12. Valentin
12
VALENTIN
Angelo swung his brass-covered knuckles into the stomach of our captive, and I admired the play of his muscles under his white dress shirt. It wouldn’t stay white for long, not while he was tearing his way through Marseilles in search of his angel .
“Where the fuck is she?” he growled.
Grégoire Tchérnov spit at the ground between Angelo’s feet. “How the fuck should I know? The last time I saw her was before she blew up my father’s fucking yacht. Good riddance.”
Angelo’s fury was swift and violent. Unable to take his frustrations out on the woman who’d started this goddamned war, he’d torn through the South of France, brutal and violent as he searched for the object of his obsession.
Watching Angelo unleash himself on this stupid Franco-Russian upstart was a beautiful sight—his salt-and-pepper hair disheveled from the violence, blood covering his knuckles, shoulders straining against the expensive fabric of his shirt.
Fucking luscious, even if beating the shit out of Grégoire was a risk. Daddy Boris wouldn’t like it, but Daddy Boris was already pissed at us.
“What did you do to her that was so bad she blew up your fucking boat when she left?”
Grégoire’s shrug infuriated my lover, and Angelo delighted me by striking the smarmy prick so hard in the face his neck snapped back.
“She’s a party girl,” Grégoire spat. “Presumably she got tired of partying with me and wanted to party with someone else.”
“She’s not a party girl,” Angelo sneered. “You kidnapped her.”
“She’s my fiancée, and she was happy to be there,” Grégoire snarled. Doubt wound through me. Were we wrong about what happened? Had Ana run away from her grandfather’s estate?
I grabbed Angelo’s fist before he could do any permanent damage. Ana had spent her entire life as a perfect mafia princess, doing Gio Costa’s bidding, bait for the disgusting men that orbited around a man who trafficked in women. And then the Russos murdered him in retaliation for kidnapping a child. Which, bon , but it left Angelo with a mess to clean up, including an heiress in desperate want of a firm hand.
Maybe she joined Grégoire on purpose. And that meant we shouldn’t beat the shit out of Boris Tchérnov’s kid, even if it brought us closer to finding Ana.
Angelo scrubbed his face, his sun-kissed skin and tattooed fingers contrasting with the silver in his hair, breathtaking even covered in bruises and cuts from our violent hunt for his niece. He flashed me the screen when his phone rang to show me Hammad’s name before stepping out of the borrowed interrogation room. They’d known each other since they were teenagers, united by their need for violence and their Moroccan heritage. If anyone could track down our wayward heiress, it was Angelo’s right-hand man.
I eyed Grégoire with askance. “ Imbécile ,” I muttered. “You had the fucking Costa heiress on your boat, and you didn’t think losing her would have consequences?”
The youth raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t that young—late twenties, same as Ana. “She thought she was too good to do her duty as my fiancée anyway. What the fuck do I care if the bitch is missing?”
Curiouser and curiouser. Ana had rebelled certainly—body modifications, shoplifting, getting her master’s degree instead of getting married and popping out obedient mafia babies—but she’d never been truly stupid before this.
I absently cuffed Grégoire across the back of the head. “Be respectful, or I’ll send you back in pieces.”
The kid snorted. “I think your boyfriend’s already made up his mind to do that.”
Angelo stormed back into the room before I could disagree. “They found her.”
“ Veinard d’espèce de merde, ” I murmured to Grégoire. Lucky piece of shit.
I followed Angelo out of the concrete room I used for interrogations when in Marseilles.
“She’s in Monaco,” he announced, just a short helicopter ride away.
“I’ll go,” I decided abruptly. She needed a firm hand and Angelo’s obsession made him too fucking unpredictable to deal with the Monégasque. He might grind her under his heel, but he’d go in guns blazing to get her out of there.
“No, we’re both going.”
I slammed my fist into his solar plexus, then knocked his feet out from under him as he tried to straighten back up. “The fuck you are. You might be salivating for a head-on confrontation, but opening a war on another front is a shit idea.”
Angelo stared at me, his stormy grey eyes furious under salt-and-pepper brows, and not for the first time, I cursed the hold that stupid girl had on him.
I’d make her pay for fucking up Angelo and pay for the millions of dollars of equipment and deals Tchérnov sent up in flames as retribution for her blowing up his yacht. And I’d have her on her fucking knees, begging for my cock, before I handed her off to someone else in marriage.
“I’ll bring her back safe and sound,” I promised, softening my voice so he wouldn’t hear the burning need for retribution that sizzled through my veins. “Wait for me.” I pressed my lips to his temple before donning my suit jacket. I smoothed my hands over my hair, as if the tight coils needed my touch to arrange them, then strode out of the room.
Julian Moreau met me at the VIP entrance to his casino, despite the early hour.
