you randomly kidnapped isn’t perfect bride material? I didn’t ask for this, and I’m not your wife.”
His silence weighs heavily.
“Get on the bed, Contessa.”
“…Why? What are you going to do?”
He says nothing. Nervousness creeps into my stomach.
In all the many times that I’ve questioned him, Salvatore has made one thing clear—he won’t repeat himself. I fold. I take myself to his bed, where he motions for me to lie down. He stands at the end of it and downs his drink. The alcohol still burns in his voice when he says,
“Open your legs for me.”
I know better than to hesitate a second time. I spread my legs, drawing the edge of my dress up around my thighs.
“…Are you going to do it again? What you did this morning?”
I’m terrified he’ll repeat it, that he’ll leave me aching on the edge all night, with sparse sleep and hot dreams of him. I can’t stand the threat of it. If anything will send me mad in this house, that will.
Salvatore ignores my question. He doesn’t even touch me, standing back and letting the vulnerability sink in as I lie here with my legs apart.
“Further,” he demands, “with your hands under your knees.” It’s a humiliating position as I stretch myself open for him, pull my thighs into a split. I’m embarrassed that Salvatore hasn’t laid a hand on me, but my pussy already drips for him.
“Look at you. I’ve had my hands and mouth all over that virgin cunt,” he growls. “You spread it open for me whenever I tell you to, and you like it. You beg me to make you come like it’s your fucking prom night. You better be my wife, Contessa, because if you’re not—well, what the fuck are you? My slut? My whore? Is that what you want to be? Just another pussy in a long list?”
“…No,” I gasp, my arousal stealing my voice.
“Then what are you?”
My mouth opens around a word I don’t know. I don’t know what I am to him. His victim? His pet? His obsession? None of them fit.
“Yours,” I gasp.
“My what ?”
I shake my head. I don’t know .
“I’m—”
My gaze wavers, caught in his intensity. God, he hasn’t even touched me.
“ I’m your good girl,” I whisper.
His breath leaves him in a growl.
Salvatore takes me by one ankle and drags me down the bed like I weigh nothing, bringing me to him covers and all. For a terrifying moment, I can’t tell if I’ve given him the right or wrong answer.
“Does my good girl deserve a second chance?” he asks.
I nod desperately.
“Then, ask me what you asked Ava,” he commands.
God, I can barely remember .
“I—I don’t know.”
Salvatore flicks his fingers hard against my clit. The sting is unexpected. I arch up, too open and vulnerable. It’s different now. When he pulled that move earlier, the foreplay had already set the tone. Now, it lands hard and kicks an uncomfortable feeling up into my guts. But even as Salvatore plays rough, a wanting stirs up an undercurrent in my belly, and that deep-seated desire to obey him keeps my legs open for his abuse.
“Ask me, Contessa.”
I wanted to know—what did I want to know?
It seems so inconsequential now.
When I don’t answer, he snaps his fingers against my cunt again, my cry muffled against my clenched molars.
“It hurts—”
“So why are you bucking into it?” he asks knowingly, flicking me again and again. “Tell me to stop.”
I don’t. I can’t . I don’t want him to.
I shake my head.
“Don’t,” I beg, the sensation confusing and overwhelming. My thighs tremble, milking the slightest pleasure out of the pain vibrating through me. Maybe I’m just that fucking desperate to feel something down there. I’ll take anything he gives me, pleasure or pain, heaven or hell.
All at once, the question comes back to me.
“I—I asked her—what you’re like. I wanted to know what kind of—what kind of man you are.”
He gets on the bed with me, pulls me up into his arms suddenly so that I sit against his hand. His other grip curls around my throat.
“Do you know what the answer is?” He whispers lowly. His soaked fingers have stopped their assault. He swirls soft circles around my battered clit— gently . Pleasure runs like an electric current into my belly, following the same path his brutal stimulation opened. The transition blows through me, my overworked little clit quaking from pain to intense, frenzied pleasure.
My toes curl, my feet numb, my pulse throbbing hard in my pussy as I practically buck into his touch. I moan without meaning to.
“I’m the kind of man that can make you come.”
I arch up, funneling the pleasure straight to my core.
“That’s it,” he urges. “So desperate, you just want to fuck yourself on my fingers, don’t you?” His touch draws out the pounding pleasure quaking in my cunt, his words hot on my ear.
“How long do you think it will be before you’re calling yourself my wife? Should we take bets?”
I can’t play his games and ride his fingers at the same time.
I whine wordlessly.
Please , I beg silently to myself, please let me come this time.
My hips stutter against his hands, my mouth falling open as he rewards my pussy.
I spread my hand over the back of his, as if I can keep it there, keep that pleasure pounding through me. Now knowing that he can and will take it away—the threat looms over me, more powerful than it should be.
With my legs spread on his lap, his hand around my throat, my hips grinding frantically against his touch—I hit that blinding peak, crying out as my thighs shudder and convulse. He holds me against him, keeping me steady as white-hot static pours through me. I dig my fingers into his thighs, but he doesn’t seem to care.
The moment comes and goes in a flash. A weak moan tumbles from my lips as I sink back against his chest, feeling him all around me, his huge arms and solid chest.
Breathy silence settles.
I know he likes seeing me like this, I know his cock is hard, his desire racing just like mine. He just holds me as I regain my breath.
“When are you going to get it over with?” I whisper into the dark around us. “We both know you’re going to take it. What are you waiting for?”
Salvatore chuckles deeply against my shoulder, as if he knows something I don’t.
“I’m waiting for you to be ready.”
“Oh.”
I didn’t expect that, thrown off balance by the admission.
“It’s not kindness,” he clarifies. I should have known better than to think it was. His hand moves down again, and for the first time, Salvatore pushes two thick fingers inside of me. I cry out as he stretches me with them, the ache sweet and painful. I instinctively push his hand away, too over-spent, the orgasm leaving me raw and sensitive.
He shows me his fingertips, where they shine from having them buried them in me.
“You’re not ready to take a cock yet. Not mine, anyway.”
I’m not sure what that means, but I know better than to assume it has anything to do with me. I’m on Salvatore’s infinite time now. Sexual purgatory. Whenever he decides it will happen, it will.
“Are you getting desperate for it already?” he asks, low and teasing. “Do you want me to break you and fill up your cunt that badly?”
I don’t answer him, but between my legs, the soft, treacherous throbbing does.