Page 41 of Mine to Tease

Once Damon realizes what’s happened, he’ll come for me. He’ll find me. But these thoughts do nothing to ease the war inside of my body. I know I’m on the verge of a panic attack. The only thing keeping me remotely present are the dangerous men waiting to descend upon me and the conversation between their rebellious leader and my brother.

“It gets us revenge without a war we can’t win,” replies the man. His voice draws my attention back to them, though, thankfully, he and the others have their backs toward me. Yet, movement in my peripheral vision lets me know the three I see aren’t the only ones here. I look from my left to my right as fresh tears threaten to blur my vision. The thought of these men coming up behind me and putting their hands on my body has me struggling against my restraints even though I know it’s no use.

“And you think abducting, torturing, and murdering my sister won’t earn you a war? I will hunt you to the ends of the earth for this,” Aidan says. When I return my attention to him, there’s a fire in his eyes I’ve never seen before. His lips appear to curl into a warning growl, and his eyes lock in on the man in the middle, unyielding, unflinching.

“You will,” the man before him says. “But Josephine Cullen won’t risk her alliance or new power over the Amato territories because of the sister of some wannabe king. So, she’ll give you a choice—take the loss and maintain your position or give up your crown to hunt us. Either way, we’re going to disappear and you’re going to lose.”

As the man’s words hit him, my brother’s stern display of resistance falters. His lip drops and he looks at the floor as if in thought or perhaps defeat. The look on his face is enough for me to realize that the men are right. The Irish won’t fight for me. The alliance is more important. The money is more important. Once I’m dead, there won’t be anything they can do to make it right, so why risk everything for a ghost?

The men standing between me and my brother take Aidan’s silence as their cue to make good on their plan for revenge three months in the making. They turn toward me then. “No,” I say. The simple two-letter word scrapes through me. My lips are parched and my throat is dry with fear. I watch the three of them with wide tear-filled eyes as they move toward me. “No,” I say again. This time my voice cracks, along with any sliver of hope I may have had that Damon would find me, save me. My reaction only makes these wicked monsters smile.

“It’s a shame it had to come to this,” one of them says. “Who knew his sister would be so beautiful.” The men exchange a look.

“Well, she won’t be beautiful when we’re done with her. She’ll be begging for death,” replies the one in the light gray suit.

As the three of them reach me, I begin to shake uncontrollably. I can’t move. But even if I could, my legs are numb and heavy, and everything inside me—every nerve, every warning bell, every part of my being—is crying out in anticipation of the pain to come. I lower my head as the three of them surround me. I’m unable to see clearly anyway. Perhaps it’s for the best that I don’t see what’s coming. But I can hear everything. I hear my brother fighting against his restraints, shaking in his chair. He calls out for them to stop. He offers himself in my place. He says if they let me go, I can assure his men and Josephine that they had nothing to do with his death. They’ll get what they want, which is him dead without ever even having to disappear. All they do is laugh.

The one in gray brings his hand to my arm then and caresses my skin as he moves behind me. I shake my head and do my best to disassociate, but as he leans forward and locks his forearm around my throat, my adrenaline kicks in and I try to fight him off. I toss my head back, knocking into his thick skull. I lurch forward in an effort to get away, disregarding what the fall would do to me if I actually managed to overturn my chair. Nevertheless, it’s bolted to the ground. I go nowhere and I’ve done nothing but give myself another headache and piss them off.

“Stupid bitch!” The one I headbutted moves in front of me. Rearing back, he smacks his palm across my already aching, tender cheek. I scream, both because it hurts and because I know this is only the beginning.

“Please! Stop!” Aidan begs.

“We don’t want you dead, Cross,” the one in the navy suit says.

“We want to make you feel pain,” continues the predator in gray. “And believe me when I tell you, there is no greater pain than watching the brutal, unrelenting, dehumanizing torture of someone you love. Though something tells me Anastasia here will disagree. I wonder what will break her—the removal of her fingernails and toenails, the breaking of her ribs, the repetitive strangulation, the twisting knife I’m going to shove into her stomach, the brand I’m going to burn onto her face. Or perhaps it’ll be the sting of my dick ripping through her tight cunt. I can’t imagine there’s anything more dehumanizing than that.”

The man in gray places his hands on my knees. His dark glare steals my fight. I feel so hopeless I may as well already be dead. He leans toward me and nuzzles his nose in the crook of my neck. Slowly, he inhales my scent. “Yum,” he moans. “Covered in tears, snot, and sweat and somehow, still sweet.” He moves his hand to my breast and gives me a rough squeeze. I wince and cry out.

“What about your code?” Aidan asks. “Everyone knows Amato men don’t hurt innocent women and they certainly don’t rape them.”

The one in gray doesn’t acknowledge my brother. Instead, he stares at me and brings his hands to the neckline of my dress. In one swift motion, he rips the silky fabric all the way down to my belly button. I bite my lip even though it hurts. My body continues to shake, and warm urine flows from me and covers my seat. It’s the one in the navy suit who addresses Aidan.

