Page 113 of Ruthless Desire

"Did you truly think he gave a damn about you or your family, solnyshko?" Dante arches one mocking eyebrow, his tone dripping with condescension. "Enzo's first loyalty has always been to me and the life I gave him after he was nothing but a street rat hustling drugs."

No. Don't be emotional, Nat - Dante is playing with your head...

My eyes blaze with renewed fury as realization dawns. "Enzo wouldn't betray me like that! Not after swearing on his life to find my dad."

Dante lets out a harsh bark of laughter as he flings me over his shoulder in a gut-churning caveman carry. "Did you truly think he'd defy me for some misguided attachment to you?"

"Put me down this instant, you arrogant prick!" I rage against the indignity, my voice shredded and raw. "I'm not some lamb to be dragged before the sacrificial altar of your depravity!"

But my defiant snarls ricochet right off Dante's implacable presence, that low rumbling chuckle reverberating through me in a deeply visceral manner I despise. No matter how incensed I become, my body remains desperately, traitorously attuned to his on an elemental level.

Dante led me down to the basement level of the compound, where a makeshift interrogation room had been set up. The stark contrast between the opulent upper floors and this grim space made my stomach churn. His powerful strides eat up the ground as we descend into the bowels of his subterranean lair - the scent of steel and motor oil overwhelming. When the colossal doors grind apart, the cavernous space beyond is shrouded in gloomy half-light.

Jagged shadows loom over heavy machinery and construction detritus scattered with sinister randomness. At the center of this bleak purgatory, a frail, crumpled figure strains against fraying ropes cinched cruelly over bony wrists and ankles. My breath locks in my throat as the man's gaunt, haunted features emerge from the gloom - those pale, watery eyes widening in naked horror at the sight of me slung over Dante's shoulder like a hunted animal.

"N-Natalie?" The withered rasp is a fractured whisper that splinters what remains of my heart. "Oh god, baby... I'm so s-sorry..."

Every last illusion I clung to shatters with those words. Because staring into the naked desolation hollowing my father's gaze, I know with sickening certainty that Dante's cruel revelations were true.

Dante halts abruptly before unceremoniously flinging me to the ground in a bone-jarring sprawl. I hit the bare concrete gracelessly, wheezing against the blinding flare of pain as I fight to cling to consciousness. When his looming silhouette eclipses what's left of the meager light, the words are a merciless rasp dripping with contempt.

"So at last, the sordid truth is laid bare, Natalie. Behold your beloved patriarch - the man whose supposed honor and integrity you revered above all. Who sold you to me like a prime filly at a backroom auction... for the paltry, pissant sum of half a million dollars."

A feral snarl tears from my throat as I surge upright, every incandescent shard of fury propelling me to shove against the scorching wall of Dante's chest with both palms. The reflex is pure, primal violence - the baser need to lash out against his calculated torment eclipsing any rational fear.

"You sadistic bastard!" I spit with venom, scouring my words raw against the maelstrom of disgust and outrage. "How dare you torment him like this? Y-You're... evil..."

"Please... please, sweetheart." My father's reedy voice fractures against my ribcage like shrapnel. "I never meant for any of this! I only wanted to give you a real life away from the hell I'd put us through..."

His anguished entreaties, the frantic thrashing against binding ropes - it's the pitiful struggle of a rabid animal backed into an inescapable corner. And still, some naive, softer part of me longs to soothe the wounded creature with meaningless placations. To absolve him of the multitude of sins staining his decrepit soul simply to recapture the comforting lies of the past.

But I've been flayed raw and reborn into Dante's remorseless truth.

"You lied to me." The graveled words no longer sound like my voice - just a hollow rasp scoured into existence by the sandstorm of betrayal. "For years you spouted bullshit ideals about honor and self-sacrifice. When in reality, you were nothing more than another soulless bastard willing to peddle your own daughter's flesh on the altar of your self-destructive vices."

I can't tear my gaze away from the obsidian granite of Dante's features as he turns, upper lip curled in a sneer of disgust aimed at the wretched creature in the chair. Yet even amidst the roiling maelstrom of his scorn, there burns an undeniable blazon of something far more unsettling - a possessive, all-consuming hunger.

The heat of Dante's body sears my chilled skin as he moves in close, one calloused palm cupping my jaw with shocking tenderness. I'm trapped, pinned in place by the sheer, unyielding intensity of his stare finally turned fully upon me.

"The sad truth, little paintbrush?" His deep rasp slurs against the throbbing pulse at my throat as he imprisons me in the scorching circle of his arms. "Your stupid 'daddy' doesn't love you nearly as much as I do."

The rough pad of his thumb traces the seam of my lips in a lingering caress brimming with dark promise. I suck in a sharp breath at the implication, stunned into silence by the predatory ardor glinting in those hooded obsidian depths.

"I'd burn this entire world to ash before allowing harm to come to you or the son you'll give me," Dante murmurs, the sinful timbre of his words jolting straight to my core. "Can your wretched old man claim that same depth of devotion, moy voron? Or were you always simply a means to an end, just another vice to indulge until you'd outgrown your usefulness?”

My mouth parts on a shuddering inhalation, because the harsh truths he wields are inescapable - sharpened into razor-edged crescents designed to strip me of every hard-won denial. In the brutal geometry of Dante’s world, there exists only elemental symbiosis of single minded want and the spoils of the conquered.

And I’ve been meticulously disassembled, rendered into his most prized acquisition.

“Yes,” I finally rasp, the word a shattered exhalation of defeated acceptance. “I understand.”

A slow, triumphant smile curves Dante’s lips as he strokes the fullness of my lower lip with his thumb in a blatant brand of possession. “That’s my Good Girl.”

The hoarse approval in his tone sends a deeply perverted shiver of nascent surrender licking down my spine. There’s only inevitability awaiting in the severe, beautiful angles of Dante’s harsh visage.

A profane wanting I’ve fought viciously against until this moment…only to now crave the possibility of being unmade and resculpted into his idealized vision.

The agony of my father's betrayal grips me, an overwhelming wave of anguish that threatens to drown me. For years, I'd clung to the belief that he was the only parent who truly cared about me. My mother, lost to her insatiable craving for fame and heroin, had always been a distant shadow, more concerned with her own self-destruction than with the daughter she brought into this world.

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