Chapter 40 #3
“Enzo.” Her voice cuts through the room. Soothes the savage beast in me the way only she can.
I slide off him, leaving him bloodier but still very much alive and breathing. “I was just teaching him a few manners, cuore mio.”
I turn to face her, and fuck me, she is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in the whole damn world.
“Rayne,” Carmine says. “Nice of you to join us.”
Luca steps in behind her, and she crosses the room slowly, deliberate, like she has all the time in the world, oozing confidence and fire.
“You are a disgusting piece of shit, Carmine. You paid that scumbag to violate me, and then you convinced everyone I was a lying whore.”
“You’re still just a whore,” he snarls.
I’m about ready to rip his throat out, but she places a steadying hand on my forearm. “I’ve got this,” she says quietly.
I step back, allow her some room. She takes a few steps closer to him, pushes his chair back with the toe of her boot. Then she slaps him hard across the face. So hard his head snaps to the side. That’s my girl.
“Puttana,” he mutters.
She crouches in front of him, like she wants to be close enough that he can’t look anywhere but her face. “That’s just a word men with tiny dicks use when they can’t get what they want.”
Behind me, Luca sniggers.
“I see why you wanted me gone though, I really do. It was a smart move. It’s because you know Enzo would have done anything for me. Kill. Maim. He’d even spare a disgusting sack of shit’s life if I asked him to.”
It takes him a second, but then his eyes spark with something that looks a lot like hope.
“Well, now I’m back and he’d still do anything for me, right, honey?” She flashes me a sweet smile.
“Always, baby.”
Carmine is staring at her now, like she just became his lifeline. Anyone who knows my Rayne knows she has the biggest heart. All compassion and kindness and not a vicious bone in her body.
She leans a little closer. “Say you’re sorry and I might have Enzo let you live.”
I watch them intently, the subtle way his face changes, from hatred and despair to a kind of yearning. It’s sickening yet fascinating to watch her taming him. “I need you to say it, Carmine. Not for them, or for the record. Just for me.”
He swallows.
She smiles, sweet and light. I’m sure he thinks he must be looking at an angel—an angel of mercy.
“I’m sorry,” he croaks.
She makes a face like she’s straining to hear. “Pardon?”
“I’m sorry, Rayne,” he says louder, clearer. “Please forgive me.”
Oh, that was poetic. Yeah, she may look like an angel of mercy, and maybe she was once, but not today.
She straightens up, brushes a spot of blood from her jeans.
“You made sure I had nothing left to lose, Carmine. You stole six years of my life, and now you’re going to understand exactly what that cost you. ”
She holds out a hand and Luca wordlessly places a two-by-four in her palm. It’s already wrapped in razor wire. Carmine knows better than anyone they’re my favored torture devices and exactly what I like to do with them.
“W-what?” he stammers. I see the moment a powerful man finally recognizes he’s the weakest in the room. Thing is, he always has been.
Rayne walks toward me, stops when she reaches me and hands me the weapon. “He’s all yours now.”
My hand finds the small of her back and I kiss her softly. “Thank you, baby. I won’t be long.”
She nods. “I’ll wait outside.”
I nod to Luca, letting him know I expect him to go with her.
She closes the door behind her, and Carmine calls after her, his voice desperate and pleading.
I should make him suffer the way I made Ethan suffer.
Take my time torturing him and taking pleasure in it.
But the truth is, there is nothing I take pleasure in more than being with her.
Any time I spend in here dealing with him is time wasted with the only person in the world I want to be with right now.
The bludgeon was Rafael’s idea, and Rayne was surprisingly on board with it.
But it was purely for show, and the strong smell of shit coming from the don right now confirms it did its job.
There’s no way I’d leave my calling card here for the cops to find.
I can’t resist one strike with it though—across the left side of his face.
It slices his skin open and he cries out.
Then I rest it on his desk, slip the knife from my pocket, grab him by the hair, and drag his head back.
He meets my eyes, his full of fear and mine filled with certainty.
“Goodbye, Carmine. Say hello to my father when you see him in hell.” I slice the knife across his throat, and it moves as easily as though he were made of butter.
Blood spills out, drenching him in a crimson waterfall.
I let him go, his head slumping to the desk and the blood running onto the marble floor.
Oliver will have a bastard of a job getting that clean again.
I grab my homemade mace, walk out of his office, take my girl’s hand in mine, and leave this house that’s too long felt like a prison for the very last time.