4. Chapter 4
V iktor
I step back from her, hardly able to believe I just said that.
Not that it isn’t true. She is going to scream for me. It’s unnerving how fast my plans for her were changing. This morning, she was an untouchable princess. The daughter of my father’s murderer. The means to an end.
I’d meant it in my heart the first time I saw her—I really would have treated her like my personal whore. I’d wanted her to feel her topple from pampered grace into my ownership like the life-shattering event such a thing ought to be.
Except, she wasn’t pampered. She was tortured, and now that she is mine, I find myself reluctant to treat her badly.
She isn’t mine yet , a voice in my head cautioned. To fit the plans I formulated since Pisani’s betrayal, I need her irrevocably bound to me, until death do we part. No other arrangement will guarantee my success… or her safety.
At some point, her father will send someone to steal her back. What I’ve done isn’t a secret. There were a lot of people in that ballroom—Morales’ men, Alviero’s men, the casino employees… Give it twenty-four hours. After that, every Family and gang in Vegas will know what I’ve done.
Not that they’ll care. Oh, they’ll take a minute to admire the size and brass of my balls, but after that, all eyes will be on Alviero and how he responds.
He has to, or they’ll wonder, then scrutinize.
They’ll wonder why he let me walk into his casino and take his daughter without retaliation.
They’ll wonder what I know when I marry her instead of giving her back.
They’ll wonder when he signs his ownership of the casino over to her.
He’s fucked. As soon as he’s out from under the sedative gas, he’ll know it.
Standing before me on shaky legs, Clara touches the ear I bit so gently.
Her hands shake, and her cheeks flush brighter the longer she struggles to come up with something to say.
She doesn’t dislike what I’ve done. Am I the first to do so?
The startled wonder in her eyes says yes, and my interest in her lovely body tickles that much higher.
She really is a princess. The wonder with which she touches her ear betrays her innocence. The budding yearning in her eyes suggests she’s never been touched—I mean, really touched—and she doesn’t know what to do about it.
Yes, she’s still a princess, one my hands now itch to hold.
I don’t know if it’s my desire or her own need that frightens her, but she steps back. She drops her hands, clasping them tightly in front of her, squeezing her fingers as if that might stop me from noticing how badly she’s shaking. For me. Because I nibbled and kissed her ear.
She has so many more interesting places I could be inspired to nibble and kiss. Starting with the peaks of her nipples, thrusting so beguilingly against the cover of her thin bra.
“Please don’t do that again,” she says primly. “We need to talk about what to do next.”
Ten steps ahead. I already know.
Reaching into my jacket, I pull out the folded contract my lawyer drafted shortly after I learned of Alviero’s betrayal.
“This is what we’ll do.”
She looks from the contract in my hand to me. God, her eyes are so much easier to read now than they were in the banquet hall when she was seated by her father’s side.
Too late, she dons her poker face.
“What’s in it?” she asks, folding her arms as if to make herself feel more in charge.
“An offer you can’t refuse,” I joke, winking again to help her relax.
Holding out the contract, I wait for her to take it.
Unfolding the crisp pages, she reads. A standard marriage contract, it came complete with a prenup that protects me entirely and her very little, but with any luck, she won’t understand the legalese.
She didn’t read farther than the first paragraph. That made it easier on me, but it was appalling. I need to teach her better.
“You can’t seriously still want to marry me?” She glances up, surprise widening her dark eyes.
“As my wife, I can protect you more,” I said honestly. “Without the protection of marriage, you are extremely vulnerable to kidnapping.”
Surprise melting into disgruntlement, she says, “So I’ve discovered.”
“Your father needs you back again, and his first inclination will not be to cooperate with me.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
There was the mouth her father warned me about.
Closing the contract, she tries to hand it back.
“I don’t want to marry. It’s unnecessary.
No one will come for me. All you’ve done today is kidnap the one person my father hates more than,”—she flounders, eventually shrugging—“you, I guess. He doesn’t care about me.
I’ve done nothing but humiliate him all my life, starting at my birth when I had the audacity not to be a boy. He—”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not he loves you.” I brush those unimportant details aside.
“Yes, it absolutely does,” she insisted. “You don’t know him. It matters.”
“You’re his daughter,” I cut in bluntly. “A man who can’t—or won’t—take care of his family can’t be trusted to take care of business.”
“I’m a business interest?” she echoes, her cheeks flushing with affront.
“You’re a business asset,” I correct. “You are his best assurance that he won’t be prematurely murdered for what he has or what he’s done. At least, that’s what he thinks. Before the end of tonight, he will put every business venture he has in your name.”
Her eyes widen, then she coughs a startled laugh. “No, I promise, he won’t do any such thing.”
