5. Gianna
CHAPTER 5
An undetermined amount of time passes as I lie unmoving in the bed where Niko placed me. I’m not sure where my mind is, but it’s not inside my body. Memories form around me, so clear it’s like I can touch them. This is a skill I developed through the long months of being locked in my apartment. Separating from my body to get my only chance at freedom.
My life has been so steeped in grief you’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it’s just as raw and soul-shaking as ever. The memories that surprise me most are those of my mother. She and I have been at odds for so long that I forgot there was a time she didn’t show her preference for Dante quite so sharply. Those memories end fairly quickly, but the ones of my father take longer to run out. He cared for me quite a bit longer before turning his back on me.
I wrestle with my anger toward my father and my grief at his loss, but I’m only fighting with myself. He betrayed me. Niko was correct about that, but he had already turned his back on me. He was handing me over to a mean and dangerous man, and I don’t think he assumed I would die, but he certainly didn’t have my best interests in mind. He was trying to hang onto a dying dynasty. One I was never enough to have a place in.
Maybe he thought I’d give birth to a son and fix everything because that’s what men have convinced themselves a cock will do, right? My father locked me away and planned to give me away, but he was still my papa.
I despise Niko for what he did, but part of me isn’t surprised. Our tragic love story never got its epic conclusion, and this always waited in the wings for us. All that’s left is for one or both of us to die. I’m not sure I want that. The idea of his death leaves me with another grief specter, but maybe fighting fate has been the issue all along.
I suppose I am more seasoned at this than I used to be because ten or twelve hours later, I find the strength to peel myself out of bed and get in the shower. I can’t tell if there’s any blood on me, but I smell awful. Even if I’m trapped here, I don’t want to stay covered in this night for another minute.
Before I stand, I stuff my grief down until I don’t have any emotions. I’m totally unfeeling. Being alone for a long time does fucked-up things to you. I pinch myself just to see if it hurts. It does. But I don’t feel it. Not really.
Darkness blankets the bedroom, and I don’t bother finding a light. If Niko plans to keep me indefinitely, I have plenty of time to learn the details of my prison. Hopefully, he’s left books or movies or something. It would be a shame not to even be able to dissociate into some fiction, but I don’t have it in me right now to bear another disappointment. So I don’t look.
I flip on the light in the bathroom out of necessity but carefully avoid looking in the mirror. That girl will crumble the illusion I have no emotions.
I lock the door behind myself, assuming Niko has a key, and it’s a moot gesture. I’m already mostly naked, but I peel off my nightshirt. My dignity and everything else have already been stripped, so it’s not dehumanizing to let the fabric drop against the tile, just necessary to get clean.
The shower is beautiful with one of those wide rain bars, and the hot water dancing over my skin relieves me, even if only a small amount. Something tells me I will need to grow even more accustomed to small pleasures than I have in these last six months. I don’t think Niko will visit me like Carlo did.
Where else would I focus my energy but the water? Everything here has so many chances to hurt me.
This bathroom puts the one in my apartment to shame, except for the lack of a bathtub. I wonder briefly if Niko thought I might drown myself. Maybe I would just to avoid all the time I’ll have on my hands. The war ending was supposed to mean my death or my freedom. I never considered this third option.
The water runs over my skin for less than five minutes when a knock on the door disturbs me. Of course. I don’t answer, pretending they don’t exist. Maybe it’s Niko or one of his staff. Whoever it is won’t help me, and even if they would, where would I go? I’m not enough of a fool to embarrass myself and ask.
A minute later, the door opens, and I’m grudgingly impressed he waited that long. The key’s hiding spot is likely hard to reach, a less charitable side suggests.
The wood closes, and despite his presence filling the room, I keep my eyes tightly sealed. There’s a heavy moment of silence when his eyes run up my naked back, but I still refuse to look.
“Gianna, I fucked everything up, and I have no idea how I’m going to fix it.” Raw edges distort his voice. Something wild and aggressive possesses him.
His intensity surprises me as much as his admission, but I still don’t move. I don’t want the sight of him still covered in my parents’ blood in my head. Would it be worse for him to be clean and fresh like it never happened? I can’t decide, but I know I don’t want to be the person he runs to. After everything he’s done, how can I comfort him?
“Look at me, please,” he begs, and I ignore him. My pettiness satisfies me in the slightest way. I want him desperate for something for once. Turning away or squeezing my eyes tighter would be reactions he doesn’t deserve. Niko’s not here; he’s nothing. I don’t even hate him. There’s no reason to. I’m certainly not relieved he’s back.
“Look at me or else, Gi.” His foot taps against the tile floor, and I almost feel powerful for the first time in months. A man like him doesn’t threaten unless he truly wants something.
