Chapter 7
Carmine
At the only home I’ve ever known, things aren’t getting any fucking easier. As hard as I try, I can’t keep myself away from a bottle of alcohol. Soren said that I don’t have to. He said to not let myself go overboard, that’s all.
Why does it matter what he said though? Why am I even contemplating listening to what he’d told me to do. Call him. Text him.
Tell him I want to drown myself in an entire bottle of whiskey and have him scold me in that dark voice.
That deep tone…the same one that had sounded so concerned for me that night in the office. In the safe house.
I still remember how his fingers felt against my cheek as he checked me for any more blood. The way his eyes shifted to my lips, how he seemed to linger.
He looked at me like I was a piece of meat for him to stalk and take as he pleased.
Which is what he’s doing, isn’t it?
I growl to myself and open the bottle in my hand as I sit down at the window seat in the library.
Soren is just trying to get to me. I don’t know why, not exactly, but I can guess.
My family is important, wealthy, powerful. It doesn’t take someone with a P.H.D. to figure out why the Fiorellis might want to screw me over. Screw us over. My family.
The only thing I have left.
I down several large swallows, and it rolls down my throat like water. I’m so used to the burn that I barely notice it. A good sparkling water would have more kick to it than this.
I huff slightly, catching my breath, and take another drink.
It’s already too much, I know it.
“So what?” I mumble. “I’m alone. Soren isn’t here to stop me.”
I scoff and take another drink. It sloshes around in my stomach with each breath, and the way the liquid stretches my stomach as it fills it feels uncomfortable and sore. It feels like I’ve been at this for months, even if it’s only been weeks.
I lick my lips and set the bottle down on the cushioned bench seat.
“What is he going to do?” I ask myself. “Punish me? How exactly?”
I snort and shake my head. “What can he do that hasn’t already been done?”
Even as I say this, I think about the way he looked at me while saying it.
Punish me.
If I don’t do as he says, he’ll punish me.
I understand the undertones now as I really lock onto the memory in my tipsy state. Would it include a spanking?
“Hah!”
Can I really imagine that? Can I actually imagine myself being bent over Soren Fiorelli’s lap and having my ass spanked?
My jaw goes a bit slack, and my mouth waters. I stare across the room, through the closed door and into a fantasy of my own making.
In that fantasy, Soren grabs me by the face and tells me what a bad boy I’ve been.
He ignores me when I try to pull away from him, just holding me by the jaw and chin while he yanks the bottle from my hand and tosses it to the side.
It crashes to the floor, breaking into several jagged and sharp pieces.
I imagine myself swearing at him. Telling him he has no right.
Soren grabs me by the back of my hair and reminds me what he told me. Punishment. It’s time for my punishment.
I’m dragged over to a couch, what couch doesn’t matter, but in my mind it’s there. Everything else is just hazy and undetailed. Even the floor under our feet and that couch. The walls around us don’t matter.
I fight him, briefly, but eventually I lay over his lap with my face against the sofa and he takes my belt off from around my waist. Then he tugs my suit pants down and—
“Oh, I didn’t realize you were in here.” Cassian’s voice pulls me out of my unintended daydream.
I jump slightly, and I’m incredibly aware that my cock is rock hard in my pajama pants.
“Cassian,” I mumble. Forgetting, just for a moment, that I’m upset with him. I know I shouldn’t be. Logically, rationally. He’s just a kid.
My drunken brain quickly brushes that to the side though, and falls back onto the frustration and anger I’ve been feeling toward him since that day in our father’s office.
“You’re speaking to me now?” he asks quietly. I know that he means it genuinely, that he’s upset too, but his words spark more irritation in my chest.
Heat spreads from my groin to my neck and face, leaving my arousal semi-hard as my focus turns to something less pleasant.
“You know why I haven’t been,” I snap at him. “You know what you did.”
Cassian steps closer, standing almost entirely across the room near the doorway. He walks in just far enough that the doors close behind him and then stops.
“Why don’t you just say it to my face again?” he asks.
I scoff and grab the bottle beside me, just holding it. It feels comfortable to have it in my hand. Like a blanket I used to keep close as a child.
“Haven’t you heard it enough?” I ask in return. “How about you say it?”
Cassian walks over to me, standing an arm’s reach away. “I can’t.”
“You’re a coward, that’s why,” I sneer.
He huffs, and his eyes, mirroring my own, glitter with tears and emotion. I watch his hands ball into fists. “No, because it wasn’t my fault, Carmine.”
I stand up with the bottle in hand. “The fuck it wasn’t,” I tell him.
