35. Siena
Siena
M y vision is blurred, my head pounding as I edge into consciousness. My arms ache, and when I try to move them, I realize they’re bound, tied tightly above my head.
Panic bubbles in my chest as I writhe against the restraints and find that my ankles are locked in place as well, held by something solid. A wooden board, rough and unyielding, presses against the back of my body.
I can’t fucking move.
The realization sends me into a panic. I writhe against the restraints, desperation bleeding from my pores, but I immediately regret it.
I’m completely naked and the coarse wood scrapes against my bare skin, sending sharp splinters into my back.
I cry out, but the sound is muffled by fabric stuffed into my mouth.
Tears sting my eyes as I struggle to focus, my breath coming in rapid, shallow bursts.
A low chuckle cuts through the dim smoky room, chilling me to my core. I jerk my head toward the sound, but it’s too dark to make anything out at first.
A faint glow appears in the shadows, the smoldering cherry tip of a cigar. A puff of smoke drifts lazily toward me, the smell sharp and pungent.
“So,” a deep, gravelly voice murmurs in Italian, “ Questa é la troia di Matteo .” This is Matteo’s slut .
Why is he speaking to me in Italian? Does he know I speak Italian? And he knows Matti?
“I’ve been curious to meet you, piccolina .” Little one? Irritation overcomes my sheer terror for just a moment. I’m 32 years old, and I’m naked, so it’s pretty fucking obvious that I’m not little by any definition.
The man steps out of the haze of cigar smoke, and my stomach turns.
He’s massive in every way: towering over six-and-a-half feet tall, easily 350 pounds, with a big round bald head that gleams in the firelight.
His fingers are thick and stubby, like the cigar that almost disappears between them, and his lips smack noisily around it, the sound sloppy and wet.
Slowly, he trails the slobbery, unlit end of the cigar from my knee up my leg. My muscles tense as he pauses before moving to the inside of my thigh, then angles the cigar and pushes into the apex, breaching my entrance with its cold damp tip.
A sick grin spreads across his face. “Hmm. The way you are tied limits access, no? We will have to fix that.”
He laughs as I squirm, squeezing my thighs together tightly. Jerking the cigar out from between my legs, he slaps the side of my ass hard and puts the cigar back in his mouth. “Mmm, piccolina . You taste good. Our Matteo has good taste.”
Bile rises in my throat as my mind races. I didn’t recognize him at first without the toupee he wore in the video, but his hooked nose, bushy eyebrows, and pockmarked cheeks with a jagged scar carved across it give him away.
This must be Aurelio, the boss Matti works for, the one who Olivia complains about. But what the fuck does he want with me?
Aurelio moves out of my line of sight, and the room’s scent hits me: leather, polished wood, and cigar smoke amid the faint warmth of a crackling fire.
It’s not as stark or terrifying as the Edge. There are no shackles on the walls or ominous drains in the floor, just a tufted leather couch against the far wall by the door and the edge of a table or desk to my right.
But the fact that I’m naked, gagged, and tied to a plank makes it much more terrifying than the Edge ever was.
For a moment, I wish I was back there. I try to imagine myself wrapped up in the sheets with Matti or laughing with Olivia while she reads smut out loud.
The man’s grating voice pulls me back. “You know who I am. You know I am Aurelio Demonio.”
It’s not a question, and I don’t attempt to nod or communicate through whatever is gagging me.
“You are a Bellamorte, no?” he continues, his voice deadpan, flat, as he paces back into view.
“Your family has always been a thorn in my side. Your father, your grandfather before him, your brother. Even your sister. And now you. Did you know your grandfather?” He waves a hand dismissively.
“No, probably not, I think. You’re too young. ”
I glare at him, trying to focus on what he’s saying and not on the feel of the plank, the rope ties, the air against my bare skin.
The Bellamorte name, my name, my family’s history. I’ve never known too much about it other than the whispers of power long faded that felt more like a fairy tale than anything else when I was growing up in the New Jersey suburbs.
