Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Pfeiffer
Eight nights to go.
I’m outside the club walking to my car when I get a text from Fiero telling me to go back inside and see Vivienne. It’s long past midnight and it’s unusual for Fiero to request me beyond ten p.m.
Vivienne hands me a key card, but before I can walk away she makes a tutting sound. “You’re not going to the eighteenth floor.”
I spin around, glancing down at the key card in my hand—almost identical to one I’m always given for the Liberty suite. “What?”
“You’re going up higher.”
“Higher?”
“Yes. To the twentieth floor.”
I suck in a breath. “Isn’t that the—”
“The penthouse,” she finishes with a pursed lip. She’s clearly not happy about it.
“Why?”
She shrugs and there’s a sparkle to her eye. “That’s where Il Diavolo wants you to go. Boss’s orders.”
I close my hand over the card. “Um, okay.”
“Take the private elevator,” she explains. “It’s the only one that goes all the way up. When the doors open, turn left and walk down the hall. Il Diavolo’s apartment is on the right.”
She turns then, dismissing me.
I wish I knew why she disliked me so much. I felt it instantly, when I first arrived at the club, and it hasn’t let up. But I don’t have the capacity to worry about it now—not when I have an actual penthouse to get to.
Above the city and the throbbing bass of the club, the highest level of the building is soothingly calm and quiet. I let myself into the apartment and stand as the door closes softly behind me, with my jaw almost hitting the floor.
It’s the most decadent apartment I’ve ever seen.
It’s open plan but doesn’t feel empty. Cabinetry, flooring and surfaces are dark but don’t feel oppressive. The scent of warm wood and deep spice lingers in the conditioned air, and low lighting softens the sharp edges and the city view beyond the windows.
I carefully remove my sneakers and leave them by the door, then walk to the window, pressing my nose to the glass. The lights below move slowly, glowing brightly. Inside the reinforced glass, it’s peaceful and mesmerizing.
The sound of a throat clearing makes me spin around, my heart shooting up my goddamn throat.
“Fiero,” I gasp. “You scared me.”
He keeps his eyes on me as he drops a bag to the floor and throws a set of keys on the side. Then he walks slowly toward me, my heartbeat pounding harder with each step. There’s a look in his eye that I can’t interpret.
He stops close and goes to rest a hand on my shoulder, but seems to remember my one condition and thinks better of it.
“Come sit down.”
I tip my chin trying to read his expression. It gives nothing away but I have a horrible feeling something is very, very wrong.
He sits me down on the couch, remaining at a small distance.
“What is it Fiero? You’re frightening me.”
He doesn’t hold back. “I know who abused you.”
My throat shrivels up. He just came out and said it, like he could ever know such a thing.
I’m so stunned I can’t even open my mouth to tell him to go to hell, which is exactly what I want to do.
I stare at him until he gets up, moves to the kitchen area and returns with some water. I take a sip then stare at the glass when I speak.
“How could you know? It’s impossible.”
There’s a long pause that only ends when I look up.
“Because your abuser took photographs without your knowledge and gave them to the Irish to blackmail me with.”
The room wobbles and there’s a sound of glass smashing in the distance.
Fiero is suddenly on his feet, instructing me to not move. I stare into an empty space as he shifts around me. I’m not sure what he’s doing because all I can think about is who could have taken photographs of me. It doesn’t make any sense.
My voice sounds too delicate for this conversation. “Photographs? That’s not possible. The man who touched me didn’t take photographs. I would have remembered that.”
He settles back beside me, his tone softening. “Not if you were unconscious.”
My gaze pans to him in slow motion. Everything is in slow motion. My head turns and visions follow. He moves his mouth but the sounds don’t reach my ears until a few seconds after. And there’s a vignette around my view. It’s all deeply disorienting.
“I was never unconscious.”
“Pfeiffer.”
My gaze narrows on him. “Yes?”
“I have the photographs. It’s definitely you in them. And you were not aware of what you were doing.”
I blink. “Can I see them?”
He pauses, his gaze roaming my face like he’s assessing me for stability.
“I want to see them.”
He huffs out a breath and reaches into his jacket pocket, then hands me a small selection of photographs.
The images swim before me and I stop breathing. It’s me. I am in the photographs. And I’m naked.
I don’t remember posing, or lying on that carpet, or that sofa, or the kitchen floor. I never did any of those things for my uncle.
How did he get me into those places and in those positions? My legs are spread, my fingers resting pointlessly between my thighs. It’s obvious I wasn’t sound of mind—there’s no life in me.
