29. Ana
29
ANA
I couldn’t stop grinning as I sat in the train station’s café, drinking terrible French coffee, watching tourists and locals make their way to their platforms, lost in their own safe, legal, free worlds while I waited for my train to arrive.
My newly brown hair and sunglasses hid my face, and in my voluminous pants, covered in paint stains, I didn’t look anything like a spoiled mafia princess.
The old-fashioned schedule, high above our heads, rattled as trains arrived and departed, announcing which platform led to which city.
I had enough euros in my pocket to get me to Paris, and then I’d figure out next steps from there. Eastern Europe, maybe. Not bad for someone who’d never had a job in her life, and didn’t even have her own bank accounts, I thought smugly to myself. I’d learned a lot during my three weeks of freedom, and I was determined not to make the same mistakes again.
I wouldn’t get caught.
I couldn’t.
My backpack was lighter than I liked. I’d need to pick up another set of clothes, perhaps sell one of the ungodly expensive watches I’d swiped from my captors, but it felt like freedom when I hiked it higher on my back and made my way through the crowd to my train.
The bruises and welts Valentin left on my body felt well earned, as if I were stronger for having suffered them.
And I was.
The heat that suffused me when I thought about his hands on me, pinching, hurting, followed by Angelo’s soft caresses… No, I’d learned something about myself and what I liked, and that was it. There was nothing wrong with a little masochism, nothing wrong with wanting to sink into their touch and let them sweep my cares away. But they wanted more than that. They wanted everything.
And I wouldn’t give it to them.
A feral smile crept over my face. All it took was one night of submission, one night to fool those assholes into thinking I wanted to be their pet, and now I was going to get away forever. Unlike the last time, I’d stay off the radar and lay low for as long as I could.
Just because I’d never had a job didn’t mean I’d never worked hard. I had a fucking master’s degree. I’d smoothed the way for my father’s deals my entire life, even if he’d never acknowledged what an asset I was. I’d find something, and when the furor over my disappearance died down, I’d disappear for real.
Surrounded by crowds speaking a dozen languages, freedom beckoned. Once I climbed aboard that train, I’d disappear.
A shiver ran up my spine, bringing an abrupt end to my euphoria. My entire life, I’d trusted my instincts, and right now, mine screamed to run. Shit. My eyes darted around the station, seeking the danger as the brakes of the arriving train squealed, overpowering the sounds of the rest of the station.
Three men in suits were casually, too casually, walking toward me from the empty end of the other platform. Their eyes scanned the crowd. I shook my head, letting my hair fall over my face, and shoved my sunglasses back on to cover my eyes. Without looking at them again, I turned away and walked back in the direction of the platform entrance, cursing the expense of the ticket I’d have to abandon.
A gunshot rang out behind me. Abandoning any pretense of blending in with the crowd, I took off at a dead run, the screams of the other passengers ringing out as we all scrambled to get out.
Stupid. A gunfight in a public venue like this would attract exactly the sorts of attention all of us spent our lives trying to avoid. The authorities would scan the video footage, make arrests, hold press conferences about rooting out the scourge of organized crime in their city, and put the screws on the same gangsters who’d been bribing them for decades to look the other way.
Not my problem. I needed to get the fuck out of here and find another way out of the city.
I moved with the crowd, their panic driving us toward the exits. Men in suits surrounded them, but they weren’t stopping the stream of casual passengers. Would my hair and sunglasses be enough of a disguise?
Please.
Please, Lord.
I prayed for the first time in a long time, making all sorts of foolish promises in exchange for my freedom.
I was wrenched backward and out of the panicked stream of passengers by my backpack. Fuck! No! Fear slid through my veins. I slipped my arms out of the straps and kept moving, only to slam into a body built like a brick wall.
“ Princesse ,” Valentin murmured, wrapping his arms around me and surrounding me with his sandalwood scent. I tried to slam my foot into his instep, but Angelo pressed into my back.
“Let me go,” I begged. “Please.” They wouldn’t. I knew they wouldn’t. Promises of retribution and punishment glinted in the fury of Valentin’s gaze.
“Stupid fucking child,” he said. “Tchérnov’s men almost caught you. They still might. if we can’t get you the fuck out of here.”
I shook my head wildly. “Please. Let me go. I can’t. You can’t.” I was incoherent with rage and terror as I watched my freedom slip through my fingers again. I didn’t want to be their toy. I didn’t want a future on my knees sucking their cocks. I just wanted to be left alone.
