38. Matti
Matti
I t takes a few minutes to cross the Demonio estate and reach my house with Siena over my shoulder. The walk gives me time to think, though my thoughts are an angry, tangled mess.
I can barely see straight, I’m so angry that that fat fuck is still living after touching Siena.
And he’s most definitely alive. The poker to his dick woke him up, and his screams were more shrill than any I’ve ever heard.
But Tommy and Vin will get him medical care, and he’ll survive it.
Though he won’t be trying to rape anymore females after this, thanks to my girl.
My priority now is taking care of her, making sure her injuries aren’t too severe. Once that’s done, though, it’s time to retaliate. Finish the job we started or finish him, one way or another.
Tommy’s reaction, I understand. Aurelio has his girl locked up somewhere, and killing his father now would complicate his ability to find her, possibly even get her tortured or killed. If I were in Tommy’s position, I would’ve made the same call.
Vin, though? That’s another story .
He hates Aurelio more than I do, and that’s saying something. Aurelio torments all of us, but Vin’s suffered the worst of it.
When we were twenty, Vin was dating a woman named Valentina. They’d been together for a year when Aurelio orchestrated all of us—Vin, Tommy, and me—walking in on him throat-fucking her.
Later, we found out Aurelio had been screwing her for months, that he told her to date Vin, essentially turning her into a pawn. She wasn’t cheating so much as following Aurelio’s orders: seduce his son, make him think she loved him, report everything back to Aurelio.
All so Aurelio could exert his control over Vin, humiliate him, and make it clear who was still in charge.
Father of the fucking year. And that’s just for starters.
So why the fuck did Vin stop me today? Why not let me take Aurelio out and finally end it, finally giving Vin the opportunity to step into the top spot?
As furious as I am, I know it’s complicated for him.
Giovanna’s fate aside, killing Aurelio now would leave unresolved problems, especially if word got out that I was the one who did it and Vin was complicit.
Taking out a boss is a big fucking deal, and right after losing Mikey, there’s no way it wouldn’t cause the men to lose faith.
Still, this isn’t like Vin. He’s usually the hotheaded one, while I keep my cool. But today, we switched roles.
I know what’s driving me. I shift Siena so that I’m carrying her in my arms, her small frame limp against my chest. She’s why I can’t seem to control myself anymore, why I’m willing to murder people for even threatening her, much less touching her.
It’s Vin’s sudden personality shift that doesn’t make sense to me .
When I reach my house, I lay Siena carefully on the bed. She’s still wearing the jacket I gave her earlier, and nothing else. When I try to remove it to check her injuries, she fights me weakly, her body trembling with the effort.
“Stay still,” I growl, sliding the jacket off of her.
She stiffens under my touch, glaring up at me. “Fuck you,” she murmurs, her tone defiant but laced with exhaustion.
My tone turns cold, mocking. “Good girl, Siena. Anything else you’d like to share?”
Her eyes blaze with renewed energy. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
I don’t answer. Instead, I toss the jacket on a chair and grab her ankles above where she is cut before flipping her onto her stomach. She shrieks in fury, thrashing and kicking at me.
“STOP!” I bark. “You’re going to fucking hurt yourself.”
She stops fighting, but glares at me over her shoulder before burying her face in the blankets.
The sight of her battered body makes my stomach churn. Bruises are creeping across her thighs, back, and hips. Scrapes line her spine and wrists, and there are burns on her inner thighs and hip.
There are no abrasions that suggest rape that I can see, but I’ll still have the doc check her thoroughly. If I find out he raped her before I got there, I don’t fucking care what Vin’s and Tommy’s opinions are. Aurelio is a fucking dead man right now, today.
I get warm water and a washcloth from the bathroom, returning to gently clean her wounds, remove the blood that is starting to dry on her skin.
She flinches when the cloth touches her skin, but I continue without a word, flipping her back over to clean Aurelio’s blood from her face.
The swelling around her jaw and eye causes a wave of guilt to rise in my throat, choking me, and I trace the back of my fingers along her jaw line. She winces, and I pull back.
Going back in the bathroom, I come out with a pile of wash cloths and a basin of warm water and soap. Taking my time, I gently wash away as much blood and dirt as I can to clean the wounds and assess the damage. She’s too tired to fight me.
I shouldn’t have left her alone and gone to fuck with Franco. But she shouldn’t have lied to me about the flash drive. If she’d trusted me from the start, I could have gotten the flash drive to Aurelio and he never would have known about her. None of this would’ve happened.
Where she’s laying on the bed is wet, and I walk over to my side of the bed and pull back the blankets, exposing the silk sheets. When I come back and scoop her up, she slaps at my face, her voice cracking. “No! I don’t want you!”
Scowling, I carry her around the bed and let her go on my side, pulling the sheet over her. “I have no intention of fucking you, Siena. You’ve gotten yourself into a world of shit, and I’m trying to save your fucking life.”
As I pull out my phone to text Dr. Rossi, she struggles to sit up, leaning shakily on one elbow. Her eyes burn with fury.
“ I got myself into this?” she hisses. “Are you fucking insane? How is any of this my fault?”
Finishing my text, I slide my phone into my pocket and bend down so my face is inches from hers. “You didn’t give me the flash drive when I first asked you for it. You didn’t trust me. That’s how.”
“Trust you?! You fucking killed my sister!”