Or else what? What will you do if I don’t look at you? I try to stay calm, but the desire to fight him overwhelms me—the primal need to tear him to pieces. I’m not scared of him, but maybe he should be afraid of me. I’m not stupid enough to believe he won’t hurt me, but my pain still won’t give him what he wants. Denying him will be my last piece of power in this world.
“Gianna.”
I ignore his threat once more.
Buttons, a zipper, then fabric falling heavily against the floor. These sounds don’t excite me. The idea of his naked skin doesn’t raise goose bumps along my back. The glass door opens and closes beside me, and that tingle runs up and down my spine as he occupies that space. The hairs rise on my arm closest to him.
He just stands there, breathing, possibly watching me. I expect him to touch me so acutely that when he doesn’t, the unmet anticipation nearly hurts enough to open my eyes.
Niko steps into the water, interrupting the flow. I open my eyes on instinct, relieved to find his back to me and not his watching gaze. Broad shoulders, glistening brown curls. His beauty overwhelms me even though every angle of his body cuts me to my soul.
It takes me a second to realize what he’s doing—why he’s washing himself instead of touching me—but when I do, I jump as far away from him as possible. Fuck not giving him a reaction. Fuck finding him beautiful. He’s washing my parents' blood off himself, and the red river runs past my feet as it swirls down the drain.
My attempt to breathe comes out as a gasp. I’m going to vomit again. He turns, regarding me first with confusion, then mild embarrassment.
“This isn’t theirs, Gianna. It’s not theirs.” He tries to meet my eyes, but I drop them to the tile again. He doesn’t deserve to enjoy what he’s done.
“Whose?”
“My father’s.” It takes me a solid minute to process what he said.
Alexandre Bouchard is dead? He killed my parents and then went and took out his own father? Why?
“You killed him too?!” I shout, surprised by my own vehemence and fury. I didn’t know I had anything left. Part of me believed that Niko didn’t have a choice in killing my family. He never had a say before, always doing whatever his father told him, just like I did for mine. But if he killed him, Niko would have gotten exactly what he wanted. He’s the one in power. This was his plan.
I can’t look at him, won’t. It will kill me. I’m so stupid for allowing any weak flutters to trip up my heart when he told me all that pretty bullshit last night.
“I didn’t kill him. Look at me.”
Collapsing in a heap on the floor and letting the water wash over me until I’m nothing appeals to me more. I certainly don’t look at him.
He grabs my chin, tipping my face up to him. I snap my eyes shut but stumble, and he catches me around my waist. His touch burns me in its intensity.
“Pax killed him. Pax killed him while they were supposed to be having dinner.” His fingers dig into my flesh, and he shakes me. “I know how fucked up this is, probably more so than you do. But I would not have killed them without my father’s say-so. I simply would have kidnapped you to protect you from the Russian wife butcher.”
“What the fuck was the point of all this, then?” I can’t even describe my rage. I told myself our tragedy was yet to unfold, but I couldn’t imagine it was a cosmic joke as well. “Both my parents and your father are dead for no reason. And you still would have kidnapped me had you not killed them? I’m in exactly the same position, only my parents are dead as well!”
“Yes.”
I guess I’m used to being lied to and handled because the simple answer throws me for such a loop.
“Yes?”
“Yes, it was all for nothing.”
He stares at me, his eyes heavier on my skin than hands as he lets the truth of that statement hang between us, but I keep my eyes around his chest. Five years without my brother, a mother who hated me, a father who saw me as an object, the man I loved who took them away from me. They become one as he stands in front of me.
“I hate you. I hate you so fucking much. I hope it eats you alive that I’ll never be able to look at you with anything but disgust. That I’ll always hate you.”
I have such strong words for Niko, but guilt flashes alongside the rage. Questioning why God turned his back on our family is the last thing I should do right now. I doubt I’ll like the answer.
“You’d prefer I lie to you?”
I don’t say it, but my father would have and Dante would have. Isn’t that what love looks like from a man? Lies that protect you.
“Fucking look at me. I swear to God I’ll slap the shit out of you if you’re so weak you’d prefer I lie to you.” There’s real malice in his voice, and I seriously debate taking the hit. Maybe that will show him how weak I am. “Do you even remember who you are anymore, Gi?”
My eyes finally snap to his because I don’t fucking want to. It’s easier not to. I hate him even more for trying to remind me of what I was avoiding in that mirror.
He stands in front of me with his brown curls drenched, his gray eyes like storms and harbingers of death. My hatred for him wells up so harshly it fights to burn me to ash. An intensity possibly more powerful than my own lights his gaze, and a horrified part of me realizes hatred isn’t fueling him. What have I ever done to make him obsessed with me? The better question is, what could I do to break his fixation? Because I need him to stop looking at me like that.