“He will,” I assure, showing her a hint of my claws.
“If he doesn’t, his business associates will receive all the proof they need that he’s been embezzling from them for his own fun and amusement.
When that happens, he won’t have twenty-four hours before they come for him.
I promise ,” I emphasize, “they’ll kill him, and he knows it. ”
She stares as if I’m crazy. “If he knows that, then why would he risk it by giving me to Miguel Morales?”
“Because he thinks I’m bluffing, because he was offended, I wouldn’t let him spend my money wherever he felt like it, and because the Morales’ picked the right time to make the same offer—marriage to you in exchange for a piece of the hotel.
I want my restaurant in a prominent part of his casino.
Morales wants a percentage of the business in exchange for investing in bringing the Crown up to date.
They think having you will guarantee a bigger percentage of his empire once Alviero dies. They just have to wait.”
“How long before they kill me?” she asks bluntly.
“If they’re smart, they’ll wait until your father is dead, and they have as much as they can get from his estate.” I knew the question was coming by the way her jaw clenched.
“How long before you kill me?”
Smiling, I step closer to her. “With me, Princess, you will die of old age, safe in your bed. That’s a promise you can bank on.”
She neither smiles nor relaxes her stance. After a minute, she tries to hand the contract back, but I ignore it.
“I’ll stay with you. I’ll obey you, but I’m not signing this. I’m out.”
“Out?” I echo.
“Whatever proof you have, that should be enough to make him give you your restaurant, the casino, whatever you want. You have your leverage. You don’t need me.”
“Clara.” I clear my throat. “Without you, darling, anything I do will look like I’ve initiated a hostile takeover, one Alviero gave in to without a fight.
Everyone with a stake in his business will wonder why, and while I don’t give two shits about his consequences, I do care about my own.
I don’t want everyone I try to do business with from now until I die wondering if I’ll take their children if they don’t unilaterally give in.
This isn’t the 1920s. We don’t get to do whatever we want, but daughters get married all the time. ”
“Not to their kidnappers, they don’t.”
“He betrayed me. Right now, the appearance is lovestruck and denied the girl of my desires, I took you. In this case, fuitina is still useful, even in America.”
“ Fuitina is illegal.” She backs away from me. “It’s not recognized in Italy anymore, and the courts don’t acknowledge it, especially not in this country.”
“It’s not the American courts I worry about.
” A single step closes the distance between us again.
I like the spark of concern that flares in the pools of her eyes as I approach her.
Her chest rises swiftly as she sees the net I’m closing around her.
She’s scared and has reason to be. I’m not a man of gentle passions, and the ones her very nearness is inspiring deep inside me are the least gentle of all.
“No.” She slaps the contract against my chest, leaving me to either grab it or let it fall. I grab her wrist instead. “No! This won’t work, and even if it did…” She hesitates before hiking her chin. “I-I won’t do it. I won’t marry you, Viktor. I want my freedom. I want to leave.”
“Marry me, Clara,” I insist. “I’ll give you all the freedom I can.”
She tries to take her wrist back, but I’m not about to let her go.
“I-I want to leave! S-someday… eventually… I want to be free!”
“Clara.” My tone lowers in careful disapproval. “Willful little girls are disobedient little girls. Do I have to punish you before you mind me?”
My sexual inclinations are well known in some circles. My closest friends and the women I bring to my apartment know exactly what I like. Clara doesn’t. I see the uncertainty in her eyes as she misses the bigger picture and zeroes in on what she’s used to fearing.
“You w-want to hit me?”
She tries to back away again, but I have her wrist in my firm grip, and I’m not about to let go. I can feel her shaking, even as she hikes her chin higher. Her defiance is as adorable as it is goading.
“Go ahead. I’ve been hit before. I can take it. It doesn’t matter what you do to me. You can’t keep me here indefinitely. The first chance I get, I-I’m running!”
She has no idea the brilliance of the flag she’s waving in front of me.
“You’re going to run, are you?” I ask, amused and invigorated, my inner bull zeroing in on her. It’s everything I can do not to grab her by the shoulders and slam her against the nearest wall. I can already feel her lips under mine, submitting as I clap both hands on her ass and kiss her senseless.
“The first chance I get,” she boldly insists.
Smiling, I pinch her naughty little chin between my fingers, forcing her nervous gaze to lock with mine.
“Clara, darling…”
She fidgets, refusing to back down but unable to hold still.
“How far do you think you’ll run once I take your clothes away from you?”
I feel her startle through my fingers and straight to my cock. That was invigorating, too.
“You can’t,” she whispers.
Reaching into my pocket, I withdraw my switchblade. Her eyes widening, she snaps her gaze from it back to me. She has no idea what I’m capable of.
She’s about to find out.