Chapter 14
Lula
Seven meals,five bottles of wine, three training sessions with the knife, and many, many fucks later, he has me tied up, standing in the middle of the room. My arms are cuffed over my head, and there’s a blindfold over my face. I have a spreader bar between my legs, a plug in my ass, a gag in my mouth, and a diabolical shield over my clit that vibrates at odd intervals.
He places a plush sphere into my hand. “Squeeze.” I do, and the ball squeaks like a dog toy.
“Squeeze this three times, and I’ll stop.” He waits for me to nod, then adds the finishing touch of plugs in my ears.
When he’s done, I can’t see, and I can’t hear. I flex my free hand in the bindings, reaching for something. Proof of the world beyond this dark, silent place.
His hand at my hip steadies me, and I know he’s chosen something particularly wicked to begin with.
A line of fire blazes across both globes of my ass.
My hand clenches, but I don’t squeeze the toy.
Another stripe across my sit spots. A third below that.
I strain, but I can’t hear anything. Not that it’d be a mercy to hear the implement whistling through the air or cracking on my flesh, but at least it would be something to focus on other than the throbbing stripes on my buttocks and the backs of my thighs.
Another stroke and subsequent sting. A fifth slanting over the rest. My rear is a fiery mass, each caned line pulsing in echoing waves.
I dangle, half dancing in my high heels, twisting this way and that. The flogger comes to bite my breasts, and I drop the ball.
Sweat rolls down my chest, beading between my breasts. I can smell the animal scent of me.
And I can smell the cool winter wind of Victor.
He leans into me, returning the ball to my hand. I squeeze it once to prove that I’m still with him.
His lips caress mine. Cool mint, a bite of pine. I sigh.
Then the nipple clamps come. And more flogging on my back. I lean from side to side, shifting my weight in the small increments I’m allowed by the spreader bar and the bindings on my wrists. I turn my head, but the blindfold lets in no light, no shapes, and the earplugs allow no sound.
I can only feel.
A crop on my pussy.
A paddle on my ass.
A tightening of the nipple clamps so they pinch with a sharper bite.
Victor’s fingers trail over the marks he made, and I can only imagine his satisfied expression.
The shield on my clit trembles to life, buzzing in rising surges. I rock to tiptoe, fighting to close my legs and get more stimulation.
Victor strokes my inner thighs, taunting me.
I moan around the gag. The sound is worlds away.
He presses on the shield, giving me the pressure I need. All the agony in my body rushes in fiery rivulets toward the beautiful feeling in my pussy. As my core contracts, the bright red burn turns to gold.
His breath caresses my face, and I can sense him murmuring, “Beautiful. Bellissima. Good girl.”
He unplugs my ears and gives me water.
“Had enough?”
I shake my head. The smarting lines on my backside and the sting in my nipples have faded to nothing. The pain is no longer enough to balance the excruciating sweetness of my climax.
I don’t know what I have to prove. Why I always want more.
But Victor does, and he answers my unspoken questions. “You need it to hurt. You like to earn it.”
“Yes. Give it to me.”
“I will, beautiful one. I will.”
And he lays into me harder than before. He never replaced the earplugs, so I hear each swish and crack. The strokes come faster, merging from one into the other until I have no time to brace for them. So I surrender to them and welcome the pain. I want it. I need it. It burns like a cleansing fire, and I’m caught in the crucible and reborn.
A hand at my hip steadies me again. Slowly, Victor draws out the plug in my ass and pumps it back in. At first, I tense, but there’s no fighting it. My body relaxes, accepting the strange sensation. When he pulls it out all the way, I clench, seeking the dark stimulation.
I don’t have long to miss it. He sets his cock at my gaping hole and presses in. He’s slick with lube, but the stretch still burns. Any desire to be filled is replaced by panic at the blunt intrusion.
“Breathe, Lula,” he growls. I suck in oxygen, feeling dizzy, and he wedges himself deeper into my ass. His arm snakes around my midriff to press on the buzzing vibrator over my clit.
