Page 38 of Sin & Sapphire

“I need to get back to Yorkfield,” I said, instead of answering his question.

“She’s not an object that can be kept,” Valentin hissed. “No matter how much we tell her that.”

“Then what?” I snarled back. “We give her to the Tchérnovs? Fuck no.”

Valentin wrapped his arms around my waist and propped his chin on my shoulder so we could stare at Ana together.

“Don’t pretend you don’t want her too,” I continued, my eyes narrowing in irritation. Valentin needed her, even if he was too fucking stubborn to admit it.

His fingers tightened on my abdomen before abruptly relaxing. “I told her we’d make her our toy.”

“In exchange for?”

“In exchange for nothing. She has no choice.”

“Then why the fuck are you telling me to give her up?” I struggled to hold back my anger.

“Jealousy,” Valentin admitted. “You look at her like she’s the only thing you care about.”

I turned to face him, then cupped his cheek. “You and she are the only things I’veevercared about.”

“You don’t know her,” he said. “You’ve had less than a handful of conversations with her in her entire life.”

“I’ve watched her for a decade,” I protested. Paying private detectives to take pictures of her. Hacking cameras. Stalking her social media.

Valentin scoffed. “Against my advice.”

I shrugged. She was a drug I couldn’t quit, a drug I didn’t want to quit. And Valentin didn’t either. He might have given her to me, but keeping her, slowly training her to accept the pain she craved? That was my gift to him.

“We’re taking her back to Yorkfield with us,” I said firmly.

“Once we can trust her to run into a friend without accusing us of sex trafficking,” he answered dryly.

Relief washed through me. He wasn’t going to fight me on this.

“But she has to behave,” he added. “Or I’ll sell her off to the highest bidder.”

He wouldn’t. Valentin would never do that to me. He was softer than he liked anyone else to know. “She will,” I promised, the thought of instilling discipline in my sweet angel making me hard.

The thought of having American operations to defend from those Russian fuckers boggled my mind. I’d returned to Italy with our father almost twenty years ago and enforced his rule with an iron fist. What the fuck was I going to do with an operation of my own?

Ana whimpered in her sleep, then thrashed in the bed, her movements increasingly panicked. “No, please, no,” she cried out, before dissolving into unintelligible pleading, fighting her bonds but unable to escape.

I pulled away from Valentin to sit on the side of the bed, stroking Ana’s hair. “Wake up,” I murmured, but she didn’t, instead jerking her face away from me and whimpering in misery.

My heart broke for the beautiful, strong creature before me. Ana would hate knowing I’d witnessed her distress while she slept.

I slapped her face. “Wake up.”

Her eyes sprung open, and she looked around wildly. “Uncle Angelo?” A strange pressure appeared in my chest when she visibly relaxed at my presence.

“That’sSirto you now,” I told her quietly as I stroked her hair out of her face, then kept on stroking her forehead, unable to resist the siren’s call to touch her.

She blinked again, sweet in her sleepiness, then tugged on her wrists before realizing she was still trapped. Her pulse fluttered at her neck.

“I was having a nightmare,” she whispered to me, as if I were a loving parent, come to chase her monsters back under the bed.

But I wasn’t.

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