Chapter 21 #2
Cruz tilts his head, his stormy eyes locking on to mine in a way that makes it impossible to look away. “Look at that, you withhold sex from the lover, he turns into a fighter. Wish I had known this years ago, but Ash was never very good at abstaining until you came into the picture.”
“It’s only been a week since I arrived.” I almost laugh back. He’s hardly celibate.
“Longer than he’s ever gone, I would say.”
It sounds like another punch is thrown, and I jump in Cruz’s hold. “Shouldn’t you be stopping them?” I ask, half mortified they are fighting over me, half turned on and proud of myself for getting to the bottom of Jagger’s sneaky ways.
His eyes stay locked with mine. “Nah. They will work out their differences and all will be well again.” He says it so casually I have to assume a fistfight in the kitchen is some kind of normal around here.
My phone springs to life, dancing across my bedside table.
I glance back, seeing it’s my brother again.
He’s been calling me repeatedly all afternoon.
I don’t want to pick up. It’s not that I don’t miss him and want to talk to him, but more that I don’t want to face reality.
And my brother is reality, my old life that I’m trying to escape.
“You going to get that?” Cruz asks, and I know he can see who the caller is as well.
“Nope.”
He lowers his face closer to mine. “Why?”
I stare right into his crazy eyes. “None of your business,” I snip back as the phone stops ringing.
He drums his hand on the wall beside me. “See, I’ve only met your brother a couple of times, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to enjoy being ignored.”
My eyes widen. “You know my brother?”
His lips curve into a broad smile that instantly makes me feel uneasy. “I know a lot of people, little darlin’, and I wouldn’t be ignoring him.”
“I’m not scared of my brother,” I huff. I know most people are, he spent a long time building that reputation, but he’s my brother, and he would never hurt me.
In the kitchen, something shatters, and I remember the other two are still fighting.
Cruz raises a brow as if he doesn’t believe me. Then, my damn phone starts again. He releases his grip on me and walks over to my bedside table, studying my phone like he’s never seen a cell before.
My heart skips a beat. “Don’t. You. Dare.” I move across the room as quickly as I can, but I’m too late.
Cruz answers the call. “Daisy’s answering service, how may I direct your call?” the smug bastard says.
I shoot him a look sharp enough to kill, but he couldn’t care less, the fucker just sneers at me as he listens to my brother on the other end of the line. He’s so erratic, I never know what he’s going to do next.
My brother practically yells down the line. “Put my sister on.”
Cruz hands me the phone. “It’s for you, little darlin’.”
“Screw you,” I mouth to him as I put the phone up to my ear. “Dante,” I say his name, trying to keep my voice light and pleasant even though my stomach is already churning.
“Why are you screening my calls?” he barks.
I sigh, really not wanting to have this conversation with him, especially while Cruz is in earshot. I throw him a glare that tells him to piss off, but he just smiles at me and leans into the wall like he’s staying. I turn away from him and move over to the window. “I’ve just been busy.”
“All fucking day? I’m not calling you for a fucking chit-chat. This is important, Daisy.”
I stare out the window, wondering how much longer I have in this place before my family sends a jet to come and collect me. “What is so important?” I ask almost absentmindedly.
“They found him.”
An icy shiver runs over my skin and down my spine. I’m not sure if I’m going to puke or pass out. “Valentine is alive?” I whisper-cry, gripping hold of the windowsill, my knees buckling.
“No, he’s very dead. They found part of his skull washed up on a beach not too far from Ravens Hollow. Luckily, there was enough that the local authorities could identify him through his dental records. I wanted you to know first, before you hear a news story about it.”
My heart thumps out of my chest. I have waited for this moment for five years, wished for it, prayed for it.
My husband is dead. The asshole who controlled my life and made it a living hell for five fucking years has gone to hell.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry tears of joy, but one thing is for sure, I will not mourn him for even one second.
The memory of his rough hands and the pain that came with each touch will forever haunt me.
That shit you never forget, but knowing he’s dead before me, knowing someone got the revenge on him I was never able to, will ease my pain.
“Daisy, are you still there?” my brother calls down the line, sounding agitated.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Sorry, just processing. Why was there only part of his skull?” It’s the most random question for me to ask, but I want to know how he died. I need to know he suffered like he made me.
“The local authorities are still investigating the circumstances surrounding his death, but it’s obviously suspicious. Sounds to me like he upset the wrong person. With a list of enemies as long as his, it was only a matter of time.”
“What does this mean for me, Dante?”
“You’re free.” He sounds just as relieved as I feel, and I’m sure he is. When everyone had given up on me, even myself, he was still fighting to get me out of that marriage.
“Until Papa marries me off to someone new.” I can’t help the sigh that escapes my lips.
I’m so elated, but fear also creeps its way back under my skin.
I know that I will never be truly free, not while my papa is still a part of that world, still doing everything he can to work his way up the ranks in their underground operation.
I am a pawn, a bargaining tool to help him.
I worked that out the hard way. And now that I’m no longer the property of Valentine Moretti, I’m valuable again.
