Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
TOMA
The door slams shut behind Lucie. It’s the sound of my heart leaving my chest to follow her. I’ll never get it back.
As I close my eyes, wetness descends on my cheeks. I touch it with the tips of my fingers, shocked that it’s my own tears. I haven’t cried for so long.
But what I did tonight. What I said to her…
I won’t ever be able to erase the look of hurt on her beautiful face.
How shock morphed into disdain, then disgust and anger.
Like a maestro, I played all the insecurities she shared with me in confidence while she opened herself and let me see all of her.
I hated myself more with every word spoken between us.
I promised I’d keep her safe. I also promised her secrets were going to be buried with me. I couldn’t do both.
I had to choose.
I had to.
The only way to protect her was always to stay as far away as I could. And for that, I had to break her heart. I know she’d involve her family to protect me and I can’t be responsible for the death of anyone she loves.
My brother has not only found me, but he’s found her. He knows she’s my weakness. I led him to her. I endangered her life and she could have died. If he ever finds out who Diane is, Lucie’s godmother will die and it will be my fault.
I should have told Dante. I should have left.
The weight of the mistakes I made is heavy on my chest, suffocating me.
The very air I breathe thins as I take big gulps.
I can’t panic now. I close my eyes again and step into the shower, setting it to ice cold.
It’s another trick I took from her, and it makes me want to hurl myself off the fucking balcony.
But I have to make sure Petar doesn’t come after her.
Somehow, I will have to convince him I’m coming back to Split because he commanded it. That I left everything behind because, like him, I have no soul, and don’t care about anyone.
I don’t deserve the warmth of her love anyway. This is my punishment. How fitting that a monster like me is meant to crave what he never deserved in the first place.
I step out of the shower, put on clean clothes, and gather my jacket, helmet and keys, striding out and to my motorcycle without another look. I abandon everything in my flat. I won’t need it where I’m going. All I need are the memories of everything I shared with Lucie.
I drive all night and all day, heartbroken and soul-shattered. Tears sprang in my eyes every time I stop along the way. It’ll take me a few more days to reach Split but I refuse to fly, to make anything easy for myself.
The whole journey, I’m haunted by images of Lucie.
Her warm smile, her giggles when she watches Biscuit do a trick, her golden hair spread on our pillow, her hooded eyes as she guides me inside her.
Everywhere I look, I see her. In the disgusting coffee I drink at road stops—she’d drink it, too, just to fuel her study sessions.
In the pink motorcycle racing me when I cross through Germany.
In the breathtaking colours of the Croatian forests welcoming me back home.
She owns me. She could have convinced me that she and I could vanquish anyone. But we can’t. The only way to get my brother off her back is if I come running to him, Lucie hurt and yelling in my wake, vowing to kill me.
****
It’s late evening when I reach Split after two days of travel.
I don’t expect my brother to trust me after my six months hiatus, but convincing him that I needed everyone to believe I betrayed him if I were to gather important information from the Venturas will take effort.
And that I hurt Lucie Ventura with perverted pleasure will be even harder.
I’ve never been a very good liar but her life depends on my performance.
The doors of my brother’s mansion open, manned by four highly equipped soldiers holding automatic weapons.
In the distance, the house itself looms, bathed in shadows.
The cold air from the Adriatic sea perfumes the air with brine, yet all I smell is the scent of decay and rot coming from the depths of this hell pit.
My heart lurches in my chest. Valid fear spreads through me.
My brother is one sick motherfucker, and unpredictable at the best of times. There’s no way to tell how he’ll punish me. Because I know it’s coming. And nothing he’s ever inflicted on me before will compare. My brain isn’t capable of forming an inkling of what he could do to me.
It seems he’s killed many of his men while I was away. I don’t recognise any faces as I park by the main door then step inside, my helmet underneath my arm.
“Brother,” my nightmare exclaims as he prowls forward to greet me. His massive arms encase me in a false hug. It holds no warmth.
We’re even in height and weight, watching each other eye to eye. But there’s a cunning and a malevolence in his, the brown shining with the sadistic shine I know all too well. His hair cropped short gives him a severe and dangerous edge.
