14. Angelo
14
ANGELO
Valentin opened the door to the apartment, then stepped aside. Ana stood beside him, bruised, bloody, her vibrant blonde hair greasy and messy, but standing tall, her chin tilted up in defiance.
My shoulders slumped in relief. He’d texted me before flying back to Nice from Monaco, but I hadn’t believed him, couldn’t, until I’d seen her with my own eyes.
She wore his suit jacket, drowning in it. Unreasonable jealousy clutched at my heart, only to be replaced with rage that she’d spent the last several weeks in hiding after escaping from Tchérnov.
Fuck.
I didn’t have any right to this girl. I didn’t when I fell in love with her ten years ago, and I sure as fuck didn’t now.
I wanted to, though. I wanted to wrap those bee-stung lips around my cock, to bend her over and plow into her until she screamed my name. I wanted to flip her onto the couch and devour her sweet cunt until she couldn’t do anything but moan my name and beg for more. I wanted her on her knees before me, looking up at me with her eyes soft and sweet, waiting for my next command.
My cock hardened as Valentin nudged her into the apartment with a touch to the small of her back, and ten years of self-loathing collided with lust. She stood in front of him, trembling, vulnerable, spitting with fury, absolutely fucking gorgeous.
“ Now ,” Valentin snapped at her.
She shook her head.
“Ana!” Valentin’s voice cracked through the room in a rare show of temper. He had little patience for rebellion, and our angel was a brat from her head to her toes.
Achingly slowly, Ana dropped to her hands and knees. One slow, ashamed movement at a time, she made her way over to me.
“Ana?” I asked, not believing my eyes.
Valentin’s gaze met mine. “ Je t’aime ,” he mouthed. He was giving me a gift—my obsession, on her knees before me, more beautiful than I’d ever seen her, raw and untamed, begging for someone to take control.
Ana reached me, her perfect fucking tits hanging in front of her, nipples hard and pointed, visible through the gaping neckline of her dress. Her eyes flashed with fury, but she obeyed Valentin.
“ Ana ,” Valentin growled as my cock hardened at the sight before me. Desire and nausea churned together in my gut. I wanted her, despite how forbidden she was. My dead brother’s daughter .
“I’m sorry, Uncle Angelo. I’m sorry you were worried about me. I’m sorry I didn’t check in.” She looked up at me, and her face contorted with fury. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was running away from a rapist, and I was scared you’d send me back.” She scrambled to her feet, shaking with emotion as she glared at Valentin and me. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you because when you finally did find me, this asshole turned me over his goddamned knee and spanked me. Oh wait. I’m not fucking sorry at all.”
Ana shook with fury as she hollered at me for finding her and getting her out of that casino before they could change their minds and do who the fuck knows what to her in exchange for helping a known criminal fleece them.
My eyes jerked to Valentin’s, who’d fixed his gaze on her, his jaw ticking with fury.
Grégoire Tchérnov raped my angel. I sent her off to my father’s without a second thought, smug in the superiority of his control over his lands, and that asshole ripped her away from a home that was supposed to be safe and did his worst.
Instead of protecting her after that fucker murdered her father, I’d sent her straight into the arms of a rapist. Guilt wracked me.
Incandescent fury sluiced through my veins. The chorus in my head that screamed for more, for damage, for murder, swelled until it overwhelmed the pounding of my heart.
My hands shook.
My breathing turned short and choppy.
I raised my fist.
Ana flinched, and even my guilt at her terror couldn’t stop me from punching my hand through the wooden table beside her over and over again until it lay in splinters on the floor. She stood there, silent and brave, not moving a muscle, barely even breathing, as I destroyed the table.
The pain in my hand did nothing to calm my rage, but Ana’s face, utterly blank, as if showing any reaction would provoke me to inflict the same damage on her, brought me abruptly back to earth, silencing the urge to inflict pain on the universe, even if it was for hurting us.
“Ana,” I rasped as I surveyed the damage, horrified at my loss of control.
