4. Nicci
4
NICCI
M y father steps into the room.
Savio is just behind him. He looks at me, catches my expression, and a self-satisfied smirk that I’d fucking love to slap off of his face curls his lips. He stands near the door as my father walks a few paces into the room and stops, and I stare at him, anything I could have thought of to say dying on my lips.
Looking at my father, all I feel is hate. I know there was a time when I was much, much younger, that I loved him. When I thought he loved me. But all that has been erased. Now I hate him in a way that feels like a physical thing, like a fist shoved into my chest, wrapped around my heart and squeezing. I look at him, and all I can think of is what Savio asked me last night about Bryce.
Would you like that? If I cut off his hands? One finger at a time?
If he’d asked that about my father, my answer might have been different.
But none of that explains why they’re both standing here in the same room, or why my father doesn’t look at all surprised or angry to find me here.
He’s always been an imposing man. Now, his stomach has rounded with age and good food, and his short beard is greyer, but nothing about it changes the force of his presence. It makes me shrink back into myself, unable to look away from him, as much as I want to.
“What’s going on?” I demand, putting as much force in my words as I can manage. “This man…he kidnapped me!” I gesture at Savio, pushing myself off the bed as I stand up, my heart hammering behind my ribs. “He drugged me. He?—”
“According to him, you refused to leave of your own free will.” My father shrugs. “I don’t see that he had much of a choice.”
I stare at him, unable to quite reconcile what I’m hearing. “What? You promised me…you said I would never have to leave the club with anyone. You said it all stayed there, that I—” I break off, seeing something flicker in Savio’s gaze, something that almost looks like anger…or jealousy. But neither of those emotions makes sense, and I don’t have the energy right now to try to parse that out. “He said I belonged to him,” I manage, my voice smaller than I want it to be, but still colored with anger. “I don’t?—”
“You do.” My father’s voice falls between us like a gavel, ringing with finality. “You do belong to him now, Nicci. It’s been arranged between the two of us.”
I stare at him, sure that I’ve heard something wrong. “You—what do you mean? He can’t own me. That’s not—” You don’t even own me, I want to say, but deep down, I know that’s not true. If anyone in this world owns me, my father does. He’s proven that time and again. He owns me, and in the past, he’s leased me out as he sees fit.
“Did you—you gave me to him?” I stare at Savio, trying to make sense of it. Barca Valenti failed my father, just as I did. I can’t imagine there being good blood between Savio and my father. I can’t imagine them working together.
My father chuckles, and there’s real humor in it, as if there’s anything funny about this situation at all. “I sold you to him, Nicci,” he says, enunciating the words as if I’m too slow to understand what’s happening here, as if I should have figured it out by now.
Behind him, Savio smirks. The room narrows, and for a moment I think I’m going to pass out again— really pass out this time. I search my father’s face for some hint of a joke, some indication that he’s making this up for some unfathomable reason, but there’s nothing.
“For how much?” I whisper. The question sounds inane to my own ears, but for some reason, I want to know. It matters to me.
My father looks at Savio, and he shrugs. He looks back at me. “Just over a million dollars,” he says calmly. “You’ve made me quite a bit of money at last, daughter. Try not to make him regret the purchase.”
He glances back at Savio, a sneer curling his lip. “She’s your problem, now,” he says with a shrug—and though I thought I was far past being hurt by anything my father says or does, every word feels like a twist of the knife driven into my chest.
And then, without another word, he turns and leaves the room, walking past Savio and shutting the door behind him without so much as a goodbye.
I can feel myself starting to shake. It’s a fine tremor, running up through my body, through every limb, threatening to make me fall apart. I stare at Savio, begging myself to wake up, for this to be some kind of nightmare. I reach up with a trembling hand, pinching my forearm hard, but nothing happens. I don’t wake up. And Savio is still standing there, looking at me as if he’s waiting for me to figure it all out.
“What do you want from me?” My voice is laced with anger, every word as sharp as a whip cracking in the air between us. “Why would you pay a million dollars for me? For what every man who walks into the Gilded Lily has had? For what your brother had?”
That last was too far. I know it the moment Savio’s gaze hardens, the moment he strides towards me, his cold green eyes locked on mine as he reaches out and grabs my chin, holding me in place and unable to look away. His fingers dig into my jaw, and I look up at him, fear beating heavy wings in my chest.
“I want information,” he growls. “I want to know what my brother was doing while you were with him. I want every little thing you were privy to while you were in his bed. Don’t deny that you were, I know that’s a lie. And furthermore, I want you .”
“Why?” I whisper, the word choked out between his pressing fingers. “Why do you want me?”
A cold smile slides over Savio’s lips. “Because I want everything he had,” he growls. “And I’m going to take everything he wanted.”