“Well, Cross, to use your own words against you—the Mafia is no more. Therefore, so is our code.” He takes a step toward my brother, though my eyes don’t leave the man standing before me who is taking his time admiring his handiwork. This isn’t the kind of dress you wear a bra with, and considering Damon’s no-underwear rule, I’m practically naked before him. “It’s not as if we enjoy this,” the one in navy continues.

“Yeah, fuck that. He looks like he’s enjoying every bit of it,” my brother says. The man in gray smiles then and finishes ripping the dress from my body. This is it. There’s no stopping them now.

“Well, what can I say? She is beautiful and he’s human.” No, he’s a monster. A real man would never do this. Nor would a man allow this to happen or barrel his fist into my jaw. The one in gray may be the one to rape and torture me, but the one in navy is just as dangerous, just as responsible for what’s about to happen to me. Though, as I grapple with what is to come, I consider Damon and what it will do to him when he finds me. After what happened to his mother, this will destroy him. Knowing that pulls loud, desperate cries from me as the man in gray pulls a knife from his pocket and gets to work cutting the ropes from my wrists and ankles.

Damon—I pinch my eyes closed and do my best to think only of him. I revisit our last moment together, the one where I told him I’d fight to get back to him. I said I would fight for us, because I’m going to marry him. I picture myself doing just that as the man in gray pulls me from the chair and throws me onto the dusty, dirty floor. I scream as the concrete tears into my exposed flesh. My hands and knees sting as they bleed. I know I should try to run, but my body has given up on me. As the man moves toward me, unhooking his belt and unbuttoning his pants, I close my eyes once more, retreating to the only place, the only man, who can make me feel safe. Fresh tears spew from me as I do.

I wear a nude, jewel-encrusted dress with a flowy white mermaid skirt. It has a sweetheart neckline and long off-the-shoulder sleeves. I shimmer like a diamond as I walk down a blurry aisle toward Damon. I can’t make out our surroundings or who is in the audience, but I see him. He waits for me, dressed in an all-black suit, with a smile on his face.

As I feel unfamiliar hands on my body, I focus even harder on my fantasy. I move faster toward Damon and his outstretched hand. As a sharp pain between my legs draws another scream from me, I grab hold of Damon’s hand. He pulls me close to him and wraps me up in the arms I’ve always felt safe in. I do my best to pretend I’m with him now, to pretend he’s the one thrusting inside me. Though it doesn’t work, because he would never touch me like this. He would never hurt me like this.

Sharp pain rips through me to the point that I can’t ignore it any longer. I can’t disassociate. I am fully present and I am terrified. Terrified by what is happening, but also of what is to come. They promised my brother they’d torture me for seven days and they aren’t wasting any time getting started. How will I survive this? But that’s just it, I won’t. I’m not meant to survive.

Knowing this, I fight to get back to my mental safe place one last time before giving in to my fate. Once more in Damon’s arms, I look up at him and I kiss him. It’s a kiss that feels like an oath. And I pledge myself to him, so that at least one version of us gets the happily-ever-after we both so desperately wanted. There was always a part of me that felt we were destined for a tragic end. I just never could’ve imagined this.

42

Back at the Compound, in the war room just off the main courtyard, I sit, motionless, at one end of the long briefing table as Gio goes over all the details of Anastasia’s abduction and leads a discussion on the plan to rescue her and Aidan from the other end. He addresses the four men of B&B—Zane, Xander, Killian, and Milo—and the three of Aidan’s men who decided to join us with a calm, matter-of-fact demeanor that exists in stark contrast to the war raging inside me. I feel like a grenade with a finicky pin. One wrong move and I will explode, taking everyone nearby down with me.

The scenes of Ana’s abduction—of her hanging, beaten and unconscious, over one of two men’s shoulders—displayed on the large monitor behind Gio makes everything I feel inside a million times worse. I was the first one back to the Compound, so I was the one to review the hotel camera footage and track them to the holding location. The images of her being taken have haunted me for the two hours since. It took everything in me not to go after her the second I knew where they were holding her. But Gio talked sense into me. If I would’ve walked in there alone, without knowing the building or how many hostiles I’d face, there’s no way either one of us would’ve walked out alive. And that’s the plan—to find a way for all of us to walk out alive. Yet, the more time that passes, the less I care about that outcome. I just need her safe, even if that means I take her place.

“We’ve tracked them to a warehouse outside of town. It sits on the bank of the Mississippi. We have a few drones in stealth mode hovering to provide continuous footage. We’ll need someone to stay behind to monitor them and provide intel through our headsets. Which is an unfortunate shame, because they’ve noted more hostiles than we were expecting.” Gio makes eye contact with me then as a grim expression befalls him. After my outburst, Gio thought it best if he handled the drone, so this is my first time seeing what our infrared technology picked up. I lean forward and place my hands flat on the wooden table to brace myself as Gio displays the new images.

“Jesus,” Milo says as the monitor lights up with red bodies on every floor of the warehouse. There’s even some patrolling the perimeter of the building. The Izzo brothers, Zane and Xander, who are never ones to back down from a fight, share a look. Even with Aidan’s men, of which we were expecting more, they’ve got us in numbers. And with their own specialty weapons, we can’t rely on our technology to win this war.

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