36. Ana
36
ANA
Tired and in desperate need of a break, I combed through my memory for a list of men and women who might have been working the night my home burned down. What the fuck was Angelo thinking? He hadn’t called my father’s consigliere or the goddamned bookkeepers.
“Angelo,” I said, “sir, why didn’t you?—?”
“Because I had to find you,” he snarled, his frustration apparent. “I didn’t even fly to Sicily for Gio’s funeral. And then you fucking disappeared and?—”
He stopped and visibly collected himself. I stared at him, my eyes wide and heart light. No. It shouldn’t make me feel like the most precious object in the goddamned world to know that Angelo abandoned everything to come find me.
But it did.
Ruthlessly, I shoved those feelings into the dark well where they belonged. Kidnapper. Stalker. Torturer. Daddy.
My mind skittered away from the word. What the fuck, Ana?
We sat at the dining table in Valentin’s apartment, papers scattered across the wooden surface while I scribbled lists of names and relationships.
“These are the people I’m certain would have been on the compound when Tchérnov hit it,” I said, shoving a piece of paper at Angelo. “I don’t know which soldiers would have been working—they rotated on a shift schedule.”
Angelo waited with one eyebrow raised.
“Sir,” I added. My lips twisted into a wry smile. Fundamentally, our relationship hadn’t changed. I was still their toy, their slave, but at least now I was useful. At least now I was doing something to help my family.
Angelo is family , a voice whispered in the back of my head.
Fuck you, and fuck him too , I whispered back. This is for me.
“My father’s enforcer should have given you all of this information,” I said. Enzo Accardi was an asshole, but he was a loyal one.
“He disappeared, remember?” Angelo snarked.
My eyebrows snapped up. Jesus Christ, Angelo really had lost control of the territory and the family.
“You had three weeks to get my fathers’ territory under control while I was gone.”
“Three weeks when I thought I had months .”
Angelo had access to my father’s legal businesses and their records, including the payroll software that paid out the strippers at his clubs. But the informal businesses? The soldiers we paid in cash every week to keep our family safe—the cousins and sons and brothers of my father’s capos?
Fuck.
“What about my father’s accountant?”
“Disappeared the day your father was killed.”
Fuck.
“What the fuck have you been doing for the last two weeks?”
Valentin’s pocket whip cracked across my left nipple, and I screamed with surprise at the agony.
“We’ve been training you, toy,” he said, dropping into the chair beside me. “And untangling this mess. Speak respectfully or don’t speak at all.”
The audacity of these two fuckers took my breath away. They thought they could parachute in from Europe, with their billion-euro business and their Sicilian mafia and hold onto my family’s territory without having to fucking work for it.
“You know, I have a master’s in finance,” I reminded them. “I could help.”
Valentin scoffed.
“Fine.” I pushed back from the table before dropping to my hands and knees and crawling under it, seething with resentment and hoping this would make my point, rather than cement my place in this household as nothing more than a plaything. I shoved my way between Valentin’s thighs, then reached up to unbuckle his belt.
“Ana,” he growled, and need pulsed between my legs, my traitorous pussy eager for the punishment that would follow this defiance.
I ignored him, freeing his cock from the confines of his slacks, and stroking my fingers up the hot, velvety length.
“Toy,” he warned. “Enough.”
When I took the tip of his cock between my lips, inhaling his salty, musky scent, he jerked back.
“Get out from under there,” Valentin snapped. Once again, I ignored him. His cock twitched in the air, the top glistening with my spit and precum. I moved forward and wrapped my fingers around him, gripping firmly, and took him deep into my throat. “Toy,” Valentin groaned, but stopped trying to escape me.
A hand gripped my hair and yanked me out from under the table. I screamed at the pain in my scalp and struck out blindly.
Angelo shoved my back against the wall and wrapped his fingers around my throat.
“Who’s in charge here, slut?”
I shook with terror, the enormity of my defiance sinking in. I’d thrown away days of pretending submission because my ego got the best of me. I deflated like a popped balloon, slumping against the wall and lowering my eyes. What use was fighting this?