“What do you want from me, Niko? What the fuck do you want? It has to be something.”
That look only deepens, and I hate him even more because he says so much with that gaze that I can’t understand.
“I want you to love me back. Okay? I want you to love me.”
Despite the fact that he appears genuine, I wait for the punchline and laugh, sharp and hateful, when it doesn’t come.
“Never. I’ll never love you.”
The idea of loving him is so foreign and disgusting to me now that I want to hurt him for even suggesting it. My laughter lands the way I hoped, but it doesn’t give me the satisfaction I want. Instead, I’m anxious for his reaction, nervous I overplayed my hand.
“Fine, Gianna, you don’t have to be my secret love affair like when we were kids. You can just be my whore.”
I open my mouth to tell him it will never happen, but he slaps his hand over my lips, forcing me into silence before I can utter a word. It’s been so long since anyone has touched me that I gasp at the contact.
“Enough of your bullshit. Keep your mouth shut.”
He pushes me back against the shower. The thump as I collide with the tile jars me. His teeth dig into the fine skin of my throat as he aims to punish me. It’s hardly an erotic spot for most people, but I’m not normal, and I squirm beneath the pressure of his teeth. He bites harder when I wiggle instead of cry, and the thought of my parents is the only thing that keeps my moan inside me. Don’t fucking moan for him.
My body shakes beneath him. Slick tile slides against my back, cold and hot, pain so intense it’s pleasure instead of all the aching nothing. I’m dying beneath him, but he assumes it’s simply physical as he continues his assault along my neck.
“If it hurts, just cry, baby. It hurts when you reject me.” He moves his hand away from my mouth. If I were to cry right now, it would be for so many things, but I’ve never gotten over the way he left me. How dare he want me now that returning his feelings would betray myself so deeply?
“You rejected me.”
“Never again.” He steals a quick kiss, which hurts so much worse than his teeth.
“I hate you,” I gasp, but the throaty quality of my voice betrays that I don’t hate him enough.
He picks me up under my knees, my back slides against the cool tile, and stops as he shoves his hips between my legs and catches me on his strong thighs.
“It didn’t have to be like this, Gi.” But the anger on his face and his hard cock tell me he doesn’t really mind how it is. I want to hurt him before it inevitably ends up inside me.
“Whose fault is that?” I demand. “Who caused all of this?”
“Maybe the asshole god you were praying to when I killed your parents. He didn’t stop me, did he?”
“God didn’t make you pull the trigger and neither did your father.”
“God isn’t real.”
For the first time in my life, I wonder if he’s right. Niko takes advantage of my moment of uncertainty, staring into my soul like I promised I never would. I’m nothing but a liar around him, and I’m almost out of dignity with so few scraps of myself left to hold on to.
“I’m going to fuck you, but I want to kiss you first. Need it.” His lips brush my neck, drawing goose bumps on my skin that aren’t as dread-filled as they should be. His kisses always amazed me.
“You already kissed me.”
“Kiss me back.”
“Never.”
“Fine, princess. Your pussy lips can kiss my cock, then.”
He reaches between us and presses his hard dick to my pussy. A needy thrill zips through me, and the guilt that follows nearly makes me vomit again. I want to fuck the man who killed my parents, and I once again decide the merciful thing would have been for him to kill me too.
“If you’re never going to love me, you might as well hate me as much as possible.” His cock rubs along my slit, spreading the wetness that may as well be made of my shame and failure rather than my pussy juice.
If he doesn’t fuck me, I might die.
“I can’t tell you how badly I’ve wanted this,” he echoes my thoughts, only making it worse. How many times have I dreamed of him, wondering if he was thinking of me too?
Is he trying to disgust me? Turn me on? I’m both as he slides inside me, much more snugly than I remember. Fuck, he’s big.
Rather than shifting his own hips, he manipulates my body, twisting my limbs and the angle of my pussy to the exact position he wants. I moan long and low as he scrapes against my insides and rests the head of his cock nearly painfully against my cervix. It’s a cry of defeat as much as pleasure. The last brick of our family's dynasty reduced to dust.
“Fuck, Gi, that noise. Make it again.”
I don’t answer him, and he tries a slightly different angle, drawing another agonized moan of defeat.
“It sounds like you like this, and you’re so fucking wet. Maybe hating me makes it better for you. I think you’re secretly relieved I took you.”
I slap him straight across the face as hard as I can, like he threatened to do to me. His mouth hangs open, his eyes wide, breaths coming even faster. It feels so good that I do it again. The wet slap rings far louder than normal in the tight, steam-filled space. I land my hand across the sharp arch of his cheek twice more before he grabs my hands and pins them to my sides, using his grip and full body weight to support and get deeper inside me, pinning me to the wall.
