Chapter Eighteen LEO
"Are you done?" Chiara asked when I pulled back.
"No," I said, brushing my fingers through her hair.
I wanted to hold back, but once I saw my seed disappearing down her throat, there was no restraint left.
"I want to fuck you. Breed my wife. Shoot load after load inside your fertile womb until it swells with my baby.
But I'm going to do it only when you beg. Properly."
"I..." She swallowed thickly, embarrassment turning her cheeks a bright pink. "Okay."
"Okay isn't begging," I reminded her, pushing her back on the bed. She was exposed for me now, and my dick was still hard, throbbing with the desire to steal the virginity I'd already bragged about taking. "Beg me."
"No."
"Then you'll stay like this," I promised her. "Naked and wet and wanting."
She scowled up at me. "I can just take care of myself."
"And you will," I told her. "You'll touch yourself every night and think of me, and wish I was the one fucking you."
Her lips parted, and she started to protest when I covered her body with mine. The head of my dick nudged her entrance, and her words cut off into a soft gasp.
"Don't fight me," I whispered, pressing my forehead against hers. "Because I promise you I will win. I will always win."
"I'm not scared of you," she insisted, but she couldn't look me in the eye as she spoke. "I'm scared of... it."
She was glancing at my cock with real fear this time. I could feel it. And while I'd enjoyed torturing her with fear before, this time her anxiety twisted something in my chest.
"I know you're scared," I said softly. "But I know what I'm doing."
"Why do you keep saying that?" she asked. "Like you've done this before."
"I have." I looked down at her, and the jealousy burning in her eyes sent a thrill through my chest. "Many times. I've had more virgins than you can count. None of them were my devoted, obedient little wife."
I expected her to be angry. She wasn't. She looked so hurt, tears shining in her eyes. "You make me hate you so much."
"Beg, bellissima," I insisted. “Show me you love me.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. The second they landed between us, Chiara went completely still beneath me. Not shy. Not flustered. Shattered. I felt it happen in real time.
The tension in her body snapped so violently it was almost physical, like a wire pulled too tight finally giving out. Her blue eyes widened, staring up at me with something dangerously close to panic. And then she shoved me. Hard.
I barely moved, but she scrambled out from beneath me anyway, clutching the sheet against her chest so fast she tangled herself in it. “Chiara…”
“No.” Her voice cracked apart. “No. Don’t say that. You don’t get to say that.”
I frowned, pushing upright on the mattress. “Say what?”
“That.” She shook her head violently, backing away from the bed like I’d struck her. “That word.”
Understanding didn’t come. Irritation did. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Chiara.”
But her face only crumpled harder. That confused me even more. Tears flooded her eyes before she could stop them, humiliation burning bright across her cheeks. She looked furious with herself for reacting at all.
“Baby.”
“Don’t.” She pointed at me with trembling fingers. “Don’t talk to me right now.”
Then she turned and ran. For half a second, I genuinely didn’t process what was happening. I just watched her disappear into the bathroom adjoining the bedroom, blonde hair wild around her shoulders, bare feet slipping against the marble floor.
The door slammed. A lock clicked after. Silence. I stared at the closed door in disbelief.
“What the fuck?” I muttered. Inside, I heard uneven breathing. Then nothing. I swung my legs off the bed slowly, annoyance already sharpening into anger. Not because she ran. Because I didn’t understand why. “Open the door.”
“No.” Her voice sounded muffled. Broken. My jaw tightened.
“You’re hiding in the bathroom now?” I demanded.
“Yes!” The answer came too quickly, almost hysterically. I rubbed a hand over my face, already losing patience.
“For what reason?” I demanded. “Because I told you to beg?”
“No!”
“Then what?” I asked. Silence. I walked toward the bathroom slowly, stopping just outside the door. Cool marble pressed beneath my bare feet while my frustration coiled tighter and tighter in my chest. “Chiara.”
Nothing. “Open the fucking door.”
“I hate you,” she choked out from the other side. “I hate you so much.”
I leaned one hand against the wood. “That’s not how we solve this, baby.”
Another silence stretched. Then I heard it. Crying. Not the angry tears she threw at me before. Not dramatic sobbing. Quiet crying. The kind someone tried desperately to hide.
Confusion hit me first. Then something uglier. Guilt. I hated that feeling so fucking much.
“Why are you crying?” I demanded, harsher than intended.
A broken laugh came through the door. “You really don’t understand?”