He pulls me closer, flush against him, and I can feel how hard he is. Rock-hard, straining against the front of his trousers, a long, thick ridge that shocks me with just how big it feels against my thigh. He looks down at me, a dark, furious heat in his eyes, and his hand slides around to the back of my neck, exerting pressure to try to put me down onto my knees.
Fuck that. I’m on my own now. My father has sold me to this man, who clearly has no love lost between him and his late brother, who wants me for what I know and for some kind of twisted revenge. There’s no consequences any longer except for what Savio will mete out, and I don’t think he can hold a candle to what my father did to me. I don’t think he can hurt me worse than I’ve already been hurt.
I wrench back, fighting his effort to push me down. “Let go of me!” I screech, twisting in his grip, and Savio’s jaw hardens as he glares at me.
“You belong to me now, Nicci,” he snaps, as if I haven’t understood the transaction that brought me here yet. “If I want you on your knees, you go down on your knees. And right now, I’m so fucking hard I can’t think—So I want that taken care of before I start questioning you the way I planned.”
“Fuck you,” I spit, and Savio’s grip on the back of my neck tightens.
“What do you think happens to you if you disobey?” he growls. “I would have thought you were better at being obedient than this, principessa . What happened to the little whore that let every man in that club have her holes without question?”
My hands are still free, and without letting myself think twice, I take full advantage of it. I slap him across the face, hard enough to leave a stinging red mark. He jolts back, startled, and flings me towards the bed, hard enough that I topple and fall against it.
Fear pulses through me, but there’s a strange exultation behind it, too. “My father’s orders got your brother killed,” I spit at him. “And yet you’re working with him? None of that makes sense, Savio .”
“I bought you from him. I’m not working with him. There’s a difference. And I’m the one asking the questions.” Savio stiffens, and I can see him struggling to find that easy calm that he had every time he came into the club. I’ve gotten under his skin, and I can tell he hates it. Hates that I’m fighting back—and loves it, too, I think. In a manner of speaking. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a man as rock-hard as he is right now.
“So you don’t care about my father? He’s not your associate?”
Savio’s face smooths. “No,” he says calmly, some of his composure returning. “I don’t care about your father at all, principessa , or his business, or anything else having to do with him. I purchased you from him to avoid any unnecessary consequences of taking you for my own.”
“For a million dollars?” My family is rich, and I lived in the lap of luxury for most of my life, and yet I can’t wrap my head around how casually he threw money at the supposed problem of making me his.
Savio shrugs, as if it’s truly nothing to him. “It was a minor amount,” he says, gesturing dismissively. “I’d rather that than deal with your father attacking me in an effort to get you back. Stealing his beloved daughter seemed more difficult than simply paying for you.”
The slight sarcasm that I hear behind beloved makes me wonder how much Savio has gleaned about my relationship with my father. He obviously must realize that it’s not a loving one—no good father would put his daughter to work at the Gilded Lily or sell her to a man like Savio.
“A million dollars isn’t a minor amount .”
He shrugs again. “It is to me.” The heat of the moment before has faded, his demeanor cool and poised again. “I want information from you, Nicci. I want to know about my brother. I want to know about his plans. I want to know why he went up against a family as powerful as the Yashkovs, what made him believe he could pull that off. Everything he ever said to you, I want to know. And you’ll give it to me. One way or another, I’ll get it out of you.”
It’s not a threat. It’s a promise. I never really understood that saying until now, even though I’ve heard my father say it a hundred times or more. Savio’s words could be interpreted as a threat, but they’re not. Not really. They’re a promise. He doesn’t need to threaten me, because he knows he’ll do it. There’s no bluff.
“I will get it all out of you,” he repeats. “Easy or hard, principessa , you’ll give me everything.”
I look at him, and I know he means it. I try to think of options, of ways out, but I don’t come up with anything. Not until a small voice, a sliver of the old me, the person I used to be, whispers in the back of my mind.
Turn this to your advantage. You used to be good at that. Or are you just so completely broken now that you can’t any longer?
Nowhere in any of this did Savio say anything about the Crows, Barca’s old gang. He hasn’t mentioned them once. And so, I suck in a breath, and gamble with that knowledge.
“I hate Barca too, you know. Or I did.” I say it calmly, matter-of-factly, and I’m gratified by the moment of startlement that I see in Savio’s eyes.
“I never said?—”
“You didn’t have to. I can tell from the way you talk about him that there’s no love lost there.” I push myself back up to standing, forcing myself to stiffen my spine and look Savio directly in the eyes. “For some reason, you hated your brother. You’re angry at him. Angry enough to buy me, to want to take everything he had or wanted to have. Your words.” I tilt my chin up, hoping he can’t see the faint tremble there, willing myself to hold his gaze. “But you haven’t said anything about his men. The Crows. The gang he used to run.”
