29. Nicci
29
NICCI
I wake to find Savio gone.
The sharp sense of disappointment that I feel startles me. I’d expected to find him here in bed, curled against me. I’d expected to wake up to his hard cock pressed against my back and his voice whispering in my ear, asking if I can take it again as he nudges it between my thighs.
Instead, the other side of the bed is empty. I shift, wincing at the soreness that runs through every part of me—particularly concentrated in my shoulder and between my thighs. Even all the times that Savio’s fucked me before this, he’s never left me this sore.
And he left me a mess. My thighs are covered in his cum from last night. I groan as I push the covers back, feeling every muscle in my body protest as I start to sit up. I have no idea where he went, but I desperately want a shower. So I’m going to have to do the best I can.
I reach down, fumbling for one of the discarded towels from last night, and wrap it around myself as I stand up. I’m not sure why I feel the instinct to cover myself—it’s not as if Savio isn’t intimately familiar with every part of my body by now—but I feel like I need some kind of shield against what happened last night.
What the fuck was I thinking? Why did I let that happen? My chest tightens at the memory of it as I force myself to my feet and down the hall to the shower, with still no sign of Savio. Last night wasn’t just different from any other time I’ve been with Savio. It was different from any other time I’ve had sex, ever. I’ve never felt anything like that—that kind of pleasure, of intimacy, of tenderness . It felt like something more than just lust. And it fucking terrifies me, because I want more of it.
Last night, from the moment Savio got into the shower with me until we both fell asleep, I felt like someone was seeing me for the first time. Like I was being seen at my most helpless, my most vulnerable—and wanted all the same.
I felt, for the first time…loved.
No. That’s not possible. I shake my head in a sharp, jerking motion, turning on the shower as I blink back the burning sensation in my eyes. Savio doesn’t love me, and I don’t love him. I can’t. He can’t. It would undo everything I’ve believed up to this point, everything that I have planned for what comes next. I have no contingency plan for falling in love with the enemy…or for him falling for me.
How could I love him, after everything? The answer to that is simple—because Savio is broken just like me, only in different ways. He acted on the pain he felt, just as I have. We’ve both done terrible things, and I can’t judge him without judging myself.
But I do judge myself for what I’ve done, every day. And I can’t deliver the bullet that I have saved for Savio if I let myself love him…or believe that he loves me in return.
I step into the shower, doing my best to wash myself. My shoulder protests with every movement, but I manage. I scrub myself clean and then just stand under the water for a little while, letting the heat soften my sore muscles.
Just as I’m stepping out of the shower and awkwardly starting to dry off, I hear the sound of the back door opening and closing, and footsteps downstairs.
Fear jolts through me for a brief moment, but it must be Savio. He promised me that this place was safe, that no one knew about it, and—whether I should or not—I trust him. About that, at least.
I grab the jeans and black t-shirt that I brought with me and manage to get them on, wincing as I tug the t-shirt over my shoulder. I hear Savio’s footsteps on the stairs just as I come out of the bathroom, winding my hair into a low, damp bun with one hand, and I meet him as he reaches the landing.
“You’re up.” He looks surprised, and I frown.
“I woke up, and you weren’t there. Where did you go?”
“Oh, principessa .” He smirks. “You missed me.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t get your hopes up. Answer my question, Savio.”
He narrows his right back. “There was a time I would have put you on your knees for talking to me like that.”
I tip my head back, looking up at him, and I can see the sheen of desire in his eyes, behind the frustration. His mind is on something else, and now I’m curious as to what. “Maybe I’ll put you on your knees, next time.”
That smirk lingers. “I might like that, principessa .”
We stand there for a moment, that thread of desire snapping taut between us, and I almost expect him to pick me up and carry me back into the bedroom. I know I’d let him, too, if he tried. Whether or not I should—I want him, and that feeling isn’t going away. It won’t until he’s dead…and maybe not even then.
“I have a surprise for you, principessa ,” he says a moment later, his voice rough. “That’s where I went. Come with me?”
“A surprise?” I look at him curiously, and he shrugs.
