Page 74 of Owning Nicci

“Nicci, stop. Nicci,stop this!Fucking stop it!I’m your father, and I’m ordering you?—”

“Shut the fuck up!” I twist, glaring at my father as I break the fourth of my brother’s fingers, his screams mingling with my father’s shouts. “Shut up, or I’ll cut out your fucking tongue so I don’t have to listen to this bullshit while I work!”

“I can do it for you if you want,” Savio says lazily, grinning at me from where he’s standing. “Wouldn’t want you to have to interrupt what you’re in the middle of.”

I hesitate. I’m high on the feeling of power, and something in me thrills to the idea of giving Savio orders, instead of the other way around.

“Do it,” I tell him, my voice as sharp and curt as any order he ever gave me. He grins, sliding a hunting knife free of his belt as he strides toward my father, grabbing a pair of pliers to help him do the job. I reach up, breaking another of my brother’s fingers just as Savio reaches my father’s side.

“Nicci.” My father pleads, his eyes wide and panicked as he looks at Savio. “Don’t do this. Tell him to stop. Please?—”

“Funny.” I wrench the pliers down as my brother screams again. “I think I said those exact words when you told my brother to show me how men like their dicks sucked, since I lost Dimitri and clearly wasn’t doing a good enough job.” I look at Savio. “Cut it off.”

“My pleasure.” Savio grins, reaching up to wrench my father’s mouth open as he reaches in with the pliers.

An hour passes. The shed is thick with the smell of blood and sweat. My father’s chin soaked with blood and drool. My brother’s hands mangled as he cries. I step back, looking at them both, feeling almost dizzy with the sense of satisfaction that I get from seeing them both like this—at my mercy, bound and tortured and begging for me to stop.

I don’t stop. Just like neither of them ever did.

I take Savio’s hunting knife from him and use it to do the same to my brother’s tongue. And then I step up to my brother, the knife pressed to his groin.

“I want you to think about how much you enjoyed what you did to me,” I hiss. “How many times you did it. How much pleasure you got from it. And I want you to think about the fact that you’re never, ever going to feel that again. I’m about to cut your filthy fucking cock off, and you’re going to bleed to death on this floor.”

Panic overtakes him at that. He writhes and kicks, screaming and drooling, his mouth open as he tries to speak and can’t. I look at Savio, who nods, moving to tie his feet so he can’t lash out and kick me.

I look up at my brother, the first man who got to abuse me, the first in a long line of men that my father handed me over to as punishment. And I don’t stop looking at his face, not for a second, as I cut away his flesh and fling it to the floor, leaving him screaming and bleeding as he hangs there.

From behind me, I can hear a series of garbled sounds coming from my father. I turn, tossing the knife onto the table, and look at my brother. His face is pale, his breathing ragged, and I know he doesn’t have long. He’ll bleed to death in a few moments. There’s more that I could do to my father, too—but suddenly, I want it over. I’m hot and sweaty, and it feels like there’s some poetic justice to them both dying at the same time, both knowing in the same moment the immediacy of being blinked out of existence.

I grab the gun Savio holds out to me, and I point it at my father.

“You can both go to fucking hell.”

I pull the trigger. My father’s body jerks, his mouth open on a plea that he can’t speak any longer, and blood splatters from his head, dripping down his waxy flesh as he slumps in the ties.

“You did good,” Savio murmurs next to me. “I’m proud of you,principessa. You’re free now.”

For a split second, I hesitate. The memory of last night is still close—the memory of Savio’s hands in my hair, his breath in my ear, his body sliding over mine. The memory of our shared pleasure, of intimacy that I’ve never felt before, of closeness that I never thought I’d have.

We could be something more. But this is my chance at freedom.Realfreedom. And I haven’t come this far to change my plans now.

I turn towards him, the gun pointed at his forehead.

“I’m not free yet. But I’m about to be.”

30

SAVIO

It takes a moment for my mind to catch up to what’s happening. The moment that I do—the moment that I fully register that Nicci is aiming a gun at me, her mouth set in a hard line as her finger curls around the trigger, my momentary shock turns to hot, burning anger.

How fucking dare she?

I brought her father and brother here. I stuck by her through every one of the hits on the Crows. I held her while she cried and listened to her story, and I…

I fucking love her.

My chest tightens as I look at her. Her blue eyes are gleaming, her face bone-white, her jaw clenched. She’s a twitch away from pulling the trigger, a single hairbreadth from my death. And yet, looking at her, I feel sure that she loves me, too.

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