Page 39 of Ruthless Desire

Before I can talk myself out of it, I grab a croissant, tearing into it with abandon. Flaky, buttery goodness explodes on my tongue, and I barely stifle a moan. It's quite possibly the best thing I've ever tasted.

"Dammit," I mutter around a mouthful, hating myself for giving in. But I can't stop. I devour everything on the tray, washing it down with rich, fragrant coffee.

As I lick the last crumbs from my fingers, a new kind of dread settles over me. How long before I give in to Dante's other... offerings? How long before I crave more than just his food, his gifts?

How long before I crave him?

The thought sends me scrambling to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before I retch, bringing up everything I just ate. I cling to the cool porcelain, body shaking with the force of my sobs.

"Daddy," I whimper, closing my eyes against a fresh wave of tears. "I need you. Please... please find me."

But even as I pray for rescue, a small, traitorous voice whispers in the back of my mind: What if you don't want to be found?

Chapter 14 Dante

The stale air reeks of copper and fear, the floor painted in shades of agony only I can conjure. Vito Rizzo kneels before me, his $10,000 suit ripped and stained crimson, Armani reduced to a abstract monument to my rage. He should have known better than to cross me.

His mistake…

"Please, Dante," Vito wheezes, bloodied spittle dotting his chin. "It was just business. Let me make amends - I'll give you double the territory, triple the cut. Your own private island to rule however you want!"

The sheer nerve of this weasel - as if there's any corner of this world I don't already own. I crouch, bringing us eye to eye, watching him flinch away from whatever he sees swirling in my gaze.

"You know, Vito, most men grovel so prettily when they realize their 'business' has earned them a first-class ticket to hell." I reach out, smearing his tears with the pad of my thumb. "But you? You still think you have cards left to play. How...quaint."

His body wracks with fresh sobs as I rise, brushing invisible lint off my sleeves - a picture of elegant violence. I can almost hear puzzlement oozing from him, a silent plea for mercy. As if he ever showed that courtesy to the women he trafficked, the souls he crushed beneath his Ferragamos.

"Oh Vito," I sigh, letting disappointment color my tone. "If you'd kept your sins to extortion and drug peddling, we wouldn't be here. But you just had to start trading flesh like cattle, staining my streets with your filth."

I let that hang in the air, the damning truth that will haunt him into oblivion. Fury uncoils in my guts, a cobra preparing to strike. No one peddles human misery in my city. Not without paying the price in blood.

"Boss?" Alonzo's gruff baritone cuts through my musings. "How do you want to handle the clean-up?"

I glance back at him, his hulking frame nearly blocking the exit. Like a good dog, always awaiting my command. But I'm not done toying with my prey.

"Leave him." I flick an imperious hand at the quivering sack of shit before me. "Let him live long enough to comprehend his folly. To realize that every scream, every shattered bone was a choice."

I lean close one last time, breathing in the stench of voided bowels and fear-sweat. "Savor your last moments, Vito. Reflect on your sins. But know that when your time comes - and it will come - I'll be there to welcome you to hell personally."

Then I'm striding away, Alonzo falling into step like a loyal shadow. I can't linger, not when a far sweeter prize awaits, trussed and trembling in her gilded cage. My Natalie. The only soul as fractured and hungry as my own.

She haunts me with every breath, the dark chaos of her gift clinging to my blackest fantasies. I see her in the spray of gore on tile, the velvet caress of a freshly sharpened blade. A poisonous flower I'll pluck again and again, until the fatal beauty of her ruin is seared into eternity.

"Alonzo, have Doc waiting on standby," I call over my shoulder, my mind already ten steps and two schemes ahead. "Once Vito slips into the abyss, I want every inch of him violated. Let's give his famiglia something truly unforgettable to dredge from the river."

My consigliere grunts assent, busy barking orders into his cell. Ever the efficient machine, my Alonzo. But all other matters fall to static as the elevator zooms me closer to her - my darkest muse, my twisted seductress.

Shadowcrest is cloaked in shadow, a subtly shifting chiaroscuro of desires best left unspoken. Natalie stands at the window, her silhouette like some tragic heroine painted in shades of yearning and dread. I stalk closer, savoring her tension, the ripple of barely leashed defiance she wears like a shield.

"Still trying to will yourself wings?" I ask, coming to rest a hairsbreadth from her back, caging her in with my presence. "We both know you're exactly where you belong. Where you've always belonged."

She whirls to face me, disgust and desire warring in the thundercloud of her gaze. "And where's that, Dante?" she hisses. "Under your boot? Collared and chained to the foot of your bed?"

The image hits me like a shot of raw lust, searing and visceral. I crowd closer, pinning her against the glass with the hard lines of my body.

"Oh no, my wicked girl. Mere restraints could never hold a creature like you." I breathe the words into the hollow of her throat, tasting her pulse flutter wildly beneath my lips. "You'll kneel for me of your own twisted accord. You'll beg so sweetly for me to ruin you, knowing it's the only way you'll ever feel whole."

She shudders, caught between revulsion and that traitorous heat I can smell rising from her skin. It calls to me, that ghostly bouquet of hatred and hunger. I want to roll in it, let it seep into my lungs until she's all I breathe.

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