“He wants you to come home, Daisy.” My brother sounds just as defeated at the thought.
I watch the passersby on the street below and wonder what it would feel like to be truly free, my own person, not having to answer to anyone else.
I wish I knew; wish I was born into another normal family not tied to the mafia.
“He’s not using me to better his position again, Dante, I would prefer to be dead. ”
“I can’t hold him off forever, it’s only a matter of time before he pays the right person and they track you down.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “He’s paying people to find me?”
He sighs, and I feel the weight I have left on his shoulders by running away. “You know what he gets like when he wants something.”
Obsessed. I glance at Cruz. He’s watching me keenly, listening to every detail of my conversation.
He’s not even trying to hide it. He’s the strangest human I have ever met.
Not worried about others social cues, he just does whatever the hell he wants.
Then something clicks that makes me feel suddenly sick to the stomach.
“Dante, why weren’t you worried about the random man who answered my phone just now? ”
“Thought it must have been a friend of yours,” he responds a little too quickly.
My eyes narrow in on Cruz, feeling like something suspicious is going on here, my gut shouting it at me. “Or you knew who it was?”
A heavy silence falls over the line. “You need all the help you can get, Daisy. Papa is on the warpath, and he wants you home and married off. He has someone in mind already. I was trying to buy you time.”
My eyes narrow in on Cruz, hoping to God he gets this cue. I’m fucking fuming mad. “How? And don’t lie to me.”
He inhales deeply. “The Stryker brothers offered to help and watch over you until I came up with another solution.”
I shake my head, understanding why Jagger changed his tune so damn quickly the other day.
It all makes so much sense now. A bitter laugh escapes my lips, not meant for my brother but for the asshole staring at me.
“You’re paying them to babysit me!” I growl out, my eyes fixed on Cruz as so much finally clicks into place.
Cruz’s eyes are lit up with delight; he doesn’t even care that I know the truth. He takes pleasure in it. What the actual hell?
“Do you want your freedom or not?” my brother snips.
“Yes, but not like this.”
“This is the only way. I’ve got to go. Take care of yourself until I can call you again.”
Suddenly, I feel teary, a heaviness coming over me. Dante is the only one who has ever really cared about me, and right now, in this second, when everything feels so uncertain, I need him more than ever. “I love you, Dante,” I whisper-cry.
“Love you too, little sis.” Then he’s gone, and I’m left listening to silence.
Tears slowly strolling down my cheeks. The past week all makes sense now.
Well, maybe not all of it. I still can’t work out why Jagger was paying to fuck me.
But the controlling shit, yeah, that all makes sense.
I was a payday for them. Got to make sure I stay alive and in their care or they won’t get whatever compensation my brother is offering.
As I look up, I can make out Jagger and Asher in the doorway through my blurred vision. They’re both panting and roughed up, Jagger with a split lip and Ash with a busted cheek. Their clothes are in complete disarray.
“Little princess, what’s wrong?” Asher asks, sounding more concerned than he should, when I know how much I really mean to him. I’m just a paycheck to them, after all.
I look back at Cruz; he knows what I just heard.
He inches closer to me, watching me like I’m a skittish horse about to bolt.
But I have nowhere to go. If I leave their protection, whomever my papa hired will find me and drag me back home.
It’s a risk I’m not willing to take. The reality of what they have done might sting, but being forced to marry some new asshole is a fate worse than death.
Cruz’s hand lands on my arm softly, and I flinch back from him.
That doesn’t deter him, though. He presses his fingertips more firmly into my arm and hip on the other side, holding me in place as his eyes lock with mine.
They flash with something I don’t understand after what I just heard.
Concern maybe? “What did your brother say?”
I stare back at him, shaking my head, a strange sadness overwhelming me.
It’s silly but part of me thought there was something here between us.
I can’t talk, the words won’t come out of my mouth as flashes of the past week come back to me.
How it felt to have his lips on mine, to orgasm under Jagger’s directions, and to be taken care of by Asher.
I let them get close to me in a way I never intended for them to.
“Not now, Cruz,” I murmur as I drop my shoulder so I can slip out of his grip and move slowly through the room to the bathroom.
He doesn’t stop me. He must know what my brother told me.
I close the bathroom door with a deafening click, locking it behind me. My exhausted body slumps. I can’t deal with them right now. I need to be alone.
When my hands won’t stop trembling and the tears keep leaking from my eyes.
I strip off my clothes and turn the shower on to scorching.
When I step under the water, it burns my skin, but I don’t care.
My body crumples, suddenly exhausted, slipping down the tile wall until I hit the cold unyielding floor.
Pulling my knees into my chest, hugging myself, I let it all out.
Relief at knowing Valentine is dead. Pain from knowing I’m just a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder to my parents.
And overwhelming sadness and disappointment from knowing the boys I have been getting to know have only kept me here because my brother was paying them to.
I’m nothing but property to all of them.
This can’t be my life. I’m worth more, no matter what family I was born into.