Aurelio pauses, watching my face carefully, squinting his eyes and looking down at me over his bulbous nose.
“Did you know I killed my father? I did. I killed my father because he served your grandfather, served the Bellamortes. Disgusting. To serve a family that did not deserve the power they had in New York, for what? Why? They are nothing.”
My heart is beating faster, and I’m starting to sweat. I don’t know where he’s going with this, but his cold, flat voice sends what feels like hot and cold lightning bolts of panic through my veins.
“Yes, I kill my father. Then….” He takes a long drag of his cigar, exhaling smoke into the air as if savoring the memory. “Then, I kill your father.”
My blood turns to ice, and I stop breathing. My father? That can’t be true. My father died in a car accident when I was eight. That’s what I’ve always been told. He can’t mean…
Aurelio steps closer, watching my reaction carefully.
“Yes, piccolina . I kill him, and then I become the king. I have the power.” He sighs piteously.
“But even kings have their problems. Your family has been a constant one, despite the fact that I keep killing you. More of you rise up to take the last one’s place. And some just won’t stay down.”
The way his gaze scrapes over my body almost feels like a cold razor blade dragging over my skin. Goosebumps pop up, despite the fire crackling in the fireplace. My body shakes, my mind a storm of rage and disbelief.
He’s lying. He has to be lying. But his voice is so matter-of-fact, practically indifferent, that a fiery ball of rage begins to roil in my chest.
“… my own fault that I am still plagued by the Bellamorte scarafaggi .”
I bristle at him calling my family cockroaches and try to pull against my ties, but the more I move, the more the rough ropes cut into my skin and the splinters from the plank dig into my back.
He squints his eyes in my direction. “You know the word scarafaggi , eh, piccolina ? Hmm. Well, you should know I tried to keep it from coming to this. I buried the Bellamorte name for decades, until that Mikey goes and marries a Bellamorte—and not just any Bellamorte! No, he marries the heir to the throne.”
Emily? Heir to the throne? What throne? This man sounds delusional.
“Well, heir to the throne since Franco came to work with us and became my Bellamorte dog.”
Aurelio sighs and taps his cigar ash onto my leg, and I flinch.
“But he turned out to be a dito nel culo , so, eh. And now he is probably dead. Which makes you the last of your line. Did you know that? You are the last Bellamorte.”
He’s not wrong about one thing. Franco is absolutely a pain in the ass. He wasn’t dead the last time I saw him, but I notice with a small amount of interest that I don’t care if he is. The world would be better off without him, especially if he’s working with this fucker.
But all this ‘last of your line’ and ‘heir to the throne’ business—I have no idea what he’s talking about.
Aurelio absentmindedly uses the butt of the cigar to rub the ash into my skin. “Do you know what Demonio means, piccolina ? ”
I do, but I don’t move, every ounce of my attention on the burning red ember at the end of his cigar and its proximity to the soft, sensitive skin of my inner thighs.
“Demon. Demonio means demon. We are all demons here. My sons, Vincenzo and Tommaso, they are demons. Your Matteo, I raised him to be a demon. And me, I am King of the Demons. But you… Your blood is the blood of the cursed. No escape for you or any of you Bellamortes. Your father, your sister, probably your brother. And soon, you. You live—and you will die—under a curse.”
The world tilts as Aurelio steps closer, his voice dropping to a sinister growl.
“Open your legs, puttana ,” he snaps, his demeanor shifting to raw aggression as he jams the cigar into the apex of my thighs. “You whore for Matteo, you will now whore for me.”
I freeze, bile rising again. My ankles are tied to the plank, so I couldn’t do more than open my knees if I wanted to. When I don’t move, his mild expression is replaced by an evil sneer. He yanks the cigar away, flips it, and presses the red tip into my hip.
“OPEN!”
I shriek into the gag and do my best to jerk away from him, the ropes tying me to the plank cutting into my ankles and wrists.
Aurelio yanks my knees apart with terrifying strength, his weight bearing down on the plank beneath me, pushing his head between my legs and suctioning his disgusting mouth onto my pussy before I can process what he’s doing.