Valentin raised a syringe, and I screamed, “No!” loudly enough to catch the eye of the crowd as I fought wildly in his grip. “Please,” I begged, terror making me wild as I thrashed against him. “Don’t drug me.”
Memories of the yacht overcame me, paralyzed on the bed as Grégoire used me, out of my mind as I danced on the deck, utterly out of control and unable to prevent the cocktail of drugs that he sent careening through my system to fog my mind.
“We don’t have time to argue. We need to get you into the car before Tchérnov’s men open fire again.”
“Please,” I begged, yanking on their arms, my eyes never leaving that stupid syringe that terrified me even more than captivity, more than the Russians. If they drugged me, they could do anything to me, and I’d never know.
“Angel,” Angelo murmured in my ear as the two men maneuvered me out of the crowd and toward another exit. “We have to leave now. I am not going to let you put yourself in danger by allowing you to turn into a hellcat on the plane because you’re scared.”
Valentin raised the syringe again. “We’ll knock you out, and when you wake up, we’ll be in Yorkfield.”
“ Please ,” I begged, my voice ragged. Fear slowed my movements and fogged my mind, until I sagged in his arms, shaking in terror. They were going to drug me, and I couldn’t stop them. It’d be like the yacht again, except that Valentin and Angelo were far more clever than Grégoire. They’d made me want them, and now they were betraying me. Stupid, stupid Ana.
Valentin ripped the sunglasses off of my face so he could look at me, his brow furrowed.
He shoved a door open with his back, and we stepped out of the station into the sunlight. Men in suits waited for us. Always suits. Always so fucking obvious that we were in the mob. They formed a protective phalanx with us in the middle, surrounded by soldiers twice my size—all a foot taller than me and heavily muscled.
“I’ll do—” A tear slipped down my face as my freedom slipped away from me. “I’ll do anything. Please don’t drug me.”
Valentin stared down at me, his expression unreadable, the summer sun beating down on us.
“I’ll behave, I promise,” I rasped, fear turning my voice hoarse, unable to take my eyes from the needle in his hand.
“You’ll do better than behave,” Valentin growled. “When we get off the plane in Yorkfield, you’ll convince anyone who sees us that you’re with us by choice.”
I nodded in time with my frantically beating heart. “I will. I promise.”
“ Jesu , we should have threatened you with drugs a week ago.” My eyes shot to his, horrified, but he’d already moved aside. An enormous black SUV pulled up, and one of his soldiers opened the door for me. Men poured into the convoy, filling the vehicles ahead and behind us.
“Better than carrying her on the plane over your shoulder,” Angelo murmured, kissing the top of my head, before pushing it down so I wouldn’t hit it on the doorframe.
Valentin and Angelo sat on either side of me as Valentin shouted at the driver.
“ Allez! Vas-y! Démare! ” Go go go!
Before I realized their intentions, my hands and my feet were cuffed together.
“Stupid fucking girl,” Valentin swore. “Tchérnov has been tearing the country apart looking for you. This morning, Angelo murdered one of the assholes who was there on the yacht while Grégoire raped you. And instead of waiting in the apartment like a good girl, you ran off.”
All I caught was that Angelo had killed one of the men who’d raped me. “Who?” I asked, staring into his stormy grey eyes.
“Dario Fontana.”
Satisfaction swelled in my chest.
“And you’re going to pay for that too, angel.”
Valentin’s private plane hammered home the difference between a billionaire and a family like mine, who was rich in contacts but cash-poor and trying desperately to pretend otherwise.
Angelo deposited me in a wide leather seat, neglecting to unbind my wrists and my ankles.
I struggled in my bondage, and all it did was turn his eyes dark with desire as he buckled me in.
“Angel,” he rasped. “Sit still.”
I did, and to my surprise, he kissed my forehead before standing up.
“You’re in so much trouble, little girl,” he murmured as he straightened. “I can’t wait to see you squirm.”
Valentin dropped into the seat across from me and strapped himself in.
“Would you please uncuff me?” I asked, embarrassed at how weak my voice was. As the adrenaline from my escape wore off, exhaustion ripped through me, leaving only resignation to my fate in its wake. “Sir,” I added ruefully.
Valentin scoffed as Angelo took a seat beside me, facing him. “Do you think you deserve your freedom?”
“That’s a pretty existential question,” I snarked. He raised a black eyebrow, and I flushed. “ Ma?tre .”
Valentin held up his fingers and ticked them down one by one. “You blew up a Russo-Franco bratva’s yacht, causing a hundred million euros of damage.”
True.
“You were engaged to that man’s son?—”
“Not my choice, not my fault,” I snapped back.