And I cum, hard and long, my muscles seizing and clamping on his cock.
He curses and mutters something long and intent in his native tongue. Slowly, he eases out of me, giving me a hint of relief before pushing back in. He’s gentle, and the device on my clit doesn’t block my pussy, so he’s free to press his fingers inside me. I clench around them, gripping them like a lifeline as the burn in my bottom flares into something new, something disturbingly like pleasure.
“That’s it. Good girl.” He pushes another finger into my pussy, his wrist pressing on the vibrator, his dick stretching me impossibly wide.
His free hand comes to my throat.
“Are you going to cum for me, beautiful? With my cock in your ass?”
“Fuck.”
“Yes.” His dick saws in and out of me. Another few passes and his fingers catch just the right spot inside me, making me shudder through another climax. “I think you like this, Lula.” He plucks away the vibrator and replaces it with his palm, roughly scrubbing my swollen bud until I’m thrashing, trying to get away.
I can’t get away. I’m strung up like a piece of meat, striped red, and now subject to him fucking me in my last virgin hole. And I like it.
Fates help me, but I love it.
He shoves his fingers, wet from my pussy, into my mouth. I bite down, tasting the sour-sweet of my own cunt. He thrusts into my back channel, making me rise to tiptoes. He’s not going to be gentle. Not anymore.
He removes his fingers from my mouth and pulls off a nipple clamp. I cry out, and
I don’t know what’s more excruciating, the bite of the clamp, the removal, or the final, awful relief.
He waits a while before removing the other one.
“Fucking sadist.”
He gives a dark chuckle and power into me, fucking me hard enough that I’ll feel it for days.
The blindfold falls away, and I gasp. I’d grown used to the dark. Leave it to Victor to give me what I want and completely ruin it.
He pulls out of my ass, and I hang for a moment, panting. Bereft.
Leave it to Victor to give me what I hate and make me crave it.
“Don’t worry, krasiva. I am not done with you.”
He uncuffs my ankles from the spreader bar and cuts me down from the overhead bindings. I collapse into his arms. His powerful arms are strong and ready to catch me. His skin is hot and glistening with sweat, and I’m surrounded by his delicious scent.
He carries me to the bed and cleans me up before laying me out for inspection.
More water. A few more kisses.
Then, a hand at my throat, pinning me. Something silver flashes in the corner of my eye, and I startle.
He’s holding a knife.
“One more thing,” he says as I track the blade’s movement. Now that he’s trained me to hold one, to throw one, I can spot the expert skill in his elegant fingers. The black handle, the silver tang, the honed edge, it’s all a part of him.
He uses the hand that holds the knife to stroke the tendrils of my hair back from my face. “I have waited for this moment since the morning you left me.”
The morning I shot him.
He waves the blade in front of my face. I’m pinned by his hand at my throat, limp from the gauntlet of agony and ecstasy he put me through. But I’m still strong enough to fight.
I don’t fight. I don’t move.
I want to know what happens next.
He sets the knife at my heart. “You marked me. And now I’ll mark you.”
I hold his gaze. The thin line of frost around the rising darkness. If this is the end, I am not afraid. “Do it.”
The first cut is perfect. The sides of my flesh peel away from the sharp edge. Then the blood wells up, darker than I imagined. And it hurts. It hurts like he’s cut too deep. Like he’s carving his mark on my heart and not just the layer of flesh above.
A second slice, angling towards the first. He’s carved a V over my left breast. V for Victor. Proof of his victory over me.
His eyes are fully black now. He doesn’t stop but gives me another three strokes to form a second letter. My breath stutters in and out of me, my nerves screaming. But I don’t tell him to stop.
I crane my neck to see, but the blood streams in every direction, blotting out what he’s carved.
This is the end, yes, but it’s also the beginning.
