He takes a step closer, watching me like I really am a snake, likely to strike at any moment. He opens the collar and slips it around my neck, taking care not to touch me with his hands at all. The heavy metal closes around my throat, and I bend my head forward so that he can lock it—and also so he can’t see my face.
Because I have to squeeze my eyes shut tight for a moment to fend off the rising fear in me. Fear…and something even more shameful. A pulsingneed. I have no idea why.
Just like I have no idea why getting dangled over the stairs turned me on as much as terrified me.
Dami made a very special effort with the tortures he thought up for me in this basement, hoping to break my mind before my body. He showed a much more psychologically sophisticated approach to his revenge than he does to his work.
The Giuliano Boss is a man who favors bullying and violence over diplomacy and strategy. The Morelli Boss is the opposite.
If Dami actually had a chance to grow…
But he won’t ever, will he? He’s obsessed with his vengeance. It’s the only thing that matters to him.
That’s why this moment is so important.
He takes a step back and looks me over. “Do you think it suits me?” I ask sweetly. He doesn’t reply. “You will go back upstairs and wait for exactly five minutes. At the end of that time, you will come back down here. Any questions?”
“Yeah. How the fuck areyougoing to know it’s exactly five minutes?”
I pull out the phone Finch gave me, and set the timer. “Take this with you. Hit start just before you enter the elevator, and leave it on the floor. When it goes off, I’ll know. And if you’re not back…”
“You think you can train me like a dog?” he asks with a curl of his lip, showing teeth. “This is bullshit.”
“You will do as I say, or the people under your protection will pay the consequences.”
There it is again, slipping out of me with no hesitation. My grandfather’s methods. The hatred in Damiano’s eyes almost makes me flinch. Almost.
“I shoulda listened when you told me exactly what you are,” he spits out. “A venomous fucking viper.”
He snatches the phone and stalks to the elevator, stabbing a finger at the phone and setting it down just before he gets into the only exit out of here. And then, just before the elevator doors close, he reaches out and snaps off the light. “Enjoy yourself,” he says.
The darkness floods in as the elevator doors close, and the anxiety is immediate. But I have to control it—Ihaveto, if I’m going to have any hope of controllinghim.
I focus on the faint light of the phone near the elevator. But soon enough it dims, then goes out. I close my eyes, even though it’s already pitch black, but the illusion of choosing to shut out the world is marginally better than having it forced on me. I try to slow my accelerating breathing.
It’s not working. Nothing’s working.
I’m starting to panic, a scream rising up in my throat that I have to choke down.
When I can’t stand it any longer, I curl into a ball and put my arms over my head, chanting silently that everything will be fine. It will be alright. Dami will return, and he will be controllable.
He’ll come back.
I just need to think about something else.
But the thoughts that come to me are torturous in a different way. The scrape of his jaw followed by the soft soothing of his lips down my throat. His hands gripping my ass and pulling it open. The nudge of his cock?—
The timer starts its tinkling song and I blow out a long breath of relief, sitting up. Any second now.
Any second.
The alarm goes on, repeating itself. And again.
And a third time.
I still can’t hear the faint whirr of machinery that presages the elevator’s arrival. I can’t hear anything except that damn alarm, falsely cheerful, mocking me where it lies. And in the faint light it lets out, I can see dark, hulking furniture, the dissected rooms of the townhouse.
I breathe in and out slowly, trying to quell the rising terror. From the corner of my eye, I think I see something in my grandfather’s study—a shadow moving. I turn my head so fast I get a crick, and scramble away on the bed until the chain, caught around the far corner of the mattress, yanks me back.