“I didn’t know,” he said as we shook hands, not even bothering with pleasantries.
I stared at him, as if not knowing was an excuse. I didn’t have any scruples about torturing women, but the only person who had a right to torture Angelo’s fucking angel was Angelo. And me, of course.
“She was running a con with a known criminal,” he continued when I didn’t respond. He walked me through the secluded hallways and then down an elevator that took us deep under the earth.
We walked through a maze of hallways that looked like any other basement for wealthy criminals—concrete, flickering fluorescent lights, steel doors that concealed rooms for torture, confinement, and worse.
My skin itched from being so deep underground, as if I hadn’t escaped the confinement of my youth, but I suppressed the discomfort I’d long since conquered. I’d had to in the military—my path to French citizenship after I was imprisoned as an undocumented immigrant running scams as a teenager.
Finally, we reached a door with bars over a window, and I peeked in. A blonde woman lay curled up on a messy bed, her knees drawn up to her face, and a blanket draped over her, covering all of her most interesting bits.
We must have made a sound because she looked up at the viewport, hate shining out of her brilliant green eyes, even though one of them was swollen and bruised, and a deep cut on her cheek bled. The fury that lashed through my veins and coiled deep in my gut shocked me. She didn’t deserve my sympathy, and she definitely didn’t deserve my anger on her behalf.
Ana leapt out of the bed, twirling the blanket as if to turn it into a whip, revealing the short, sequined dress she’d worn into the casino that night.
My eyes traced down long legs, and the bruises on her thighs sent fury sluicing through my veins like gasoline in search of a match. Non. She was a troublesome brat, and it didn’t matter how fucking gorgeous those legs may be—my job here was retrieval.
When Julian banged on the door and she flinched in fear, I’d had enough. I would take care of her, and then I would rip out the hearts of the men who’d hurt her. But first, I would punish her for eliciting these feelings in me, so she’d never know how tempting I found her. So Angelo would never know.
“Leave us,” I snarled as I strode in.
Ana’s eyes widened as she took me in, then narrowed again when she saw Julian behind me.
She raised her tightly coiled rope of blanket in front of her like a staff, as if it could shield her from what was to come.
“Leave us!”
The door slammed shut behind us.
“You!” I snapped, hating the way I wanted to gather her in my arms and check her wounds, hating how much I admired the lift of her chin despite her obvious fear, hating how every goddamned inch of her was built to appeal to sinners like me. She was temptation personified.
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused?” I ached to tame her, to show her how sweet obedience could be.
“Uncle Valentin,” she murmured, instantly changing into a seductive siren and looking up at me through long lashes, the smear of mascara under her eyes not doing a goddamned thing to diminish her allure. “Have you come to rescue me?”
I laughed shortly. “I should leave you in here to rot. You’re a mafia princess, and instead of protecting your family, you’re in goddamned Monaco running scams like a street rat?”
I didn’t mention that I’d been arrested for doing the same goddamned thing in Paris decades before, that I’d been where she was, scared and on the run from human traffickers, and desperate to pay my way. She didn’t deserve my sympathy. Not after the millions she would cost me to clean up this mess, to pay someone to take her off of Angelo’s hands and marry her, and to appease Boris Tchérnov for the humiliation of losing her.
Ana’s shrug was the match that set me aflame. I stalked toward her, determined to teach this connasse, this pute, a lesson. Ana had no power over me, and I itched to prove it to her before I brought her home to Angelo and handed him this dangerous, cunning woman, who I was certain would ruin the both of us.
“Valentin? Oncle? ” She eyed me warily, and her breath sped up as I approached her, towering over her, even in her heels. I snatched the blanket out of her hands, then wrapped my hands around her waist and threw her over my knee.
She needed discipline, and I intended to provide it.
“What the fuck?” Ana shouted.
I spanked her ass hard enough to jolt her into a moment’s shocked stillness, then drew my gun and shot the camera in the corner of the cell. This was my lesson to teach and savor, not the perverts who’d been watching her in her cell.
She fell silent at the sharp sound, trembling as she lay draped over my thighs, her too fucking short dress riding up and baring the sexy spot where her ass met the crease of her thighs.
“ Qu’est-ce vous faites? ” Ana whispered. Good fucking question. What the fuck was I doing? Operating on pure instinct, trusting my gut that the best way to handle this gorgeous, tempting woman was to establish utter control over her up front.
Her creamy thighs shook as she took shuddering breath after shuddering breath, calming herself, hiding her terror. Good girl. I shoved her dress up to her waist, and when I laid my palm on her lace-covered ass, admiring the way my fingers sunk into her flesh, she flinched. I ran a finger along the edge, enjoying the way gooseflesh followed the path of my touch.