“You weren’t supposed to be the one in father’s office.
You aren’t fit to be guarding anyone!” My voice raises and I wave the bottle around recklessly.
I feel the heavy, warm, and fuzzy feeling of the alcohol setting in.
Soon, I won’t be able to control the volume of my voice at all.
“I wasn’t supposed to be in there, you’re right,” he says back to me, his younger and slightly less mature voice strained. “But it would’ve happened either way, Carmine. Don’t you understand that?”
I shake my head. “No. No, it wouldn’t have, not if—”
“If an actual fucking guard was in there?” he stands completely still, his frame stiff, only his fists shaking slightly.
“It didn’t matter who was in there. Dad would’ve died anyway.
They came in too fast; they ambushed us.
It wouldn’t have mattered who was keeping watch on the other side of the fucking room when they came right through the office door and shot him in the head and chest at his desk!
” Cassian is yelling now. His voice sounds so much like my own when I was younger.
It’s like standing in front of a mirror, looking at a smaller and more vulnerable version of myself.
“Well, it wouldn’t have happened if I had been there!” I demand, my voice breaking and starting to slur.
“It would’ve, and you know it,” he tells me. “That’s why all you’re doing since he died is drinking and you’re letting some stranger and their family take over ours.”
My breath hitches in his throat.
“Don’t tell me what I’m doing,” I growl. My words barely make sense. I stumble backward a little bit.
“You’re acting like a disaster, Carmine!” he says, and his tears stream down his face and he starts to sob. “I don’t want this. I don’t want it to be like this between us!”
“You’re lying!” I hiss at him. “All you do is lie. You probably wanted him to die,” I accuse, my head dizzy, words flooding me. Words that didn’t come from me to begin with. They leave my mouth anyway. Directed right at Cassian.
“What?” he gasps. “How could—?”
“Shut up!” I roar and smash the bottle on the floor.
Cassian flinches and takes a step back away from the shards of glass on the floor.
“After what he did to you…” I mumble.
Cassian’s wet eyes look at me in confusion. “What are you talking about, Minnie?” he asks me.
“Don’t call me that!” I sneer. “Don’t call me anything! Get away!” I wave my arms. Tears burn in my own eyes and I look away from him.
“You deserved it, you deserve it,” I say breathlessly.
Suddenly, Tommaso comes rushing into the room with Tiberi right behind him.
“What the fuck is going on in here?” Tommy asks, squaring up with his shoulders as he sees the two of us. His eyes are already flashing with heat and I know he’s gunning to fight someone.
“Nothing!” I step on the broken glass accidentally and growl in frustration as I step back and stumble into sitting on the window seat again.
“Cassian, are you alright?” Tiberi asks him.
I scoff and look to the side. My vision is blurry already. How much longer until I simply black out? Did I really drink that much? My left foot is dripping with blood and stinging from the glass in it, but I don’t care.
“He’s just being a dick,” Cassian mumbles. “What’s new?”
I narrow my eyes, but it’s mostly in an attempt to just see clearly.
“Go, it’s time for dinner anyway,” Tiberi insists.
“Yeah, we’ll handle our brother,” Tommy agrees. “Nothing a little hand to hand can’t work out.”
“Tommaso, relax,” Tiberi puts a hand on his shoulder. “Take Cassian to the dining room. Alessio will be home soon.”
Tommy scoffs. “Right… yeah, Alessio will probably want to kick your ass anyway.” He turns and motions Cassian out of the room.
“I’m fine,” Cassian insists.
We both know the truth.
Once I’m alone in the room with just Tiberi, he speaks again.
“You’re losing it,” he tells me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble. “So everyone tells me.”
Tiberi shakes his head. “I’m serious, Carmine. We’re all grieving, in our own way, but you… You’re a mess.”
“So I’m going heavy handed on the alcohol, so what? Like you aren’t spending more time at the gun range, Tommy ain’t picking fights with whoever he can, and Alessio ain’t out there getting tied up by some man in leather. We’ve all got our vices.”
“You forgot someone,” Tiberi reminds me. “Cassian.”
I sigh and look at the floor.
“This is not his fault, but he’s the one who saw it happen. He’s barely a man, and he’s handling it better than you,” he tells me.
I snort. “Well, thanks for the pick-me-up, Tib.”
“It’s not good, Carmine. He should be grieving too. He should be able to come to you, his oldest brother for fucks sake, and grieve. He shouldn’t be handling it better than the man who’s supposed to be in charge of all of us. Alessio shouldn’t have to protect him from you.”
I blink, suddenly slightly more sober. “No one’s protecting him from me.”