“Lula.” He captures my lips, pressing down against me with an insistent hunger. He tips my hips back and slides into my ass again. This time, I can watch him invade me, inch by punishing inch. When he’s fully rooted, he presses on my sex, scrubbing the sodden folds until my orgasm blooms and I soften and accept another quarter inch of his cock. My ass is full of him.
My brain is full of warring sensations. I push against his hard, bare chest with arms weakened by the pain over my heart. The smooth marble of his muscles is pink, stained by my blood. I plant bloody handprints all over him—his shoulders, his pecs, his face—until our lips touch, and I taste metal and salt and us.
And then he’s coming, deep in my ass. Another part of me has ceded to his rule. But I don’t care because he cleans me up so carefully and rolls us to a fresh, clean section of the king bed so I can fall asleep in his arms.
I wake to him bandaging me. I still haven’t seen what he carved into me, but I can feel it throbbing through my chest like it went all the way to my back. The soreness extends into my left arm.
He pauses, his hand hovering over the white bandage. A shark’s smile hovers at the corner of his mouth. He’s happy with his work.
He feeds me some pain pills and holds a glass of water to my lips. The pain recedes behind a gauzy curtain.
“Sleep,” he orders. “It’s still late.”
It must be night. I savor this sliver of the outside world he’s gifted me. “Late?”
“Yes.” Another kiss. In the darkness, he moves beside me, warm and familiar. A partner, a trusted lover, coaxing me back to sleep. “I’ll wake you in the morning.”
Mornings with Victor, barefoot and shirtless in the kitchen. Eggs. Pancakes. I fall back asleep, smiling.
* * *
Victor
I’ve never slept as wellas I do with Lula. Even as a boy, I rested in fits and starts, listening to the cacophony of the crime-ridden neighborhood where we could afford to live. Angry voices, slamming doors, back-firing cars and shots fired, I never got used to it. I learned to sleep lightly, to startle awake, warn my mother, and protect her.
But now I rest deeply and fully, my arms full of my captive. My vicious angel.
She makes me feel things, and I’m not used to feeling things. But the small, stunted part of me recognizes that she is the only one who can awaken these emotions. I need her close. She is my soul.
After two REM cycles, I rise reluctantly. I leave Lula sleeping on her back, the bandage over my initials bright in the darkness, and head to the locked drawer in the kitchen that holds the most important of my burner phones.
I wait seven minutes before making the call.
“I’m here,” Spiro answers. Over the past few days, I’ve worked to gain his trust. Now, I’ll learn if my efforts paid off.
“Do we have an agreement?”
Spiro pauses. “What’s it worth to you?”
“Name your price.”
He does, and when I agree to it, he tells me the information I asked for. All of it.
I hang up, heavy with the news I have for Lula.
Our time of reprieve is over. Last night marked a turning point for us. I know she felt it.
Now it’s time to learn whether it was the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end.
* * *
Lula
I wake slowly and stretch,wincing as it pulls the tender skin above my left breast. Victor’s left more painkillers beside me and a glass of water. Considerate sadist.
As I have so many mornings, I pad out of the bedroom and find him at the stove, making a meal. Unlike most mornings, I almost smile when I see him clad all in black, his white-blond head in the fridge. His T-shirt shows off the taut muscles and veins of his forearms.
My mouth waters. “Morning.”
He signals me to Come,and when I do, he sets a bluish smoothie in front of me. I didn’t even hear the blender. I taste yogurt and berries.
He watches me drink it, his face a beautiful mask. Okay? Another hand signal. He uses them constantly now, especially when he’s teaching me how to attack someone with a knife.
“A little sore. Let’s go easy on training today.” I pretend to roll my shoulder but don’t move it more than an inch.
Victor plants his hands on the island, staring at the glittering quartz.
He’s not usually this moody. Something’s wrong.
I set the glass down. “What? What is it?”
“I know who the mole is,” he rasps.
