Chapter 3
DOMINIC
Ihave no delusions about the darkness inside my soul. It is a black abyss, a hole so deep and so dark, it could consume me.
It could swallow me whole. It will if I have anything to say about it.
After leaving Gia’s room, I locked the door and set the mask on the kitchen table.
I opened the fridge and took out a beer, popping the bottle cap off and drinking half of it down on my way to my bedroom.
After whipping Gia’s ass, I needed a drink.
And a shower. Whipping was hard work. A workout, really.
And it made my dick hard.
Sick fuck.
In my bedroom, I stripped off my boots, jeans, and briefs, finished the rest of the beer, and switched on the shower. I stepped into the icy flow before the water even warmed, the cold not doing anything to alleviate my rock-hard erection.
I’d heard Salvatore describe me once. He’d been talking to Marco, his bodyguard—glorified foot soldier actually, but who was I to judge, considering. I’ll never forget the word he used. That one word. Monster.
Thing was, he’d been right all along. The golden boy had hit the nail on the fucking head.
I was a monster.
Salvatore thought he must be one to do what he did to Lucia.
I snorted at that. He was a fucking white knight compared to me.
He did bad things. You couldn’t not. I mean, it’s the fucking mafia, and he’s king.
Or would have been, but he handed it all over to our uncle.
I could still call Roman uncle. He was a blood relation.
That should make me feel better, but it only made me sick.
Fuck them. Fuck the Benedetti assholes. Roman’s allegiance was to them—my uncle whom I’d hated because of how well trusted he’d been now sat like king of the family. Well fuck him too.
I was never one of them. I didn’t even come close to looking like my brothers or the man I’d believed to be my father for twenty-eight years of my life.
Blind and stupid. Hell, I didn’t even look like my mother except for the eyes.
The color at least. The look inside them was all my father: Jake the Snake Sapienti.
I was Dominic Sapienti, and I looked like my loser father.
How in hell could my mother have fallen for him?
I mean, once she’d gotten to know him? On the outside, I could see it. But the inside? Black as Satan’s soul.
He’d aptly earned his nickname. He slithered from one loyalty to the next.
Wherever the payout was, there he was. No friends to speak of, but too many enemies to count.
A killer. Ruthless. Hateful. He did the work no one else would do.
The jobs that no one wanted to take. Crimes that made even me cringe.
I’d learned from Roman that Franco would have killed him when he found out about me. About his wife’s affair. She’d begged him not to, she said she loved him. And Franco loved her too much to hurt the man she loved.
Well, wasn’t he the fucking romantic. A regular Romeo.
I turned my thoughts to Gia.
To her face.
Her eyes.
Her fear.
I gripped my cock and began to pump, leaning one hand against the wall while water sprayed my head and shoulders.
I fucked my hand at the image of her bent over the bed.
The sound of her exhalations, her grunts and screams, her drugged attempts to get out of the way of the belt.
I thrust harder into my fist at the memory of her bare ass bouncing with each stroke, the welts turning a deep red.
I imagined the heat of her ass if I were to spread her open and plunge into her warm pussy.
I wondered if she’d be wet. If she’d be ready for me.
The thought made my cock throb. Some girls got off on it.
Not the way I’d done it just now, maybe, but for some of the girls, there was something about getting their ass whipped.
It made them wet. And even though I didn’t rape them, I made them come after punishing them.
It was a power play. That was all. I owned them—owned their pain and their pleasure.
I imagined Gia coming. Imagined kneeling behind her and spreading her open, feasting on her pussy—fuck—as she’d beg for me to stop. I threw my head back, water prickling like needles against my face as I blew.
She’d beg. I’d make her beg. I’d hurt, and then I’d make her body yield, make it surrender even as she fought its release, its yielding to me, to a man she would come to hate.
I’d watch that betrayal work itself into her brain.
I’d fuck with her. And I wouldn’t stop. That’s what this was.
Training. She needed to learn, and pain taught.
So did pleasure. It taught you who your master was.
I slumped forward, heart pounding, my cock still throbbing in my fist. I opened my eyes.
What I should have done, though, was come all over her instead of in the shower.
Degradation was a good teacher too.
I had time, though. Not much—two weeks until the auction. It’d have to do.
I washed my hair and scoured my body. I did that a lot now, scrub at my skin to the point it hurt.
For the last seven years, it was as though I was trying to claw my way out from inside it.
I hated myself. I guess I always had, but now I had a reason.
Now I knew the stock I came from. The scum I was.
I climbed out of the shower and grabbed a towel, scratching the rough cloth against my skin as I made my way into the bedroom.
Had I intended to become what I was? A mercenary for hire? Taking the highest paying jobs, no matter the cost to my victims? Not consciously, no. Over the last few years, though, I had done everything I could to live up to my heritage. I was a mercenary. I went where the money was.
I didn’t like training women, readying them for something like this. But I was good at it. And I wasn’t sure there was another job on earth that would make me feel any lesser trash than this. Taking women and knowingly delivering them into the hands of other monsters like me. Worse than me.
I was well and truly a sick fuck.
I’d started taking these types of jobs two months after the night I’d learned the truth. After that night at Salvatore’s house when my world had exploded around me, and left me holding the smoking gun. When I’d stood over my brother’s—half-brother’s—dying body.
