Page 15 of Capo

I thought I had felt terror before, but the fright that seizes my chest and wraps cold fingers around my throat is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

“Please, no,” I whisper. “I’ll do anything.”

He looks me over and scoffs. “You’re not even fuckable. Maybe some of my men can have a go at you. They’re not picky.”

Tears well up in my eyes and start rolling down my cheeks. “No, please.”

“Stand up.”

“Please.”

“Stand the fuck up!”

His growl is so vicious that my knees buckle, the rush of fear so primal it almost makes me wet myself. My legs barely obey me as I one-handedly push to my feet.

“Take off your clothes.”

“What? No!”

Salvatore takes one long step forward, almost nose to nose. I’m not a short girl, but he’s way taller than I am and lethal threat radiates off him as he stares me down. “Take off your fucking clothes. If I have to repeat an order one single fucking time again, I’ll beat you. Got it?”

I nod, my whole body rigid to the breaking point. I unhook the sling around my neck and look around me for somewhere to put it. Laying it on the backrest of the chair, I then start to squirm out of my shirt. It’s a shapeless shirt I borrowed from the hospital. I had a tight, black, glittery top on when they admitted me. I could never have gotten that over the cast. Under the shirt, I’ve only got a bandage around my ribs and my bra, a black push-up bra meant for a fun night out. My breasts are too large to go braless even though it was a bitch to put it on. When I let the shirt fall over the backrest too, I cover my chest with my arms and plead with him, wordlessly, not to do this. Is he going to rape me? Rape me and then kill me? Have his men take me? I should just ask him to kill me. I can’t do that. Never.

“Go on,” he growls. I don’t see interest in his eyes, even though he looks at my breasts. It’s as if I’m a thing he’s evaluating.

Fighting not to sob but failing miserably as my breath hitches on each intake of air, I flick open the button on my pants. These are the pants I wore on the night out, though, black, wide legs, snug around my butt. Pulling down the zipper, I realize I have borrowed hospital underwear on. I’ve never felt so humiliated in my life as I let the pants fall to the floor, bunching around my ankles.

Salvatore’s eyes sweep across my body, then he laughs. “That’s the ugliest fucking pair of panties I’ve seen in my life.”

My cheeks heat up. “It’s not my fucking fault,” I sneer. I cry out as he backhands me. Not overly hard, but my already bruised face is too sensitive and I gasp from the pain.

“You’ve got to learn some fucking manners,” he growls.

“What for,” I spit, “you’ll kill me anyway.”

“Get out of your fucking grandma panties, now, or I won’t fucking get a hard-on ever again in my life.”

I can’t help thinking that sounds like a good idea. My gaze darts to his pants, and sure enough, there’s a bulge. He’s liking this–my humiliation–because I can only assume he isn’t turned on by my broken appearance. One-handedly pushing down the waistband, I shimmy out of the panties and let them fall too. I can’t help glancing down at my thin carpet of light red hair down below. Shaving my pussy wasn’t really something anyone considered at the hospital.

“Don’t move.” He takes a step to the side, studying me. Lightheaded with horror, I try to remember how to breathe. Disappearing out of my sight, he moves around and stands behind me. The only thing that is heard is his breaths. “Spread your legs.”

I freeze up. “No, please.”

“Shut the fuck up.” He slaps my butt so hard that I stumble forward and I cry out in pain. “I warned you about obeying my orders. For every time I have to repeat myself, there’ll be consequences, and since I just had to repeat myself again—”

The next slap is much harder, sending a shockwave up to my already hurting brain. I lift a foot to step out of the bunch of clothes on the floor and immediately spread my legs.

Silence. A low, almost animalistic growl.

“Stay.”

Fingers fiddling with my bra clasp make me gasp. He pushes it off me and it falls to the floor, joining my other clothes. My breaths come out as nothing but short inefficient gasps as I stare at the bookshelves before me, the spines having titles in languages I don’t recognize. The room spins. I really don’t dare to move when I listen to the faint rustle of his feet on the carpet as he walks away.

“Ivan,” he says, the sudden sound making me jerk.

“Yes, sir,” comes a disembodied voice through a loudspeaker.

“You can bring in the first.”

The first? The first what? I sway, feeling as if I’ll faint. A low rumble from Salvatore makes me freeze up, realizing that if I move, he’ll punish me. If I question him, he’ll punish me. If I beg, he’ll punish me.

I stepped into the lion’s den, and I’ll be devoured. I just made the biggest mistake in my life, and that’s no small feat.

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