Page 34 of Last Hand

This isn’t sex. It isn’t rape, not exactly, not anymore. It’s something else—a claiming, a marking, a debasement so complete that I feel myself fragmenting, pieces of my identity floating away like ash from a burning building.

His tongue moves with practiced skill, somehow finding places that don’t hurt, places that—in any other context, with any other person—might even feel good. The contrast between this almost-pleasure and the searing pain that preceded it is disorienting, nauseating. My body, already confused by trauma, doesn’t know how to respond.

Vittorio makes a sound against my flesh—approval or disappointment, I can’t tell. His hands slide beneath my hips, lifting me slightly, changing the angle of his assault. His tongue probes deeper, tasting blood and violence and violation.

“So sweet,” he murmurs against me, the vibration of his voice sending unwanted sensations through my traumatized nerve endings. “Even like this.”

I want to vomit. I want to scream. I want to kick him in his smug, monstrous face and run until my legs give out. Adrien’s life depends on my compliance, on my surrender. So I lie still, tears streaming silently down my temples and into my hair, and I endure.

Time stretches, elastic and uncertain. It could be minutes or hours that I lie there, pinned beneath Vittorio’s mouth, trapped in this strange purgatory between pain and unwanted stimulation. My body betrays me in small ways—a quickened breath, a slight arch when he finds a particularly sensitive spot.Each involuntary response feels like another violation, another piece of myself lost.

Finally, he lifts his head, his mouth glistening with evidence of his actions. He wipes it casually on the back of his hand, studying my face with that same clinical interest.

I think of Adrien, still watching, still suffering. I wonder if he hates me now, if he blames me for this horror we’ve fallen into. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. This is my fault— my stupidity, my recklessness. I got us into this, and now I can’t get us out of it.

Vittorio’s tongue moves with deliberate purpose, no longer exploring just focused, intent. There’s something mechanical about it now, a task to be completed rather than a pleasure to be savored. I feel nothing—not pain, not pleasure, not even revulsion anymore. Just a distant awareness that my body is being used in ways I never consented to.

When he finally stops, lifting his head to study my face again, I keep my eyes closed. I can’t bear to see the satisfaction in his gaze, the ownership he believes he’s claimed over me.

I force my eyes open, blinking to clear the tears. His face hovers above mine, studying my expression with something that might almost be concern.

“There’s my girl,” he murmurs, brushing a strand of hair from my forehead with surprising tenderness. “The worst is over now. You did well.”

The praise lands like acid on an open wound as if I’ve accomplished something worthy of recognition. As if surviving his violation is an achievement to be celebrated. “Now you’ll be rewarded for telling the truth,” he murmurs so low it has me staring at him, wondering what he means. He leans over to the bedside table and retrieves something from the drawer. My eyes see the glint of metal just as he twists, then the next secondthe bang of it resonates through the space, making my ears ring, and I scream as he puts a bullet between Adrian’s eyes.

EIGHT

Leone

I watch my mother from the corner of my eye. She hasn’t moved in minutes. Her hands are still wrapped around the edge of the chair. Her eyes aren’t here anymore. She’s somewhere else. Some other time. And I think I already know where, back to before she met my father. Before the life she lived with my father was forced on her.

“I… What happened?” I ask, retaking my seat while my father studies my mother worriedly after her outburst.

“She was seventeen.” My father sighs heavily. “She was away at school in Paris and set to marry on her eighteenth birthday. I found out through an acquaintance that she was spotted at a school there, so I went to Paris in search of her. When I did find her, I took her and kept her hidden.” My mother snaps out of it the moment my father speaks again.

“For how long?” Milo asks, leaning forward. For once, my father doesn’t sneer at him, instead he glances nervously at my mother before reluctantly answering.

“A year,” he answers, and I flinch.

“You hid my mother for a year?”

“Yes. I moved her between safe houses. Only my most loyal men knew. I told my family nothing. If the Moretti’s had found out too soon, they would’ve burned me out of Calabria, and we would’ve lost everything.”

“So, how did you get away with it?”

“I got her pregnant,” he says flatly. No wonder the woman couldn’t stand to look at me growing up. “Once you existed, once she started to show, I had leverage. The Moretti’s couldn’t cover up a bastard born from their blood. And they definitely couldn’t afford to insult the Romanovs by admitting they’d lost their bride.”

He smirks. “So they cut a deal. Let me marry her officially. In exchange, the Moretti name became part of Pressutt’s through an alliance. Their assets. Their routes. Their reach. Everything they promised to Anatoly Romanov…”

“Became yours,” I finish for him.

“And the Romanovs never forgave it,” Milo mutters. “Neither did Mikhail.” He groans now, realizing just how bad this is. It means he isn’t just after taking everything; he is hoping to destroy our family and the only way to hurt me is to hurt Fallon. Fuck!

“Mikhail was raised in his father’s ashes, forced to rebuild an empire I burned to the ground. Anatoly lost everything because of me. I ensured it once I rose to power by forcing my way into every corner of his reach and picking it off. I stole the girl and destroyed the deal and made sure he knew who he fucked with.”

My mother finally speaks, voice quiet. “You didn’t steal me. You destroyed me.”

Everyone turns to look at her.

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