Angelo tilted his head and grinned before dragging my face to his and planting a wet kiss on my forehead. “True.”
Valentin cut a furious look at his lover, but I couldn’t stop smiling. “You distracted Angelo from consolidating power in Yorkfield after his brother died.”
“You mean after my father was murdered , ma?tre? ” I responded, unable to keep my fucking mouth shut.
Valentin’s cruel amusement made me feel three inches tall. “Don’t pretend you mourned that man for a minute.”
I hadn’t. But he was still my father.
Valentin held two fingers up and continued to count down. “You put yourself in danger when you ran—the bratva almost caught you at that train station. And the bounty on your head means others will be looking for you too.”
He was right.
So fucking right.
I felt so fucking small, so fucking stupid .
“And most importantly,” Valentin said, leaning forward in his chair, “you broke the rules.”
I flushed, then instantly hated myself for flushing.
The appearance of a flight attendant in a neat navy-blue suit saved me from embarrassing myself with a response that would only earn me more punishment.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” she breathed at Valentin, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. He’d fucked her. I ruthlessly squashed the tightness in my chest when she squeezed his shoulder in greeting, and her skirt rode up the backs of her thighs when she bent over to talk to him, giving Angelo an eyeful of her stocking-clad legs. It was her uniform, and she was doing her job, I told myself, as I refused to look over at Angelo and see where his gaze wandered.
“Whiskey, one ice cube,” he said to her, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard before.
“Yes, sir,” she said and stood before turning to Angelo and bending over to take his order, allowing Valentin to enjoy the same view that Angelo and I had moments before. The neckline of her white shirt revealed the lacy top of her bra as she looked at Angelo with blatant want.
“The same, but neat,” he said. I kept my eyes straight ahead, staring at the ceiling above Valentin to pretend that I wasn’t utterly humiliated by the fact that she wanted to fuck both men, and that Valentin, at minimum, had fucked her before. Did she know what he liked? Did she like that too?
My breathing sped up as their pretty words about being their toy flashed through my mind, reminding me what they thought of me. Useless for anything but hurting and fucking. Disposable.
“Princess?” Valentin asked, noticing my distress.
I shook my head, unwilling to show weakness in front of this stranger. She pretended to ignore me, but her eyes flicked over my bound hands and feet, my disheveled appearance, and the inexpensive clothes I wore before she dismissed me.
I wasn’t competition. I didn’t want to be, I reminded myself. It didn’t matter that she was stunning, perfectly made up, not a hair out of place, and I wore old worn clothes, with a poor dye job turning my hair a flat brown, and looked like I belonged wedged into the cheapest economy seats. It didn’t matter because I was not competition—I would not compete—for these men’s attention.
“And your … guest?” she asked finally, pressing her lips together, as if my presence were an offense to her sensibilities.
“I’d like champagne,” I said, lifting my chin, grateful my bound hands hid their trembling as I tried to hold myself together, irrationally hurt by the entire exchange. A lifetime of training kicked in, and I shoved the humiliation deep into my soul, where it couldn’t make me shrink into myself and hide, like I desperately wanted to.
The flight attendant looked to Valentin for approval, and indignation grew in my chest. He nodded, and the woman disappeared into the galley without further acknowledging my presence.
“Princess?”
I wouldn’t meet his eyes. He could fuck whomever he wanted. It didn’t affect me. It wouldn’t hurt me. It was further proof that I needed to get out of here as quickly as I could.
In a flash, Valentin had released his seatbelt so he could loom over me with his hands on the armrests on either side. I breathed in his spicy scent and hated how much it comforted me.
“Princess, what’s wrong?”
Oh. He thought I was having a panic attack. No, I was hyperventilating because these assholes had reminded me once again how little value I had to them. Idiot that I was, I kept forgetting.
Valentin slid his fingers around my neck, pressing his palm against the front of my throat. “Take a deep breath, princess.”
“I’m not having a panic attack,” I snapped, fighting to be angry rather than hurt.
He adjusted his grip, so his fingers pressed on the sides of my throat, gently constricting my airway. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said sullenly, “ ma?tre .” Fucking nothing was wrong. I wasn’t jealous. I wasn’t resentful. I didn’t want their eyes on me and only me. I wasn’t desperate for some sign that I loomed as large in their lives as they loomed in mine.
“Ana,” Valentin said, and my eyes snapped to his with surprise. He never used my name. “What’s wrong?”
“ Nothing .” Hot tears pressed at my eyes as exhaustion wore down my determination to maintain my hauteur.
“First rule?”