“Just follow me.”
I’m too curious now to argue. I follow him down the stairs and through the house, out of the back door, and into the yard. He leads me down the hill to the pond and a little further, to a large outbuilding that I saw when we were here last. I went down one afternoon and poked around, but it didn’t seem to be anything other than a large, empty shed.
“What’s going on?” I look at him quizzically, feeling a small thump of fear in my chest. I haven’t forgotten that this is still the man who bought and kidnapped me.
Ignoring me, Savio pushes open the doors and walks inside. I hesitate for just a moment before following him, my pulse picking up speed as I do. I freeze just inside of the doorway, my mind taking a minute to catch up and believe that what I’m seeing in front of me is real.
My father and brother are hanging from meat hooks in the middle of the shed, their feet barely touching the wood. A rustling sound startles me, making me jump, and I pivot sharply to see Savio shaking out a tarp.
A groan catches my attention, and I turn back, seeing my father come back to consciousness. He’s still dressed—slacks and a button-down, one shoe lost. But my brother is stripped down to his boxers. I see him starting to stir, too, and my pulse races as I look back at Savio.
“This is my surprise?”
He nods, spreading the tarp out beneath their feet. “We had a deal,” he says calmly. “I brought them here for you. Do whatever you like, principessa ?—”
“What the fuck is going on?”
My father’s thick, slurred voice cuts through the warm air of the shed. He twists in the zip ties holding him, looking at me and then at Savio. Panic and confusion in his features. My chest feels warm, my veins buzzing with adrenaline at seeing him like this. Seeing him captive, afraid, hurting. Finally .
“Why the fuck am I here, Valenti?” he spits out, as my brother starts to stir, coughing as his feet kick against the floor. “Was she too expensive? Did she not please you well enough? Is this some kind of trick—that you pay me for my daughter and then break into my house, make her watch while?—”
“No one’s making me do anything,” I snap. I stride to the table next to Savio in a few quick steps, picking up a pair of pliers. I hear my father splutter as I grab a chair and drag it up next to him, standing on it so that I can reach one of his hands. “Just like no one made you beat me. No one made you hit me, over and over. Just because I said I didn’t want to be used as your fucking bargaining chip.” I grab one of his fingers in the pliers and twist.
The snap of bone is drowned out by his cry of pain. He jerks back and forth, and I laugh, a bitter sound that seems to come from somewhere deep inside of me.
“Did that hurt? It hurt every time you hit me. Every time, you knocked me down to the floor.” I grab a second finger in the pliers, breaking that one, too, and let out a long breath as I listen to the ragged groan that spills from his mouth.
I jump down from the chair and cross the room to where my brother is hanging. “I’ll come back to you,” I tell my father. “First, I’ll let you watch while I take your heir apart piece by piece, until he’s begging me to stop. Just like I begged him to stop, remember? You should remember. You watched all of it—while he trained me to please the men you tried to sell me off to. While he used me as a punishment. He’s never going to be able to use anyone else. Ever again.”
“Nicci.” My father’s voice is pleading. “You can’t do this. You can’t hurt your own flesh and blood?—”
“Like you hurt me?” My voice rises. “What the fuck am I, then? Just a daughter, so it doesn’t matter, right? Just a disobedient hole to be taught how to be used? Isn’t that what you said?” I pause next to where my brother is waking up, a low moan coming from his lips as I move a chair next to him. “I’m going to break every single one of his fingers while you watch.”
“Nicci—” My brother mumbles my name, and I backhand him, hard, satisfaction slithering through me as I feel the crack of flesh against flesh.
“How does it fucking feel?” I hiss, as I reach up to grasp one of his right-hand fingers in the pliers. “How does it feel, getting slapped in the fucking face?” I squeeze the pliers around his finger. “How about this? You remember what you did with these fingers? How I begged you to stop? You remember your hand around my throat, slapping me down to the floor before you pulled me back up on my knees and shoved your fingers in my mouth to make me open it? Do you remember what else you did?”