“I’m sorry, sir,” I whispered.
Angelo tilted my chin up with his other hand, loosening his hold on my throat, but not letting go.
He brushed his lips against mine, a caress so soft I wondered if I was imagining it. Butterflies danced in my stomach at his gentleness.
“You’re right,” he murmured against my skin. “We’ve been wasting time playing with our new toy instead of defending my territory.”
The cruelty of his words burrowed deep beneath my skin. I was a distraction. I was too stupid to help. I was?—
“When we should have been torturing you for information, instead.” He met my eyes with amusement, then nuzzled his nose against my cheek. “If I edge you for hours, do you promise to tell me everything you know about your father’s businesses?”
I slumped back against the wall, closing my eyes with relief. “No torture necessary.”
Angelo continued to nuzzle at my face, the scratch of his beard as arousing as it was comforting. “This doesn’t change the rules,” he added.
I hadn’t thought it would.
“We’ll take you shopping for clothes tomorrow,” he murmured.
“If she behaves tonight,” Valentin added. “And begs for her punishment for being such a goddamned brat.”
I’d do anything to escape these walls, for something to do beside eat, sleep, and let them play with me.
The idea of submitting, of losing myself in the endless cycle of pleasure and pain, wasn’t as horrifying as had been when they’d found me in that casino a few weeks before.
Fucked up, Ana. Yeah, fine, it was. But I’d never pretended to be anything other than fucked up.
I dropped to my knees, wincing as I hit the hard tiles of the kitchen floor. “I’m sorry. I’m a stupid slut who deserves her punishment. Please, show me the errors of my ways.”
Valentin’s bark of laughter indicated I hadn’t hidden my sarcasm as well as I’d hoped.
“Come back over here,” he said, “and warm Angelo’s cock.” I crawled, injecting as much seduction into the movement as possible, prowling across the room, shivering with delight as their eyes followed my curves.
I positioned myself under the table, between Angelo’s thighs, andskimmed my hands up his legs, the expensive fabric of his trousers, erotic beneath my fingers. I unbuckled his belt, awkwardly, ducking my head so I wouldn’t slam it into the tabletop, then slipped my hands into the open fly of his pants. I ran my hands up his torso, tracing them over the coarse hairs that grew in the spot where he’d tattooed the angel.
Fierce possession burned through my veins like poison, wild and toxic, at the idea that this fierce, unhinged man was mine, that he’d always been mine. He’d branded my image on his skin to prove it.
What if I owned him as wholly as he owned me?
“Angel,” Angelo rasped, tangling his fingers in my hair. “That’s not warming my cock.”
My fingers traced idly over his skin where I knew the tattoo was, before dipping down to free his cock, more hard than not. I lapped at the tip, delighted at the salty taste of his precum—if he was aroused, I’d turn this into a blow job. He shoved his chair back and yanked my head away so hard I thought he was ripping the hair from my scalp.
“Pet,” he snapped. “If you don’t fucking do as you’re told, I’m not only going to lock you back up in your cell by yourself, but I’m going to make you suck my cock while Valentin fucks your ass without lube.”
My thighs clenched, and I shifted under the table, the thought of the two men sharing me, tag teaming me in a brutal game of keep-away, as delicious as it was frightening. That shouldn’t have been such a turn on.
But Jesus Christ, I wanted them to let me out of this hellhole tomorrow.
I scooted forward and sucked the tip into my mouth, then leaned my cheek against his thigh. There wasn’t a comfortable way to do this under the table, but I wiggled until I could rest the side of my face on his leg and lean my side against his knee and calf.
Valentin shifted his chair closer and rubbed his foot against mine. Warm pressure in my chest filled me to bursting, and I couldn’t?—
Fuck.
I didn’t want to resist anymore.
Not tonight.
For one night, I wanted to do what I wanted, not because I was acting out, or because I wanted to destroy something, but because suckling Angelo, on my knees, under the table, healed something deep inside my soul. For the first time in my entire life, what I wanted aligned with what the men who controlled my life wanted.
And I was going to embrace that with both fucking hands.