He doesn’t have to explain. The mole, the person who infiltrated our family and passed on information to Stephanos. It would have to be someone trusted to get the intel Stephanos seemed to get, intel that kept him one step ahead of us at all times.
Names and faces flit through my head. “Who?” I know I’m not going to like the answer.
“Gino.”
I close my eyes and accept this bullet to the heart. My stupid, selfish brother. “That fool.” It makes sense. He burned through his trust so quickly. He liked spending money and expected it to come easy. And as the son of one of the top family members, he had access to anything. No one would question his loyalty.
A shadow falls over me. Victor has come around the island to be close to me, and despite my roiling stomach, the hairs on my arms raise a second before he touches me. “Lula, I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” I wrench myself away, wincing as it sets my wounds throbbing. “You’re one of them.” An enemy. I have to remember that. I keep retreating until I’m a few feet away. “I need to tell my cousin. I need to get out of here.” It’s stupid to say this to my captor.
He stands at my stool, his hands by his sides, still no expression on his face.
Then he says the unexpected. “And if I let you go? Will you continue on this path to vengeance?”
I’m still reeling from the fact that he would let me go. “What do you care?”
“You belong to me.”
“I’m not a possession—” I’ve stopped retreating. Mistake. Because he’s crossed the distance, backing me into the wall. I glare up at him as he sets his hand at my throat.
“You belong to me. And I belong to you.” He flexes his hand and releases me. “But you see nothing, consider nothing, but your revenge.”
“It’s not revenge. It’s vengeance. It’s for someone else.”
“Is it? What does your mother gain by you killing her murderer?”
My chest is rising and falling so rapidly that blood has started trickling down my breast. “She deserves to be avenged.”
Victor’s face is carved from stone, but his eyes burn like blue lasers. “But does she require it?”
“I require it.” My voice cracks. He’s flaying me open like the sadistic surgeon he is, and I have no more defenses. “They threw her life away. They treated it like nothing. But she wasn’t nothing. She was everything.”
“And what would she think if she saw you now, her precious daughter? Would she want your life to look like this?”
I suck in a breath. Victor could not have hurt me more if he carved my heart out and held it in front of my face, still beating.
“You spent all these years sharpening yourself to a blade and making yourself a bullet in a gun. But you are more, Lula. You can do, can have, more.”
“Shut up,” I whisper and turn my face away.
The floor creaks as he leaves.
He’s making noise on purpose because he so rarely makes a sound, leaving me with bile in my throat and burning eyes.
* * *
Victor
The screensin my media room are filled with motion. Spiro, Joe, and the rest moving around the deserted pizzeria. Cars zooming down streets. Workers in Cavalli’s, fixing the walls, prepping them to paint.
I ignore them all and fix my eyes on one screen, the most important one. In the black frame, Lula sits on the bed, staring at the wall. She hasn’t crumpled yet, but I can tell she wants to. The news about her brother bowed but didn’t break her. More proof that her mother’s death was ignored by those Vera loved the most.
They threw her life away. They treated it like nothing. But she wasn’t nothing. She was everything.
My captive has not cried yet, but her eyes look bruised. I message the doctor to watch over her and leave my media room.
An hour later, I’m across from the dark doors of the abandoned hotel Spiro gave me the address to in a neutral part of town. Here, supposedly, Stephanos left me my money. A black duffel bag of unmarked bills. Whether the money will be accompanied by the man, I cannot say.
Instead of walking in as instructed, I climb the fire escape of a nearby building and get to the roof to scout the area. From here, I can settle into a sniper’s perch and look down onto the drop zone. Not that I have a gun.
A few minutes pass. I’m early, but something tells me my client is earlier still.
The moon drifts across the sky. A rat pokes its head out of a hole and inches toward a dumpster.
A match flares in the dark for a second before being snuffed out, but it’s enough. The tiny, mean eye of a cigarette remains, burning red gold.
And there he is. Broad shoulders, shaved head.
I wait in the shadows, contemplating my next steps.