Chapter 16 #2
He drops. The crack of his kneecaps hitting marble echoes through the corridor, and I see one of the younger guards flinch at the sound. Romeo spreads his left hand flat on the floor, fingers splayed wide.
"Pinky finger. Joint closest to your palm."
"Don Romano—" It comes out choked. "Cristo, please—"
"Do it."
He positions the blade over his knuckle. The knife hovers there, shaking so badly the tip wavers across his skin without breaking it. He's breathing too fast, face gone gray-green.
"Do it, Romeo."
He squeezes his eyes shut. Sucks in air through his nose, holds it, and brings the blade down.
The sound hits first—wet crunch of steel punching through cartilage and bone, the scrape of metal on stone as the blade hits marble underneath.
Then blood sprays across white marble in bright pulses that spread in dark pools.
Romeo's scream tears out of his throat raw and inhuman, bouncing off walls and ceiling until it fills every corner of the corridor.
The fingertip rolls when it separates, spinning in a small curve before stopping against the wall trim, pale and still slightly curved like it might curl if you touched it.
The knife clatters to the floor, blade slick with blood. Romeo crumples sideways, cradling his ruined hand against his chest. Blood pumps between his fingers in steady beats, soaking through his shirt. He's making sounds in the back of his throat—wordless noises that might be whimpers.
Behind me, Alessia makes a small choked sound. When I glance back, she has one hand pressed to her mouth, face white as paper, but her eyes are still open. Still watching.
I crouch down beside Romeo. "Look at me, Romeo."
He does, through tears and pain. His pupils are blown wide.
"Every time you look at your hand from now on, every time you see that missing finger, you're going to remember this moment. And every time someone asks you what happened, you're going to remember the cost of disrespect in my house. Do you understand me?"
He nods, gasping, can't form words.
"Say it."
"I understand." It comes out barely audible. "I understand, Don Romano."
"Good." I stand and turn to Marco. "Get him to the doctor. Bind his hand first or he'll bleed out."
Marco's already pulling a tourniquet from his belt, and he moves with practiced efficiency.
He kneels beside Romeo and wraps the fabric tight around Romeo's wrist, pulling it taut until the blood flow slows from a steady pump to a sluggish seep.
His movements are professional, clinical, the actions of someone who's done field medicine before and knows exactly what he's doing.
I look at the other guards still lined up against the walls, all of them maintaining their positions at attention with their eyes carefully directed forward. "Remember what you witnessed here this morning. Remember it clearly. This is what happens when someone forgets the rules."
They nod in perfect unison, but not one of them speaks.
"The rest of you are dismissed. Get back to your posts."
They disperse quickly, boots striking marble in synchronized retreat as they file out of the corridor.
Within thirty seconds, the hallway is empty except for Marco still working on securing Romeo's tourniquet properly, and Alessia still standing frozen against the wall with her hand pressed to her mouth.
Marco gets Romeo to his feet—carefully, supporting most of the man's weight against his own body—and half-carries, half-drags him down the corridor in the direction of the infirmary.
Their footsteps fade gradually until I can't hear them anymore.
The severed fingertip stays where it landed against the wall trim, small and pale and somehow obscene in its normalcy.
Then it's just the two of us. Me and Alessia and the blood spreading slowly across the white marble in dark puddles.
She drops her hand from her mouth finally. Her lips have gone bloodless, pressed together in a thin line. "You mutilated him."
"I punished him for breaking the rules."
"For talking to me." Her voice shakes with barely controlled emotion. " You took his finger for that."
"For touching you without permission," I correct, and I keep my voice level even though the memory of his knuckles against her collarbone makes me want to go find him in the infirmary and take the rest of his hand.
"For crossing boundaries that exist for a reason. You are not his to touch, Alessia."
"I'm not a thing to be owned, Matteo."
"I never said you were." I close the distance between us in three long strides, and she backs up instinctively until she hits the wall with nowhere left to retreat.
"But you're under my protection in my house, and that means certain rules apply whether you like them or not. And you clearly told him to stop, but he didn’t listen.
That alone, would have been reason enough for me. "
"That doesn't give you the right—"
"It gives me every right." I plant my hands on the wall on either side of her head. "Every man in this house knows what you are to me."
Her breathing has gone shallow and rapid, her chest rising and falling too quickly. "And what am I to you?"