My eyes caught on the bruises that spotted her thighs, inside and out, and fury at whomever had touched her raked through me before I could quash the dangerous mix of jealousy and rage churning in my gut. I pressed my lips together, considering whether my instincts were leading me astray.
No.
Ana needed structure and discipline. She begged for it with every fiber of her being. And the pain I could inflict while giving her what she needed? I needed it with every fiber of my being. Conveniently, I ignored the fine line between my sadism and the abuse so many other men had inflicted upon her.
“You’ve been a very bad girl, Ana,” I said. “And you’re costing me a fucking fortune.”
“Boo fucking hoo,” she snapped and tried to roll off of me. I slammed my leg down over hers, trapping her between my thighs.
I knew she could feel my cock hardening as she struggled to free herself, as the softness of her body brushed against me.
“Enough!” I roared. “You’re an undisciplined brat. You started a goddamned war with the bratva! Your uncle has been worried sick for weeks!”
“And you’re hard,” Ana snapped.
I laughed as I stroked my fingers over the curves of her ass, noting when she trembled, when her muscles clenched in anticipation as I approached the apex of her thighs. God, she was beautiful.
“I’m a sadist, princess. And I’m about to inflict pain on you. Fuck yes, I’m hard. Count to twenty.”
Twenty was the warm-up, but she didn’t need to know that. I brought the flat of my palm down over her succulent curves, and she let out the most adorable squeak.
“What are you doing?”
“Spanking you like the child you are. Fucking count, princess.”
I spanked her again, watching the jiggle of her skin with delight. Lust the likes of which I hadn’t felt in a long time shot through me with startling intensity. Fuck, this was so wrong. She was vulnerable. And more importantly, she was Angelo’s. We’d shared playmates before, but Ana? Ana was special to him.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” she yelled, breaking me out of my reverie.
I smacked the sensitive spot where her curves met her thigh, and she yowled in pain. “What the hell?”
“Count!”
“Fuck you!”
I spanked her again, and she tried to kick out at me, but couldn’t get the leverage to dislodge herself. Ana wasn’t tiny, but I was a foot taller than her, and a good fifty kilos heavier.
“I said count, you bitch.”
Ana panicked, losing rationality as she kicked and screamed. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.
I wrapped the fingers of my left hand around her throat, squeezing gently enough that I wouldn’t truly cut off her air supply. “Ana,” I murmured. “Ana!” I repeated more sharply when I didn’t get her attention the first time.
She trembled, her terror deeper than what a simple spanking should bring. Awareness shot through me, followed by blind fury. I’d kill the fuckers that scared her, that hurt her so badly she couldn’t sink into the bliss of the agony I forced on her. But first, I needed Ana to calm the fuck down.
“Breathe, princess,” I said, releasing her neck and moving my hands to stroke her hair and her back, soothing her. She shook beneath me. “Keep breathing.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked over her shoulder, once she’d gotten control of herself again.
“Because you’re a spoiled brat who’s been handed everything on a fucking silver platter, and you threw it all away so you could run small cons in fucking Monaco,” I said, ignoring the wrath her terror had ignited in me and my own hypocrisy.
My hand scraped against a bit of uneven skin on the back of her thigh. I looked closer. It was a round burn scar, about the size of a cigarette. There were more—a few that were larger, the size of cigars, and cuts, old injuries that had nothing to do with whatever indignities she’d suffered over the last month.
I stroked my fingers higher, my touch turning sensual as I fought to control the irrational rage that filled me at the thought of anyone else hurting her. After all, I would hurt her too.
My pants grew tighter at the thought.
“I’m going to spank you, princess, the way a spoiled brat like you deserves, then you’re going to apologize for being such a brat, and then we’re going to walk out of here together.”
She took a deep breath, and then another, but didn’t struggle against me.
I cracked my palm against her ass again.
“One,” she whispered, her shoulders slumping. By the time I reached twenty, Ana’s ass was cherry red and hot to the touch, but she allowed me to spank her without complaint. I palmed her ass again, soothing the pain by gently rubbing her skin, and she arched up into me, pressing her curves into my hand.
“Are we done now?” she asked, stilling, as if she’d realized what she’d revealed by her movements. Was Angelo’s brat a masochist? Did she like the pain of this punishment?
We’d find out in a minute. “Princess, that was the warm-up.”
Ana jerked away from me, her struggle only pressing her stomach harder into my cock.
“Someone! Help! Let me go! Please!”
Her cries went unheeded. If Julian was listening, he was smart enough to ignore her pleas for help.
“We’re going to do twenty more, princess.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
Because I want to. “You fucking owe me, Ana. You started a war when you blew up that yacht, and I’m going to take the price of winning it out of your hide.”