Valentin hadn’t moved from where he stood on the other side of the room, but his muscles were tense, ready to spring into action and stop me.
My gaze swung back to hers and met her gorgeous green eyes with a calm stare. Her expression hardened, her fear disappearing so quickly I wondered if I’d imagined it, and for the first time in my life, the need to protect overwhelmed the murderous undercurrent that coursed through my veins.
I’d keep my angel safe if it was the last thing I did. Sending her away had been the worst mistake I’d ever made. I wouldn’t make it again.
“You’re safe,” I rasped, and her eyes flicked to mine with surprise. I stepped close and raised my hand to stroke her hair out of her face, only for her to jerk her face away from me.
That wouldn’t do.
My mind raced, searching for solutions. She was the only living Costa woman, heir to a mafia empire, in twice as much danger because that empire was in decline, begging for a man strong enough to seize it and make it his own. To seize her so he could.
She was bruised and bloody from her ordeal. She was used to men hitting her—her own father abused her. And Valentin had spanked her.
I needed to think, and I needed to do it when her presence wasn’t overwhelming my senses, stirring my cock and making me want to do anything but treat her with the reverence my angel deserved.
“If I send you to your room, are you going to run?” I asked her quietly, admiring the way her chest heaved as she caught her breath.
“Yes,” she answered defiantly, a flash of spirit returning to her eyes, making me hard all over again. “I’m fucking done. Done with the mafia. Done with men telling me what to do. Fucking done .”
I could worship her later. And I would. First, we needed to make sure she wasn’t going to get into any more trouble while we figured out how we were going to keep her safe. And how I was going to get my hands on Grégoire Tchérnov so I could slowly choke the life out of him for what he did to Ana.
“Lock her in her room,” I told Valentin, hoping my callousness would hide the husky need in my voice, praying her eyes didn’t flick to my cock, hot and hard against my thigh.
“Keep your fucking hands off of me,” she snapped as Valentin approached her.
He laughed, his deep brown eyes crinkling with genuine amusement as he backed her up against the door, his size as overbearing as it was breathtaking. “Princess, I’ve already had my hands all over you. And there’s nothing special about you.” Valentin caged her against the door, his hands beside her ears. “Do you want to do this the easy way, or the hard way?”
A bark of laughter exploded out of me. “Has Ana ever done anything the easy way in her entire life?”
Valentin’s shoulders relaxed, as if he’d been waiting for my approval of the way he treated her. He didn’t need it, but he already had it. I trusted him completely, even if I had to suppress my fury that he’d spanked her and my envy that he’d seen the perfect curves of her ass before I had.
He lowered his lips to her ear. “Angelo knows what I like. And he told me to lock you up.”
Valentin took her wrists in his hands and raised them above her, then held them there with his left hand. My cock hardened further, impossibly, when he wrapped the long fingers of his right hand around her throat, not squeezing, just letting her know he could if he wanted.
My lover and my obsession, their bodies locked together, tore through my imagination. Cazzo . This was a bad idea. And I had no desire to stop it.
“Now, are you coming to your room?” he asked her.
The fight should have gone out of her. Instead, she brought her knee up to Valentin’s groin, only stopped from doing damage by the sudden press of his pelvis against hers, shoving her tightly against the door.
I gave up pretending I didn’t give a fuck and adjusted my cock as I watched them. This would end in disaster, but until then, it was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.
He exhaled sharply, then stroked his thumb along her neck. “Are you scared of me, princess?”
She pressed her lips together in a grim line, then looked at me, as if I would save her.
Valentin laughed softly, pressing his fingers along the sides of her neck to limit her air supply. “You’re a fool, Ana. I only want to hurt you. Angelo wants your complete and utter submission.”
My stomach dropped as I understood why he’d brought her here, why he’d made her crawl to me. I needed complete submission, total power over my toys. Valentin couldn’t give me that, but?—
I traced my eyes over the scene before me, a beautiful woman, bruised and broken, proud and furious, shoved up against the door by my lover. He was giving me her as a gift, but did he realize how badly he wanted her too?