“Didn’t Dimitri Yashkov kill them all?” Savio raises an eyebrow, his expression still cool, but I can see a hint of eagerness there. The desire for the information that he said he wanted.
“Most of them.” I swallow hard. “Some of them escaped, as far as I know. There are at least a handful of them that I think got away.”
Savio shrugs. “So maybe I’ll track them down for answers, too. I’m less concerned with a handful of former gangsters that my brother controlled. I have bigger fish to catch, principessa .”
“Maybe you do. But you want my cooperation, don’t you? One way or another, you said. What if we could help each other?”
My heart beats hard behind my ribs as I see Savio raise an eyebrow. I have very little to bargain with, here. He has all the power, and I have none. He doesn’t have to go along with anything I ask for. He can have me no matter what—it’ll just be by force, which I’m not sure he’ll mind. All I have to go off of is the hope that he’d rather have me willing…and how intriguing he finds my offer—if I amuse or interest him enough to convince him to go along with my suggestions.
“What are you saying, principessa ?” Savio’s voice is controlled, slow, a dangerous purr. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. His gaze is cool, bland, everything that he’s feeling hidden behind a careful mask.
I draw in a breath, forcing myself not to tremble. Not to crumble apart. Savio might be a devil, but if I can bargain with him, I might get what I want—what I’ve dreamed of in the silent, lonely hours of the night, when anger has been the only thing keeping me from disappearing into a shell of myself.
Sometimes, spite is all there is to keep a person going. Sometimes anger is all you have to hold onto. And I’ve held onto mine.
“I have my own reasons to hate Barca,” I tell Savio, keeping my voice as empty and emotionless as I can. He has enough power over me already; I don’t want to let him know how badly I want this. “Just as I have more than enough reasons to hate my father.”
Savio’s expression doesn’t shift. “Is there a point to this, principessa ? Or are you just giving me a sob story that I didn’t ask for?”
I grit my teeth. “My point ,” I manage, forcing myself to speak normally and not spit the words at him, “is that I will do whatever you want. I will tell you anything you want to know—although I don’t think I know as much as you think I do—and I’ll please you however you want…if you help me kill the Crows, and my father.”
There. I said it. The words hang heavy in the air between us, my heart thudding in my chest. I feel like I can’t entirely breathe. Now that I’ve said it out loud, I can feel how desperately I want that revenge, more than I ever realized before. The need crawls through my veins, heavy and aching, and Savio is my only chance to sate it. If he locks me away and tortures me into giving up information to him with nothing in return, there’s nothing I can do about it. And the thought of him saying no—losing this one small chance to take back something from the people who broke me—feels like what I imagine heartbreak must feel like.
Not that I would know. No one has ever broken my heart.
I would have had to let myself love someone for that to happen.
His gaze turns keen, interested. “So if I kill them for you, you’ll do what I want? You’ll answer my questions? You’ll obey me, submit to me, accept that I own you, and your purpose now is to serve me ?”
I swallow hard. The beat of my heart in my chest is almost painful now. “No.” I shake my head. “Not if you do it for me. I want to be a part of it.” I tilt my chin up. “You’ll take me with you when you hunt them down. You’ll teach me how to shoot a gun, use a knife, and how to defend myself. Every time you find a Crow, I’ll be at your side when you go after them, and I’ll damn sure be at your side when we go after my father. And in return… yes.” I feel a strange, shivery sensation go down my spine as I speak. “I’ll submit to you. I’ll do and give you whatever you want that’s within my power.”
Savio’s eyes gleam. He steps closer, and his fingers close on my chin again, but more gently this time. He looks down at me, and all I see in his gaze is heat and sin, swirling together in a pit of dark green desire.
“You have no idea what I want, principessa ,” he murmurs, his voice curling around me like smoke. “What I can do to you.”
His thumb brushes along the edge of my jaw, and the softness of it surprises me. There’s nothing soft about the look in his eyes or the sound of his voice. “I was looking forward to breaking you. But somehow, the idea of you willingly submitting when you have no idea what it is that you’re getting yourself into is even more arousing. I think I’ll find even more satisfaction in that.”
My throat tightens. “Are you agreeing to my offer?” I manage, my words a little more strangled than I mean for them to be. A dark, wicked smile curves Savio’s lips.
“That depends,” he says coolly.
“On what?”
“On whether or not you can convince me, right now, that you’re serious.” His fingers tighten, ever so slightly, on my chin, and his thumb sweeps over my lower lip. “Show me how you’ll submit to me, principessa , and we have a deal.”