A rictus lifts the left corner of his mouth, and his nostrils flare. “I’m so happy you’re here,” he seethes through clenched teeth. “We’re going to have so much fun. Come.”
With a snap of his finger, a man steps forward.
With hair cropped short like Petar and an economy of movements, he makes me think of an old soviet soldier.
Seems he might be my brother’s best trained man, understanding Petar’s intent without words.
He takes my helmet and removes my leather jacket, then disappears behind one of the many closed doors.
While the Ventura mansion is all open space and tasteful decoration, this house is barren.
The paint on the walls is cracked, all doors are closed and no one is boasting loud laughter.
Petar’s steps are loud in the silent, empty corridor as he saunters towards the back of the house. Towards the basement.
It’s always a fucking basement.
I steel my spine and follow after the man who could have been kin but turned into my worst enemy. He doesn’t glance behind his shoulder, assured that I will follow, finally back to being the obedient pet he trained me to be.
The temperature drops as we descend the metal staircase and make our way into a room.
A metal chair is sealed to the floor in the middle of the empty space with thick, concrete walls.
Shackles with heavy chains bound to the floor surround it.
I clench my knuckles involuntarily to stave off the shudder that wants to take over my entire body.
“Go on,” Petar says, almost kind. “Strip and shackle your feet and one hand. I’ll do the other.”
There’s no point in disobeying. Lucie’s life depends on my compliance. Everything I care about depends on me obeying, submitting.
Once I’m naked, seated on the cold chair and restrained as he asked, Petar closes the distance between us, locks the other shackle around my right hand in place and steps back, admiring his victim. I grind my teeth. I’ll keep doing it until this is over.
There isn’t a single soul I wouldn’t kill and torment to make sure Lucie is safe, including myself.
I make a promise while my brother observes me with sharp eyes as though to determine how deep my betrayal truly runs.
If I find Diane, I’ll extract her and send her away in one piece back to Lucie’s father and her husband.
This is the last thing I can do for Lucie’s safety, so her heart never breaks again.
The woman she considers a mother has to leave this place in one piece.
I repeat the vow over and over, drowning Petar’s acute gaze on me.
He narrows his eyes and turns to a corner of the room, plugs in a tool and opens a tap.
Fuck. It’s going to be bad.
Water starts to drip from the hose and Petar slides his fingers through the slow stream of it, as though to test its temperature.
He hisses and I know it must be colder than Siberia.
The tool next to it crackles with electricity.
I’ve never received a shock from the cattle prod he loves to use, but I’ve seen it plenty of times.
Before I can settle my nerves some more, Petar douses me with ice cold water and my lungs seize.
I may have taken ice cold showers for weeks to feel closer to Lucie and her routine but this isn’t it.
Not only is the water freezing, the jet is heavy and steals my breath as it hits me right in the fucking chest.
I howl in pain when my brother orients the jet of water lower, hitting my cock and my balls. Agony lances through my legs, my back bows and arches. My brain feels like it’s freezing, dying, all feelings and sensations honed to ice cold pain.
Then it stops and I heave a breath, coughing out water.
“That sweet cry. How I missed you, brother.”
“You’re not my brother.”
Petar clicks his tongue, then water hits me again, right in the throat. My head snaps back. It opens more space to hurt. I bring my chin to my chest but the water hits my forehead. An ice pick to my skull would hurt less. I cry out again.
The water stops. I breathe but my reprieve is short lived. Petar advances towards the chair and sticks the cattle prod right to my pecs. My whole body seizes. There’s nowhere to escape. I’m stuck to the chair, my whole skin and organs electrified, burnt.
I want to die.
And we just got started.
“Let’s try that again. Who am I?”
I clench my teeth. My torture starts all over again until I breathe, “my brother.”
“Good boy.”
A cup of fresh water is brought to my lips and I gulp greedily.
I lose track of time. Every time Petar asks a question, I try my best to defy him, not to answer, but the pain is unbearable. It’s all I know. All I am.
And he starves me. Refuses me water and dignity to relieve myself. The only way to get some food to withhold the pain is by giving him what he wants.
“Who do you belong to?”