My voice rises as I speak, until I’m nearly shrieking in his face. Savio says nothing. He’s standing by the door, arms crossed over his chest, watching me. I can see satisfaction in his face, too—and pride. There’s no doubt that’s the other emotion I see. He’s proud of me, and warmth washes through me at the realization.
“Nicci, stop. Nicci, stop this ! Fucking stop it! I’m your father, and I’m ordering you?—”
“Shut the fuck up!” I twist, glaring at my father as I break the fourth of my brother’s fingers, his screams mingling with my father’s shouts. “Shut up, or I’ll cut out your fucking tongue so I don’t have to listen to this bullshit while I work!”
“I can do it for you if you want,” Savio says lazily, grinning at me from where he’s standing. “Wouldn’t want you to have to interrupt what you’re in the middle of.”
I hesitate. I’m high on the feeling of power, and something in me thrills to the idea of giving Savio orders, instead of the other way around.
“Do it,” I tell him, my voice as sharp and curt as any order he ever gave me. He grins, sliding a hunting knife free of his belt as he strides toward my father, grabbing a pair of pliers to help him do the job. I reach up, breaking another of my brother’s fingers just as Savio reaches my father’s side.
“Nicci.” My father pleads, his eyes wide and panicked as he looks at Savio. “Don’t do this. Tell him to stop. Please?—”
“Funny.” I wrench the pliers down as my brother screams again. “I think I said those exact words when you told my brother to show me how men like their dicks sucked, since I lost Dimitri and clearly wasn’t doing a good enough job.” I look at Savio. “Cut it off.”
“My pleasure.” Savio grins, reaching up to wrench my father’s mouth open as he reaches in with the pliers.
An hour passes. The shed is thick with the smell of blood and sweat. My father’s chin soaked with blood and drool. My brother’s hands mangled as he cries. I step back, looking at them both, feeling almost dizzy with the sense of satisfaction that I get from seeing them both like this—at my mercy, bound and tortured and begging for me to stop.
I don’t stop. Just like neither of them ever did.
I take Savio’s hunting knife from him and use it to do the same to my brother’s tongue. And then I step up to my brother, the knife pressed to his groin.
“I want you to think about how much you enjoyed what you did to me,” I hiss. “How many times you did it. How much pleasure you got from it. And I want you to think about the fact that you’re never, ever going to feel that again. I’m about to cut your filthy fucking cock off, and you’re going to bleed to death on this floor.”
Panic overtakes him at that. He writhes and kicks, screaming and drooling, his mouth open as he tries to speak and can’t. I look at Savio, who nods, moving to tie his feet so he can’t lash out and kick me.
I look up at my brother, the first man who got to abuse me, the first in a long line of men that my father handed me over to as punishment. And I don’t stop looking at his face, not for a second, as I cut away his flesh and fling it to the floor, leaving him screaming and bleeding as he hangs there.
From behind me, I can hear a series of garbled sounds coming from my father. I turn, tossing the knife onto the table, and look at my brother. His face is pale, his breathing ragged, and I know he doesn’t have long. He’ll bleed to death in a few moments. There’s more that I could do to my father, too—but suddenly, I want it over. I’m hot and sweaty, and it feels like there’s some poetic justice to them both dying at the same time, both knowing in the same moment the immediacy of being blinked out of existence.
I grab the gun Savio holds out to me, and I point it at my father.
“You can both go to fucking hell.”
I pull the trigger. My father’s body jerks, his mouth open on a plea that he can’t speak any longer, and blood splatters from his head, dripping down his waxy flesh as he slumps in the ties.
“You did good,” Savio murmurs next to me. “I’m proud of you, principessa . You’re free now.”
For a split second, I hesitate. The memory of last night is still close—the memory of Savio’s hands in my hair, his breath in my ear, his body sliding over mine. The memory of our shared pleasure, of intimacy that I’ve never felt before, of closeness that I never thought I’d have.
We could be something more. But this is my chance at freedom. Real freedom. And I haven’t come this far to change my plans now.
I turn towards him, the gun pointed at his forehead.
“I’m not free yet. But I’m about to be.”