I shook my head and met his gaze, pleading with him not to make me say it, not to make me admit the confusion swirling in my brain, that my hatred of them was spiked with jealousy and a desperate need for comfort that I wasn’t yet ready to confront.
He slipped a knife out of a pocket and knelt before me. He sliced through the cable tie binding my feet together, then, one by one, lifted my feet to his knee and inspected my ankles, frowning at the red lines that marred my skin. “Better?” he asked.
I shrugged, not interested in admitting that the skin-to-skin contact comforted me.
“Toy,” he snapped.
I took a shuddering breath, and then another, and then another, maintaining eye contact the entire time, as shocked by the intensity of his attention as I was by my daring.
His eyes widened slightly. “You’re jealous,” he breathed.
I flushed, unable to contain my humiliation. Now they knew, and they would use it against me.
Angelo’s attention snapped to me, but I didn’t take my eyes from Valentin’s, terrified that he would twist the knife in the wound of my humiliation. I didn’t have the right to be jealous—they’d made my position in their household perfectly clear.
Valentin’s expression softened as we stared at one another, his thumbs stroking over the tops of my bare feet. “Princess,” he murmured, but didn’t finish his thought, as if he didn’t know what to say. That made two of us.
The flight attendant returned with three glasses on a tray. She hovered uncertainly, visibly surprised by Valentin’s position at my feet.
He bowed his head to plant a soft kiss on each of my knees before standing gracefully to take his seat across from me. She placed his whiskey beside him, brushing her fingers over his suit jacket as she stood.
Valentin’s eyes never left my face, even when I looked at the walls above his head, unable to watch the flight attendant flirt with him. I reminded myself that she couldn’t know who I was, didn’t know our relationship, and none of that shit was any of her business anyway.
She served Angelo, then stood in the center of our aisle. “Where should I put her drink, sir?” she asked Valentin.
I exhaled a frustrated huff. In response, Valentin’s full lips tilted up in a half smile, and he tilted his head. “Toy, you should have said something.”
I lifted my chin. “Oh?” I asked, communicating my frustration and disgust in one simple syllable.
“Ask her where she’d like her glass,” he instructed the flight attendant. The tightness in my chest eased as he forced her to acknowledge me. She turned toward me, slowly, like she was surprised that I might have a say in the matter.
“Between Angelo and me,” I answered firmly, straightening in my seat. I was Ana fucking Costa, after all.
“Mr. Costa?” The correction slipped out of her as if by instinct.
“Between Angelo and me,” I repeated, emphasizing his name and lifting my chin. She might not have the right to use his name, but I sure as fuck did.
Her eyes flicked down to my bound hands. “Are you sure?”
“She’s sure,” Angelo interjected before I could respond.
“Yes, Mr. Costa, sir,” she said, setting a napkin between us, and my glass beside his whiskey.
“Yes, Ms. Costa,” Valentin corrected her, jerking his chin toward me. “Did you not recognize Ana Costa, or did you think she didn’t deserve your respect?”
My heart stopped with an abrupt thud and my eyes filled with grateful tears.
The flight attendant looked between Angelo and me, confusion evident in her warm brown eyes. I waited, confident in my ability to project calm authority in any situation.
“My apologies, Ms. Costa. Please let me know if you need anything else,” she murmured.
I inclined my head, determined to be gracious. She didn’t know these men had shoved their cocks in my mouth. She didn’t know they’d tied me up and alternated pain with pleasure until I screamed. She didn’t know?—
I didn’t know if they were off the market either, and I hated that.
The plane roared to life, then quieted as it began to taxi.
“Fire her. We’re the only ones allowed to disrespect our slut,” Angelo growled as he lifted my glass. “Look at me, angel.”
I shifted in my seat, and he tilted the glass toward my face. The sweet champagne slid down my throat, bubbles exploding on my tongue.
A drop slipped past my lips and down my throat. Angelo bent forward to lick it up, and my traitorous body leaned into his touch.
“Delicious,” he murmured against my skin, and I couldn’t stop the soft sigh that escaped me.
He continued to serve me the champagne in small sips, lapping up the drops that slid down my skin, leaving me aching and wanting.
Valentin watched us through hooded eyes, his hard-on visible through his pants.
I finished just in time for takeoff, turning away from the men and closing my eyes to avoid the intensity of their stares.
Angelo reached over and tangled his fingers in mine, holding on to me, comforting me. “We have a change of clothes for you,” he murmured as he dozed off. “Can’t have my future wife showing up in Yorkfield looking like a transient beggar.”
Wait.
What?