A name is on the tip of my lips but it doesn’t get past it. “You,” I murmur. My voice has broken already, my vocal cords raw and so irritated I haven’t heard the sound of it in days. Or is it weeks? I don’t know anymore.
“Louder, brother. You’re being broadcasted live to everyone in the Bratva. Let them know.”
“You!”
“Good. Good. Now it’s time for your reward.”
A smirk spreads on his ugly face, satisfaction so thick I can feel it pouring out of him in waves.
A woman, completely naked, enters the room. She holds something in her hand but I see her through a veil over my eyes. She has long blond hair, and a generous body.
I avert my eyes.
“Oh, none of that, brother,” Petar’s mocking tone echoes on the walls. He marches up to me and takes my chin in his vicious hand, holding it to look at the woman.
“Please, open your eyes,” she whispers. She sounds terrified but I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see her naked form in front of me. “Please.”
“Listen to her, Toma. After all, her life depends on you.”
My eyelids snap open. The woman is so close I can’t miss the tears in her brown eyes. The sclera of her eyes is shot with red vessels and she’s clenching her teeth as though not to cry.
“Look,” Petar commands and I know what he means. It’s another order meant to break who I am, who I truly belong to deep down in the hidden parts of the black organ in my chest.
“Please,” the woman breathes again, just for me.
I let my eyes peruse her body. Freckles pepper her cheeks and chest, where her hair has been styled to fall in waves on her shoulders and over large breasts.
While I watch her, she drapes my shoulders with a warm towel and I moan.
It spreads through my entire body and I feel myself soften underneath her caring touch.
I don’t want it but can’t escape it, still bound to my chair.
Her brown nipples are hard, the temperature of the room obvious on her skin, with goosebumps everywhere. Her stomach rolls in valleys meant to entice. She kneads my shoulders, my arms and then my thighs, avoiding touching my cock. I’m grateful for that.
It hits me then.
She looks like the woman I left behind.
I close my eyes but open them again at her whimper of fear.
Everything I’ve lived through for the last few days, the pain and the torment, is nothing to what finally hits me in the gut. This is the real torture. If I don’t comply, agony awaits me. If I do, another sort of death greets me. I won’t win.
She continues her ministrations, massaging my body with the warm towel.
My body isn’t my own. I groan. Pleasure spreads through me.
After days of torment, convulsing with pain, deprived of food, water and dignity, her touch is soft and fills me with a self-hatred so deep it burns me from the inside out.
She kneels in front of me, wincing when her knees hit the cold concrete floor, and mutters a small ‘sorry’ before she takes hold of me and pumps her hand up and down.
“No. No.”
I wiggle, trying to dislodge her.
Her hand stops. She shoots a glance behind her at my brother, watching the scene with a gleam of satisfaction and hate in his eyes. He nods once. The woman resumes her forceful jerking, and my body responds. No matter if I tell myself it isn’t what I want.
She takes me into her warm mouth and my head drops back.
“Stop. Please.”
I beg, and beg. And beg.
And she doesn’t stop.
I’m fully hard, sweat coating my skin with self-disgust.
The humiliation continues.
The woman stands. Shame takes hold of me, choking me, when she spreads her lips and glides her fingers in between. It takes a while and she needs to close her eyes but eventually, they shine with arousal. Then, she settles above me and guides me towards her centre.
“No. Please,” I beg weakly.
“They have my sister,” she says, low enough that only I hear her. “I have to. I’m sorry.”
Then, she drops down and fucks me.
And I come.
Tears fall down on my face.
Petar appears behind her shoulders, a glinting knife in his hand. The woman stills. “Well done, brother.” The knife knicks her neck and her lips wobble in fear. “Get out,” Petar tells her.
She doesn’t need to be told twice. She scampers out the door.
I will never see her again. I will never know if she escaped. If her sister is safe.
I’m dead inside. Like he wanted.
For weeks, he continues. Cattle prod for disobedience. A forced orgasm for obedience.
All I want is to die.
The name of the one I left behind fades. Except the vow I made. It seems a lifetime ago. There’s a woman here I need to send away. I don’t remember why but I hold onto it, and promise to end it once it’s done.