Her words, the way her voice cracks, the pain on her face are a knife to the gut, but I keep my expression blank. She’s parroting Aurelio, or maybe Franco. I say nothing, arms crossed, letting her vent.
“How is it my fault that I’m in this nightmare? That your psycho boss followed you to the dungeon you had me locked in so that he could torture me and try to rape me? That he killed my father? That you killed my sister? That you want to fuck me until you’re bored or until you’re ready to kill me?”
Rage surges through me, drowning out the guilt. I press my palm to her chest, pushing her back down on the mattress. She grabs my wrist, glaring at me.
“If you’d given me the fucking flash drive the first day I asked for it, this ‘nightmare’ would never have started,” I snarl.
“Instead, you lied to me for weeks. Ran from me, fought me, hid things from me—and I’ve burned every relationship I have to the ground defending you, protecting you the best I could, keeping you breathing. ”
“You keep me breathing. But not my sister,” she croaks.
I lean in closer to her, threateningly. Her eyes widen in terror, and my cock twitches in response.
It’s sick, I know, being turned on by her fear, but I have this irrational desire to fuck her until her anger is gone, the past few hours are erased, and I’m back with the woman I held in my arms and kissed goodbye this morning.
I close my eyes briefly, reliving it. I kissed her. I fucked her in a bed and stared into her eyes while I did it.
And she fucking lied to me.
My voice is heavy and threatening. “Your sister’s death was collateral damage. The result of being with the wrong man at the wrong time.”
My breathing hitches as I realize that Siena almost met the same end as her sister and for the same reason.
Being with me. The wrong man. The wrong time.
It’s in that moment that I realize what I have to do, what I’m going to do to protect her, and the thought alone is enough to make me physically ill.
I pull my hand back from her chest and she coughs, rasping out the words. “You swore to me that you didn’t kill her,” she whispers, her voice cracking.
I pause, staring at her, taking her in, her incredible beauty made more raw and dangerous by her wounds.
She’s looking at me with those intense brown eyes, accusingly.
There’s so much pain in them, and it hurts me to look at her, but I hold her gaze, knowing that the next words out of my mouth will end us.
“I didn’t know you then,” I say, straightening and turning toward the tall windows overlooking the estate, turning away from the hatred I know will cloud her face.
There is silence for a moment.
Her voice is soft when she speaks. “You didn’t know me when you killed her, or when you lied about it?”
I can’t look at her. The truth is that she doesn’t understand how this world works. That the course of her life changed the day she stepped out of her car at the site of the plane crash.
Bellamorte or not, whatever her family’s status in our world all those years ago, she’s only alive because she is with me, because I am the ruthless killer she hates.
But today was proof that I’m not enough to protect her. That the only way for her to truly be safe is to stay hidden away as far away from me as possible.
I’ll be better able to protect her from a distance when I have my self control back. When she’s not driving me crazy with her wet mouth, her soft body, her intoxicating moans.
When I glance back at her, she’s curled in a ball facing away from me, her bruised body trembling. The anger drains out of me, replaced by exhaustion and dread.
Her long hair is starting to stick in clumps to the open wounds on her back, and I can’t help myself. I’m drawn to her, moving back across the room to help her by gently moving her hair aside. She slaps my hand away.
Dragging herself up to seated, she presses her back into the headboard. Closing her eyes, she takes deep breaths, trying to steady herself. She can barely hold herself up, and I eye the corner of the nightstand next to the bed warily, concerned that she’ll pass out and hit her head.
“Siena, you need —”
“Fuck you!” She screams at me, opening her eyes. She looks dizzy, and it doesn’t seem like she can focus on my face, but she leans toward me shakily, nothing but rage holding her up. “You’re a fucking monster!”
She pitches to the side, and I lunge forward, catching her before she hits her head, and wrap my arms around her.
She fights against me with what little strength she has, and I easily hold her in place. Brushing my lips over her ear lobe, I close my eyes and breathe her in. Bergamot & Basil.
“I know, baby,” I whisper. “I know.”
The door opens, and Dr. Rossi walks in, carrying his medical bag. Though he checked out Siena at the Edge after she was attacked at the lawyer’s office, she doesn’t recognize him.
She stops fighting me and presses her body into my chest, shrinking away from him. I know that it’s only because she’s more scared of him than she hates me at the moment, but I relax as she finds safety in my arms .
“I got your text,” Massimo says, keeping his eyes on me. Smart man, since Siena is only half covered by the sheet and fully naked. “You said she needs stitches and…”
I cut him off. “She needs stitches. And you’ll need to check for other injuries.”
Siena looks up at me in panic, realizing that I called him, and starts to fight against me, trying to push herself out of my arms.
“He’s a doctor. He’s here to help you,” I murmur, holding her tightly to me.
She is grunting, working hard to wriggle away from me, but I easily keep her in place.
“If you keep fighting me, we’re going to have to sedate you.” I glare down at her.
Her thrashing grows more frantic, and I nod at Massimo. He preps a syringe, and I hold her still as he sinks the plunger into her neck.
Whispering my name, she goes limp in my arms. I lay her gently on the bed as I rise, watching as Massimo sets up his surgical table with sterile supplies.
Pulling the flash drive from my pocket, I turn it over in my hand.
Time to figure out what the fuck people aren’t telling me.