I met her eyes, then adjusted myself again with no subtlety whatsoever, accepting that I was a sick bastard who was finally getting everything he wanted in this life. I didn’t want to put a stop to this. “What’ll it be, Ana?”
“Fuck you,” she spat. “Fuck you both.”
Valentin’s lips twitched, as if he were about to smile, and then he squeezed her throat until she couldn’t breathe, held her gaze as she struggled for oxygen, then caught her once she collapsed, unconscious, into his arms.
Valentin slumped onto the couch beside me, the harsh lines of his face softening with exhaustion. He hadn’t slept yet. Neither had I.
“I murdered three men in Monaco for laying their hands on her.”
As well he fucking should have. Rage so intense my hands trembled swept through me at the idea of anyone laying hands on her, followed by surprise.
“Murdered?”
“Hammad will handle the cleanup,” he said as he ran his hand over his scalp.
“Does Hammad know that?” I asked. Hammad fucking hated it when we left messes for him.
“They fucking beat her, and she was trying so hard to be strong in front of me, and I—” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “ Bon dieu , j’sais pas .”
Valentin left wet work behind him when he left the French military, long before he met me. And yet, he hadn’t hesitated to punish the men who’d hurt my Ana.
“Three,” he muttered. “Three men laid their hands on your angel.” His knee knocked against mine as he shifted on the sofa, rotating his broad shoulders to work the kinks out.
“Three men and you,” I said, unable to hide the confused mix of anger and hurt in my tone.
Valentin looked at me with sad eyes. “ Ouais. Et moi. ” Yeah, and me. “And Grégoire Tchérnov before that.”
“He’s a dead man.”
To my surprise, Valentin nodded before moving the conversation on. “She needs discipline.”
“You don’t like brat taming,” I answered. I’d back Valentin up in front of her—he was my partner—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed about him spanking her. Ana wasn’t one of his play partners.
When Valentin didn’t say anything, I looked at him. A vein in his forehead throbbed as he clenched his jaw.
“Valentin?”
“She’s a masochist.”
The oxygen left the room in a whoosh and left me reeling. He wanted her too. He wanted to hurt her. And he thought she wanted it too. Even if she didn’t know it yet.
And he’d killed for her.
“No,” I growled.
“We can’t take her back to Yorkfield like this,” he continued, as I reeled from his revelations. “Now that she’s succeeded in running once, she’ll do it again and again and again. She’s the key to controlling Gio’s empire.”
“That’s why Boris wants the marriage.”
“She needs discipline and boundaries,” he went on. “And punishment. Regardless of what Boris wants, she’s cost me millions.”
“She’s a twenty-six-year-old woman, not a child,” I answered, even though my mind was flying at the thought of my angel on her knees beside me, my fingers tangled in her hair as she nuzzled her face against my thigh. The thought was as appealing as her lips wrapped around my cock as tears streamed down her face while I bruised the back of her throat. Or spoiling her rotten like I’d wanted to do since she was sixteen and I fell in love with my brother’s daughter.
“That’s right,” Valentin continued. “She’s not a child anymore, and she hasn’t been for a long time. We can teach her, train her— tame her—break her spirit so when we do finally marry her off, she doesn’t run.”
I’d flown to Yorkfield when the Russos had murdered my brother in cold blood. Ana had been as breathtaking then as she’d been ten years before. Ten long years of avoiding her, of self-loathing. I might be a monster, but I sure as fuck wasn’t going to act on it. I hadn’t when she was sixteen, and I hadn’t since.
But now, Valentin was beside me, his breath warm in my ear, telling me I could. Telling me I should . Telling me he could hurt her, and I could have her on her knees looking up at me with sweet submission in her eyes.
Grégoire raped her. Ana deserved sweetness, not pain.
“Angelo,” Valentin rasped. What if Ana could give him what he needed too? Cazzo. We were bad men.
“What are you thinking?”