The question catches me off guard, and for a moment I don't know how to answer because the truth is complicated and dangerous and I'm not ready to examine it too closely. " I'm responsible for you. And when my men forget that, I remind them."
"By taking their fingers." It's not a question this time.
"By showing mercy." I lean in closer, until my mouth is nearly touching her ear.
"I could have taken his entire hand. His arm.
His life. That finger is kindness, Principessa, and the fact that you don't recognize it as such just means you don't understand the world you're living in yet. They’re not working in a fucking flower shop. "
"I understand you're a monster."
"Yes." I don't deny it. " And the sooner you accept that, the easier it’ll be."
"I'll never—"
I kiss her before she can finish the sentence, crushing whatever protest she was forming against my mouth. She makes a sound of surprise or anger and immediately pushes at my chest with both hands, her nails scraping through the fabric of my shirt trying to reach skin underneath.
I fist my hand in her hair and tilt her head back sharply, angling her face exactly the way I want it, and kiss her deeper until I feel some of the fight start to drain out of her body.
She bites my bottom lip. Hard enough to break the skin, hard enough that I taste the copper bloom of blood in my mouth.
The sharp pain makes me groan and press harder against her, and I let her feel through our clothes exactly what her defiance and her violence do to me because denying it would be pointless when my body gives me away this obviously.
"You can fight me with everything you have," I murmur against her bloodied mouth. "But your body knows the truth."
My hand slides up her thigh, pushing her skirt higher as I go. She tries to twist away but there's nowhere for her to go, just solid wall at her back and my body blocking her in front. When my fingers brush against the silk between her legs, I find her wet. Soaked through the fabric.
"See?" I press my palm firmly against her heat through the damp silk, feeling her pulse against my hand. "You can hate me all you want, principessa. You can call me a monster and mean every word of it. But this part of you doesn't lie to me."
"Stop—"
"No." I hook my fingers into the waistband of her silk and pull the fabric aside roughly, feel her slick and hot directly against my skin. "You don't really want me to stop. You just think you should."
I push two fingers inside her without any more warning and she cries out, her head falling back against the wall hard enough that the impact must hurt. Her inner walls clench around my fingers immediately, tight and slick, trying to draw me deeper even as her mouth still forms protests.
"That's it," I murmur, starting to work her with slow and deliberately thorough strokes. "Let me hear those sounds you make."
Her nails dig into my shoulders now, but she's not trying to push me away anymore. She's holding on, using me for balance as her knees start to shake and her legs begin to give out under her. "Matteo—"
"Say it again. I want to hear my name in your mouth."
"Matteo, please—"
I curl my fingers inside her, finding that spot that makes her whole body jerk and her breathing cut off completely. Her inner walls grip me so tightly it's almost painful, slick heat coating my hand and wrist. "You're going to come for me now."
"No—I can't—"
"Yes, you can." I press my thumb firmly against her clit, feel it throb and pulse under my touch. "Come for me right now, Alessia."
She shatters. Her body convulses violently, inner muscles clenching around my fingers in rhythmic waves that I can feel all the way up my arm.
She cries out—tries to muffle the sound in my neck but can't quite manage it—and the noise echoes off the marble walls the same way Romeo's scream did just minutes earlier.
I work her through it carefully, keeping my fingers moving at a steady pace until the violent trembling in her thighs starts to ease and her breathing begins to even out into something more regular.
When she finally goes still, slumped heavily against the wall with all her weight on my hand still between her legs, I pull my fingers free slowly. I bring them to my mouth and taste her while she watches through dazed and unfocused eyes.
"Mine," I say again, and this time she doesn't have the strength left to argue with me about it.
I straighten her skirt carefully, smooth the fabric, fix her hair. Make her presentable even though we both know what just happened.
"Go to our room now," I tell her. "And think about Romeo and his missing finger every single time you start to forget who you belong to."
She stares at me for a long moment without speaking. Her lips are swollen and bruised from my kiss. Her cheeks are flushed dark, her eyes too bright and slightly glazed, and her legs are shaking so badly I'm genuinely not sure she has the strength to walk.
But she does. She pushes herself off the wall with visible effort and walks away from me without saying a single word.
I watch her go. I watch the way she holds herself together with pure will until she rounds the corner at the end of the corridor and disappears from my sight. Only then do I look down at my hand, at the way my fingers still glisten with her.
I don't wash it off. Not yet.