The board creaks and splinters as he groans in pleasure and holds the cigar dangerously close to the soft flesh of my inner thigh.
It feels like my brain is doing back flips trying to escape what’s happening, and before I can think through the consequences, I react like an animal, desperate and wild. In one violent motion, I slam my knees closed as hard as I can, catching his head between my thighs.
I scream into my gag as the cigar he’s holding sears my inner thigh as he yanks free, his angry roar deafening.
He stands, fury pouring off him in waves, and his fist crashes into the side of my face.
Pain explodes in a white-hot flash as another blow lands on my stomach, and the board beneath me cracks further.
“Open your eyes!” he roars.
His lips curl into an angry grimace when I comply, blood pounding in my ears.
“You don’t like me, piccolina ? Because I kill your father? Yet, you have no problem spreading your legs for Matti—even though he killed your sister when I told him to?”
Spit flies out of his mouth as he talks, and I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could plug my ears. The smell of burnt flesh hangs around me, and my skin burns as I push back the urge to vomit.
Franco says Matti killed Emily. Aurelio says Matti killed Emily. Only Matti says he didn’t.
But men lie—especially when they want to fuck you.
They also lie when they want to hurt you.
What the fuck am I supposed to believe?
Aurelio slaps me across the face, and when I open my eyes in shock, he blows a fat puff of smoke at me.
“You don’t believe me. You want to believe that I am the monster and not your Matti, yes? Well, I am the monster. But your Matti, he is a monster, too. Especially to women.”
Matti’s words come back to me: I’m your monster, kitten .
I’m struggling to breathe, my body on fire with pain. Moving my head as little as possible, I try to explore my peripheral vision, looking for an escape. The door on the far side of the room is ajar, but I can’t see anything in the dark hallway except shadows.
Aurelio moves to block my view, and I turn my head away as much as I can. He grabs my chin and forces me to look at him.
“As soon as he gets the flash drive from you, you will see for yourself. Just like Liana.” he says darkly, running his palm up my thigh, pressing hard, kneading my flesh, bruising me with his meaty fingers.
I glare back at him, beads of sweat popping up along my body, trying hard to ignore the searing pain from the burns on my hip and thigh, not to mention the cuts on my back, wrists, and ankles from the plank and ropes. Swallowing hard, I focus on breathing around the gag.
Aurelio’s next punch comes out of nowhere, landing again on my stomach, and the board beneath me continues to crack, dropping a few inches.
I gasp, and try hard to pull in a breath, the wind knocked out of me. The gag is fabric, and it comes loose in my mouth, half of it sucked into the back of my throat as I hyperventilate. I start to choke on the gag as he hits me, raining relentless punches onto my abdomen and thighs.
I fight against the restraints, trying hard to loosen my hands so I can slide one out and remove the fabric from my throat. All I can see is Aurelio’s hulking form, his face moving in and out of my vision as he hits me over and over.
I can’t hear anything. I can’t even feel him make contact anymore, but I know he is as my body rebounds from each punch, the board continuing to crack and slip beneath me.
The room spins, my vision darkening. The board finally snaps in two, bending my body in half awkwardly as I fall hard to the ground, still tied. Aurelio’s shouts disappear and a white rush of silence washes over me as my body goes slack, and I stop fighting for breath.
It feels like a saw is ripping through my throat when the gag is ripped out of my mouth. When my vision begins to clear, it is not Aurelio but Matti’s face I see glaring down at me.
Gasping, I pull in as much air as I can into my lungs, but they feel locked, like they’re wrapped in plates of steel. I train my gaze on Matti as he works on the ties binding my wrists, too desperate to breathe to feel pain anywhere other than my lungs.
When Matti leans down, his lips against my ear, I close my eyes. His voice is all I can hear. Angry. Venomous. Cold. It slices through the thick silence in my head like a knife.
“You shouldn’t have fucked with me, Siena. You have no idea what I’m capable of.”