Page 38 of The Devil's Den

“I’m your daughter,” I barely manage to breathe out.

“Daughter.” He snickers, finally releasing me, standing straighter, while I pant.

“Clean this mess up and go serve me my food when you’re done,” he throws out calmly before walking away from me like he’s done my whole life.

* * *

MATTEO AGE 19

I was about to fall asleep when the door creaks. Those bastards had me training late, then killing two others. I often wonder how good it’d feel to use those weapons on myself instead, but then she stops me.

Aida.

When those thoughts hit me, it’s like she knows, jumping into my mind as though she’s there, begging me to stay, to love her even when it’s hard.

And I do. I love her so goddamn much, I’d raze the world to see her smile. But lately, she’s been drowning with the weight of her father’s cruelty. And fuck, I want to murder him for the way he treats her. He deserves to die painfully. Slowly. And he will. We will rise.

But with every damn year, I fail to convince myself that I’ll ever kill him. But I can’t give up either. I gotta believe it’ll happen.

One day.

“Aida? Is that you?”

She doesn’t answer, but I can tell it’s her from the way she moves over the stairs, so elegantly. She lets out a sniffle and the muscles in my entire body instantly harden as I rise to my feet.

“What happened?”

She appears, tears streaking down her cheeks, her neck an angry red.

I inhale a fiery breath. “Did he do that?” I snap, my tone razor sharp. “Did he fucking hurt you?”

She nods slowly, her chest rising and falling with gasping exhales.

Fuuuck!

“Come here. Let me hold you.” Because that’s all I can do. She rushes into my arms, her fingers clasping the back of my neck as she cries.

Even with the amount of rage that’s in me right now, for her, I soften. Because she needs me that way. I lower us onto the mattress, and instead of sitting beside me, she straddles my thighs, crying into the crook of my neck.

My hand brushes up her back, my fingers threading into the long, waves of her silky hair. “I’ve got you. I’m right here. I’ll never leave you, not if I can help it.”

She draws back, a palm curling over my cheek. The way her tear-filled gaze delves into mine, I can’t help the intense feelings surging through me. There are so many of them and they hit me all at once.

I love her.

My breaths labor out of me, each one more difficult than the last.

My cock stiffens, even while I don’t want it to. She’s upset. How could I get hard now? I try to maneuver her, so she doesn’t feel it, but when I attempt to, she pushes her hips deeper into it.

“Fuck, Aida…please don’t,” I plead, my voice hoarse, desperate. For her. We’ve never done that. Damn, if I didn’t think about it constantly, but the way our life is, it’s not possible. “We can’t do this here.”

“Why not?” she whispers, her brows bowing. “I want my first time to be with you.”

And that confession, that no one has been with her, it wrecks me. Because I want that too, for her to be my first. Yet I know it’ll probably never happen, that her first time will be with someone else.

It has to be.

Damn, does that realization hurt like hell.

---