I struggle, but the pleasure increases as I do. His weight practically keeps me still, and all my effort creates friction between us. He picks up his tempo and fucks me at a bruising pace, my body repeatedly falling on him as it slides against the tile. He grabs my hips again when he’s sure I’m done hitting him, and the bruising force makes me feel alive for the first time in so long.
“Oh God. God, forgive me.”
“I think he should be worried about you forgiving him.”
The mere suggestion rips a gasp out of me and while I’ve questioned God more than once in all this loss and pain, I’ve never considered my anger as something worthy of His or anyone else’s notice.
Niko fucks me harder than anyone ever has in my life, not that there have been many, and no single part of my brain can explain why it’s so good when I hate him, when he’s forcing me. I can’t help but imagine Fyodor in Niko’s position right now. Had this gone my father’s way, it would have been. Somehow I doubt I’d be on the verge of coming.
I cry for so many things as Niko’s cock changes its angle, and my pussy responds to him, getting even wetter and more malleable, gripping him desperately for a release I haven’t gotten in far too long. He slips another inch deeper as my traitorous pussy relaxes around him, hungry to come on him.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” I chant, but even I have to admit how much it sounds like fuck me.
“You’re so pretty, Gi. Your cunt is so tight. I’m going to fuck it whenever I want. I’m going to fuck you whenever I want, but I’ll always make you cum.”
I pulse around him like a traitorous whore. I’m getting close, and it doesn’t help that I’m excited to be with him again somewhere deep down. Part of me doesn’t hate him. Part of me always dreamed he’d steal me away. This is my fault as much as anyone else’s.
“I’ll hate you forever.” It would make my life so much simpler if I had the courage of my own convictions. Maybe I could muster the proper hate if I hadn’t been alone for so long. If I wasn’t desperate for anyone to love and notice me. If he didn’t make me feel so good.
“If you hate me so much, you won’t come, right?” That mischievous voice is so familiar that for a moment, I could be seventeen again.
“I’ll hate myself too much to enjoy it.” I don’t deny the impending orgasm because denying the inevitable will only give him more power, and I’m going to come hard and soon.
“You should forgive yourself now, because there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
He reaches down and plays with my clit as his cock slides in and out of me, my lips kiss him just like he promised, and those words somehow intensify the simple friction, like it’s something romantic rather than harsh and cruel. My building orgasm isn’t just a betrayal to myself. I’m a traitor to my entire bloodline and everyone who came before me as my pussy starts to quake around him.
With that last wave of guilt and self-hatred, I come so hard I nearly black out, my vision fraying around the edges. My pussy pulses around him, and the wet rush that accompanies my orgasm surprises us both.
“Fuck, you didn’t do that last time,” he grits through his teeth. “I’m pissed as hell that you could possibly be even more attractive to me.”
“It was a fluke.” I didn’t even think I could squirt.
“You’re going to do that on my face.”
He keeps fucking, and a few moments later, he follows, his eyes faintly rolling back and his perfect mouth going slack as he loses his load inside me.
“If that’s what it’s like when you hate me, I can live with it,” he pants, wet curls sticking to his forehead as he puts my legs down and lets his cock slip out.
“I wasn’t concerned with pleasing you.” But that’s a moot point as his cock leaks a dribble of cum down his thigh that the water quickly steals away.
“One of my favorite things about you, Gi. You’re one of the only real people I’ve ever known. I don’t doubt you. It’s all the other stuff I’m worried about.”
That statement rocks me. What the hell could he be sure of other than the sex being stellar?
I don’t ask, but I do wonder about the “other stuff.” It’s an old habit that won’t die. I used to believe with enough proficiency my father would include me in our business, but he never even let me sit for the BAR exam after law school. I should put things like that out of my head. I’m sure Niko’s opinions of my abilities aren’t much different.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had sex, and my pussy throbs. I stand in the water, trying to wash him off me without being too obvious. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he got to me.
I grab a bottle of body wash off the shelf, not able to hide my distaste any longer. “If I’m a whore now, when should I next expect you?”
“Don’t pout. It’s unbecoming.”
“I told you I don’t give a shit about pleasing you.”
His fingers trail the curve of my back. “If you won’t love me, you have only one use for me, and you will serve it.” He gropes my ass in a dehumanizing and frankly hot way, and I believe him with all my heart until he kisses my shoulder just once before he leaves.
My sense of self shatters even further, and by the time I leave the water, the name Gianna sounds strange, mushy, and foreign, and I think I’d prefer to go by princess. Gianna hates him so fucking much, and I’m not sure I can guard myself against anything that feels so good. I’d prefer to be anyone else.