He didn’t die.
But that didn’t matter. I’d felt Franco’s hate. His revulsion. Had he always felt that way about me?
I sat down on the edge of the bed, as if needing the support.
Had I just always been too fucking stupid to see it? Too cocky? I’d been my mother’s favorite. Her little prince. I knew why now. She’d loved my father more than she’d loved Franco Benedetti. And I was the living, breathing result of that love.
I shook my head. What would she think if she saw me now?
My throat closed up, and I stood. I had to forget. I just had to fucking forget. I could try to understand forever, and it wouldn’t make any difference. It wouldn’t change anything. I just needed to stop thinking about it.
I went to the dresser and opened the top drawer, taking out a fresh pair of underwear, jeans and a long-sleeved, V-neck T-shirt.
Black. It was all I wore these days. Underneath was the photo I kept there.
Taking it out, I touched the little face.
The tiny smiling face. Effie. My little girl.
She was eleven now. And I missed her. I’d been in her life off and on for her first three and a half years, but when she and Isabella had moved back to New Jersey, I’d seen her almost daily.
I think that’s why I missed her so much now, even after so many years had passed.
I was just Dominic to her, though. Not dad.
Dad.
I shook my head. She’s better off, asshole.
Isabella—for some unknown reason—kept e-mailing me photographs. I printed the ones I was especially fond of. It was strange. I didn’t think she’d want me in the picture at all. Did she feel bad?
No. That bitch didn’t have a conscience. Or she hadn’t until Luke.
She was the only one who knew how to get ahold of me, and I knew she hadn’t told a soul. That was confirmation of her lack of conscience. She’d watched her sister and my half-brother search and search for me, and she never said a fucking word.
But even she didn’t know about this cabin in the woods.
Even she could not forgive this.
I tucked the photo back into the drawer and got dressed. That was what I needed—to remember all the lowlifes in my life. To remember none of us had a conscience. Well, except maybe Salvatore. And fuck him. I was sick of thinking about him.
In the kitchen, I grabbed another beer and opened it, taking a sip and looking at the food supply.
The cabinets would have been stocked before I got here.
Part of the setup. I had several contacts, but only one man knew of the location of this cabin.
And I only knew him as Leo. He got me my jobs.
No one knew they were hiring Dominic Benedetti or Dominic Sapienti.
Leo got the cabin ready and delivered the girls.
I didn’t kidnap them. I was purely a trainer.
I spent about six weeks with them. I got them from here to the auction. And I delivered them submissive.
Like I said, I had no delusions about what I was.
I took out the eggs and bacon and switched on a burner. My thoughts went back to the girl. No sound came from the room. All cried out from her whipping, she was probably sleeping off the rest of the drug.
She was different than the others. She fought me; they all did to an extent.
But they also begged for their lives. She’d done the opposite.
She’d told me to get it over with if I was going to kill her.
I wondered where she’d come from. Who’d had her, and who’d branded her.
I wondered if her new owner would want that mark cut out.
They usually liked them pure. Maybe he’d burn his own brand over top of whatever decorated her hip.
There was one thing that bugged me, though. That kind of nagged at me. When she’d bitten my hand, I’d gone to slap her but stopped. I’d never stopped with any other girl before. It was something in her eyes that had done it. Not the fear, but something else. Something almost familiar.
I lay strips of bacon into the pan and cracked two eggs beside them, the sizzle and smell making my stomach growl, and wondered who she was.
It wasn’t just her looks but the look inside her eyes.
She was different than the others. She wasn’t a random pickup off the street.
And I had a feeling she was older than the usual girls by a few years.
The girls I trained were between eighteen and twenty-one.
I wouldn’t take them younger. If I had to guess, I’d say Gia was twenty-four, maybe twenty-five. The buyers usually wanted young flesh.
Sick fucks.
Sicker than you?
I scrambled the eggs and told that voice to fuck off.
Once everything was cooked, I plated it and set it on the table, grabbed my laptop out of its bag beside the door, and booted it up.
I finished the plate of food as I checked my bank balance for the deposit—ten grand up front, the rest upon sale, the final price determined by the amount the girl brought in.
Not bad money. But I guessed human trafficking brought in serious money.
The auctions were always interesting. I enjoyed looking at the girls.
Who wouldn’t? But I more liked watching the buyers, who were mostly men, some couples, and a few single women.
The same ones seemed to turn up at every auction.
I wondered if they were growing their stable of stolen women or if they needed to replace lost or damaged goods.
That little bit of conscience that gnawed at me got shoved back down into its box and the lid locked down tight.
I thought of the girl—the job—and how I could maximize my earnings.
She was good-looking, even if she was older than the usual girl, but she had something most of the others didn’t: that arrogance.
Nothing like breaking a cocky girl. I just needed to somehow preserve that during her training, make her bow down with just that hint of indignation.
Once I finished, I cleaned up, then grabbed a granola bar and a bottle of water and headed toward Gia’s room.
The cold inside gave me a chill. I saw how she lay sleeping huddled into herself on the bed.
I set the water and the granola bar down on the small bedside table and walked back out.
Tomorrow I’d give her a chance to earn back the blanket.