I catch a glimpse of my hair strewn across one shoulder and that’s when I realize this isn’t a mistake, or a sick joke. He did this to me. He intoxicated me with God knows what and contorted me into sexual positions, for kicks.
A rush of vomit surges up my throat and before I can even ask where the bathroom might be, my stomach expels everything I ate in the last twenty-four hours onto the floor of Fiero’s penthouse apartment.
I retch again, bringing up another load, barely conscious of my hair being held out of my face as I throw up everything but my vital organs.
He waits until I’m done then slides his arms beneath me. As he lifts me into the air, he murmurs in my ear. “I’m not touching you with my hands, don’t worry.”
The room spins as I’m carried, and when he lowers me, my legs give way and I crumble into a pile of limbs on the floor of the shower cubicle.
“I need to get you out of these things, Pfeiffer. You’re covered in vomit. I need to use my fingers, okay?”
I nod vaguely and his hands work to relieve me of rancid-smelling clothes, tossing them to the other side of the room.
He lets me remain seated on the floor as he gently sprays the warm water over me and uses a cloth to soap me down.
Moving me this way and that, he cleans my whole body.
Then he towels me dry and carries me out of the shower to a huge master overlooking lower Manhattan.
He pulls back the comforter, strips to his shorts and slides in beside me.
A tissue is pressed to my cheeks and I realize I have tears streaming down my face and my body is shaking from all the unprocessed trauma.
“Let it out, Pfeiffer,” he says, soothingly. “Let it all out.”
I’m numb. Completely, entirely and horrifyingly numb.
So, when he curls an arm around me and pulls me into his chest, holding me as I tremble violently, I don’t fight it.
The sound of a camera shuttering vibrates through my brain, deafening me in sleep. I sit up fast, sweating, tears brimming my eyes.
Then a heat wraps around my back, careful not to touch but reassuringly close.
“You had a nightmare,” he says softly.
My breaths come out short as I remember where I am, who I’m with and what he knows. Then a thought occurs to me. Fiero never said he knew it was my uncle.
I turn to face him, suddenly struck by the shadows across his face making him seem darker and more dangerous than he looks in the light.
“Who took the photographs?” I whisper.
“Your uncle,” he replies. “Callum.”
I swallow and nod. So, he knows. He knows what I have never told another living soul.
My head throbs as I roll over and slide out of bed. At some point after the shower, Fiero dressed me in one of his shirts which thankfully comes down to my thighs, but I still feel mentally naked.
I need space to process this. Squeezing my eyes shut, I rub my temples trying to soothe the climbing panic.
“How did you find out?” I ask.
Fiero gets out of the bed and walks around it toward me.
“He owed the Irish,” he explains, carefully. “That’s why he stole from us. But he gambled the money before he could pay them—or us—what he owed. I took you as payment but the Irish got nothing.”
I pace the room, still rubbing my temples.
“That’s what the Irish guy came to the club for. Callum went to him first, told him how important you are to me, so he tried to take you the night I was shot. Him and a sidekick who’d entered under a false ID.”
A long breath rolls from his lungs. “When that plan didn’t work, your uncle got desperate. Thought if he gave the photographs to the Irish they could blackmail me for money, knowing I… I wouldn’t want the scandal that naked photographs of my woman would bring.”
My gaze snaps to him and I’m suddenly finding it hard to breathe. “B-but… I’m not your woman. Why would you care?”
He stands and strides toward me, then cups my shoulders with his hands.
“Pfeiffer...” He opens his mouth to say something else, but then closes it again and swallows. Then his eyes skate over my features, fast and urgent. “I can’t tell you how furious I was to come face to face with that bastard after seeing what he’d done.”
“Where is he?” The hatred in my voice scratches up my throat like sandpaper. “I want to see him.”
I hear him swallow in the dark.
“You can’t.”
I scramble backward, vibrating with hatred for my dad’s brother. “Yes I can. I need to see him, Fiero. Now.”
He reaches for me but I dart away. “Why? What can you say to him? Nothing is going to change what he did.”
“I don’t care!” My voice is climbing now, one decibel at a time, and I don’t mind if it shatters glass.
I’ve kept his treacherous actions buried deep in my subconscious for all these years.
Now that I know putting his hands on me wasn’t all he did, I want to hurt him.
I want him to see that despite everything he did, he hasn’t broken me.
If anything, I’m so much stronger than he is.
He’s nothing but a petty, dirty pedophile with a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan.