Page 2 of Stone

Stone comes home this evening, and my body is once again ignited with sparks of allurement usually missing from the coldness that is Casa Forte, my home.

Despite the luxury, comfort doesn’t exist here. It’s all a façade—a show of entitlement and wealth created from the underworld of society. One that poignant figures choose to ignore, as it suits them. The don of our family—my father, Benito Carrera—has ambitions to be a legend in our familia history. Albeit an evil one.

My father has been on tenterhooks and extra irrational for the past week, and he hasn’t been like this since the mysterious death of his best friend, Don. The man who my father insisted I call Uncle and used to make my skin crawl. Relief filled me upon his death, knowing I would not be pawned off to marry the man who was older than my father and looked at me like I was a piece of meat. He was also a well-known sadist who delighted in thedemise of innocent women and, most likely, children. Honestly, I would put nothing past the man with the cruel gleam in his murky gray eyes.

He was simply a monster.

The way he treated Stone and spoke about him caused hatred and sickness to churn inside me. Every time Stone’s name left Don’s lips, I became lightheaded at knowing I wouldn’t like what he’d say.

He and my father’s right-hand man, Vector, ridiculed and hurt Stone. They did not hide their contempt toward him, and my father made no attempts to stop it. It’s almost as if he delighted in Stone’s torment.

They’re cruel and evil, and I will hate them for it until the day I die.

My father speaks openly in front of me, so I’m well aware of the business he deals in. The trafficking of humans is one of them, and my stomach lurches every time it’s discussed, as if those innocent people don’t matter, as if the training compounds they keep them in are something to be proud of.

They talk about them like they’re prized cattle. Who is valuable and unique? Who is worth the most money? Who will go to auction? Then they spend their evening smoking Cuban cigars and gloating about how they intend on breaking their victims.

My brothers Azrael and Czar have been raised to take over my father’s legacy, and that sickens me more than anything else. They’re more than this sadistic world we live in, so much more. I have hope deep in my heart that they will see it one day and, more importantly, believe it.

We know that our half-brother Stone will not be an heir to our father’s fortune. We’ve all been told often enough that he’s not worth shit, despite my rebuttals.

Our father believes his bastard children owe him a debt for allowing them to live outside of wedlock, and he sure knows how to punish them for his downfalls.

Stone is covered in scars from what my father calls his repentance. The moment I set eyes on him as a teenager, I fell for his bright-blue eyes in a way no sister should think about her brother.

My heart raced, butterflies swirled in my stomach, and my vision became dreamy when my eyes locked with his. I saw past his bandages, his scars, his repentance. I saw past it all and only saw him—the lost boy. The boy with no memory, no mother and an absent father, and I loved him instantly when nobody else would.

I promised myself to keep my feelings for him hidden, knowing how wrong they were, how society would claim them as sickening; maybe I’m not so different from my father.

Because I failed miserably.

Chapter Two

Stone

With our father speaking, I keep my head down and concentrate on delivering my spoon to my mouth without spilling the soup. Something I learned not to do early on when I was invited to his home for dinner. Spilling soup on the tablecloth as a nervous teenager resulted in me having my fingers broken with a hammer while being restrained at the ankles and ass-fucked by my trainer for his sadistic pleasure. All the while, the men in the room laughed at my downfall and pain. Nope, definitely not spilling the soup.

My cheeks blaze at Sienna’s gaze on me. It makes my thick hands tremble whenever I’m around her, and today is no exception. I almost want to tell her to leave me alone, but I like her attention on me, even though I shouldn’t.

“Sienna,” Azrael hisses, pulling my attention to him and away from my spoon hovering midair.

She glares in his direction, raising her chin in that defiant way that makes me want to draw her pouty lips to my mouth and tug on them. “What? He hasn’t even greeted me,” she snaps.

Azrael’s eyes narrow as I place the spoon in my mouth and try to gauge if the soup is tomato flavored or not. It’s difficult to tell when you’ve bitten through the organ so many times you’ve lost sensation and taste.

She fidgets in her chair, and for the first time in weeks, I allow myself to drink her in, and my heart stutters. She’s delicate, slender, yet her modest summer dress fits her figure to perfection. Her back is ramrod straight, thanks to her training, and her hair is in a sleek ponytail, elongating her unmarked neck, and I close my eyes upon imagining it stained by my touch.

Then I snap my eyes open and mentally chastise myself. I can’t allow my inner thoughts to be discovered. Not only are they wrong because she’s my sister, but they’re also sick too.

My usually dead cock thickens with need, and I place my spoon in the bowl, incapable of feeding myself without receiving a punishment for it.

“Is there a problem with the food?” My father’s sinister voice cuts through the air as he wipes his mouth with the napkin and stares down the table to where I sit at the opposite end. A reminder of my place, not with the family at the head of the table, but at the end, alone.

Unwanted.

I clear my throat. “No, sir.” I quickly avert my gaze to avoid the sneer of disgust he always greets me with when speaking to me.

“Then why the fuck aren’t you eating it?” he booms. Sienna winces, and Azrael and Czar jump, and I want to wring the old fucker’s neck for it, but I remain seated and unmoving. Something tells me it’s because I’m told I only have partial hearing that I barely flinch at his dark tone, but I became accustomed to the loud, angry voices while living in the training compound he part-owns.

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