“No,” I snapped honestly. “I fucking don’t.”
More silence. Then, finally, “Because you make me forget myself.”
The words landed strangely in my chest. I stared at the door harder, like I could somehow see through it. “What does that even mean?”
“It means I’m starting to like when you touch me,” she admitted shakily. “And I hate myself for it.”
My anger loosened slightly. But only slightly.
“That’s what this is about?” I asked incredulously.
“Yes!” she cried. “You lie and manipulate and humiliate me and ruin my life, and somehow you still make me feel…” Her voice cracked apart again. “Things I don’t want to feel.”
Something dark and possessive unfurled low in my stomach at her confession.
Even her confusion belonged to me now. I should have enjoyed it completely.
Instead, that strange twisting feeling came back again.
The one I only seemed to get around her.
I rested my forehead briefly against the door, exhaling slowly.
“Chiara.”
“Go away,” she hissed.
“No.”
“I don’t want to look at you, talk to you,” she yelled. “I want nothing to do with you!”
“That’s unfortunate,” I said quietly. “Because you’re still my wife.”
A watery sound came from the other side. Half laugh, half sob. I closed my eyes briefly. Then I said the one thing I hated myself for wanting to say. “Please, bellissima.”
For a long time, the only sound between us was her crying.
Quiet at first. Then uglier. Like she’d spent years forcing it down and couldn’t anymore.
I stayed outside the bathroom door, jaw tight, one hand braced against the wood while the penthouse sat silent around us.
The city lights beyond the windows felt impossibly far away now.
“Chiara,” I said again, lower this time. “Please, Chiara. Talk to me.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” she whispered weakly.
“Like what?” I asked softly.
“That you…” Her voice cracked. “That you want me to love you.”
I frowned. “I told you it was a mistake.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she yelped. Something about the way she said it made irritation flare again.
“Then explain it to me,” I demanded. “Because right now you’re acting like I fucking stabbed you.”
The silence stretched so long I thought she wouldn’t answer. Then I heard the soft sound of her sliding down the other side of the door. And when she finally spoke again, her voice sounded smaller than I’d ever heard it.
“My mama used to say it.”
I stilled.
“She told us every day,” Chiara whispered. “Me and Aurora and Matteo and Sienna. Every single day, no matter what happened in that house.”
Her breathing shook unevenly.
“She’d hold our faces and tell us she loved us more than anything. Even when Papa was angry. Even when he hurt us. She always said if we remembered nothing else, we had to remember that.”
Something cold settled low in my chest. I stayed silent.
“She was beautiful,” Chiara continued brokenly. “Not just pretty. Beautiful in the way people stop talking when someone walks into a room. Soft voice. Soft hands. She smelled like roses and vanilla all the time.” A small, devastated laugh escaped her. “Sienna barely remembers her now.”
I heard her swallow hard. “But I do.”
My hand tightened against the door.
“She used to cry after Papa punished us,” Chiara whispered. “Not in front of him. Never in front of him. But later.” Her voice trembled harder. “She’d sneak into our rooms afterward and apologize like it was somehow her fault.”
The image hit harder than I expected. A woman trying helplessly to comfort bruised children while trapped beside a monster. I already hated Lorenzo Ventura. Now I wanted to kill him with my bare hands instead of the poison circulating his blood stream.
“One night,” Chiara said, her voice growing thinner, “Papa hit Aurora for talking back. She was always his favorite, and he never touched her before then.” A shaky breath. “Mama finally snapped.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
“She screamed at him,” Chiara continued. “I’d never heard her scream before. She told him he was evil. Told him he was destroying us.” Her voice broke apart completely. “And for one second I thought maybe he’d listen to her because he loved her once.”
A terrible silence followed. “He beat her anyway.”
The words landed like stones. Inside the bathroom, Chiara started sobbing openly now. Not trying to hide it anymore.
“He just… kept hitting her,” she cried. “And I tried to stop him.” Her breathing turned ragged with panic, like she was back there again. “I grabbed his arm and screamed and begged him to stop, but he shoved me away like I was nothing.”
My jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
“She couldn’t even stand afterward,” Chiara whispered. “I remember blood on the floor. I remember Sienna crying so hard she threw up. Matteo trying to protect Aurora because he thought Papa would hurt her next.”
Her voice shattered entirely. “She died three days later.”
The silence afterward felt monstrous. I stared at the door without seeing it anymore.