Page 35 of Ruthless King
“Oh?”
“I’m in the mood for a drive. Take us to Havienna.”
My eyes widen, and he nods, stroking his chin.
“You recognize that name, ehtigre?” He reaches for me again, fingering a lock of my hair. “I’m sure your employer told you all about that. But how much will his money be worth when I’m through with you?” Switching effortlessly to Italian, he murmurs, “Tell me your name, little hellcat. I don’t think you’ll like what lies in store for you if you don’t.”
He fits the part of intimidating captor; I will give him that. His body is practically balanced on his knees, his eyes boring into my own, his tone a lethal whisper. At the back of my mind, I think I should feel some ounce of alarm.
But I don’t. I feel nothing.
Donatello Vanici cannot hurt me any more than he already has.
I’d bet my life on that.
11
WILLOW
Within minutes, he grows bored of me and returns to his previous position, slumped against his seat, his gaze focused on the window. Alarm makes me stiffen, and I cut my eyes to the door, wishing I had the energy to wrench it open and leave. I prefer the anger. The threatening side of him is easier to withstand.
Because when his eyes soften… Something in his expression now recalls those old, peaceful days when I would curl up by his side with a book while he pored over ledgers or business documents. Little had I known what his true work entailed.
In my ignorance, I only knew that I enjoyed being beside him, sneaking glances at his stern, focused face while he’d been too distracted to notice. No matter how lost in the details of his empire he became, he would always humor my presence. Always.
His large hand would absently stroke through my hair in acknowledgment, and I can still recall the feeling of calm that used to come over me. A feeling I haven’t been able to ever achieve since.
God, I used to live in such awe of this man.
Now, without the lens of childhood to distort him, all I see is a cruel bastard no different than any other in this twisted war of men. But Mischa doesn’t clothe himself in the blood of dead children by way of armor.
“It must be exhausting to be so angry with me,” he taunts, leaning his head back against his seat. He lets his eyes fall shut, an act that betrays just how little he fears me.
A smart woman would lunge for the knife. Instead, I lower my gaze to the strip of flesh bared by his ruined shirt and can’t seem to do anything more than stare. My fingers twitch, my teeth grinding together as I imagine his reasoning for having that name tattooed there. For sympathy? Pity?
It certainly can’t be out of guilt. He had weeks to find me before Mischa Stepanov entered Nicolai’s that fateful day—but he never came.
I don’t even realize I’m moving until it’s too late. My fingers twitch in the still air, reaching across the distance between us, grappling for the lapel of his tailored suit jacket. It’s expensive judging from the fabric’s softness—a world apart from the simplistic clothing he used to wear.
But he still smells like tobacco. Like old, expensive cigars and musk. Like fresh air and rain. My lungs greedily fill with his scent, comparing it to those old dangerous memories. My throat tightens at the threat of them, and I wrench my hand away just as he stirs, opening his eyes.
Rather than react in alarm, he snatches my wrist, running his thumb along the back of my hand as if testing the flesh for any hint of my identity. These smooth, manicured hands obscure so much of who I really am. His frown deepens.
“You are not Safiya,” he says coldly. But then he raises his free hand, tugging his shirt aside, revealing the planes of his chest and the letters scrawled across it in scarlet ink. Tightening his grip on me, he forces me to touch the curve of the S. The A next, which curves around the outline of his pec. The f…
“Do you want to hear what I did to her?” he asks, though there is no pride in his voice. Just exhaustion that matches the wrinkles etched into the flesh around his eyes. “I lied to her,” he tells me, forcing my fingers to trace the path of the I. “I told her I would always protect her, though I knew then that I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I sacrificed her love to my hate, and at the time… I didn’t regret it. You know what they call me,tigre? The men who hired you and the others. Il Mostro.” He switches to Italian, using his free hand to stroke my cheek. I don’t know why I let him. Why I’m so riveted by the flesh beneath my fingertips. Up close, it’s easy to tell that this tattoo wasn’t done carefully like Mischa’s many adornments. With every new child, he has their name added to a tally on his back, his way of marking his growing family.
Those carefully inked designs are nothing like this. Raw, jagged lines. Smeared ink as though something other than a professional instrument made the initial incision. And I can picture exactly what from my own experience with the weapon—a knife. A small one, wickedly sharp, utilized crudely to form the final creation inch by inch. To stain the skin, the creator had to use raw ink, rubbing it into the open wounds for no other reason than to cause pain. Agony. Horrified, I realize that this isn’t a tattoo.
It’s a punishment.
“You’re disgusted,” he murmurs, dragging the pad of his thumb to the corner of my mouth. My reaction doesn’t seem to bother him. If anything, he relishes in my discomfort, swiping his tongue along his lower lip in satisfaction. “Aren’t you, littletigre? Horrified by what I’ve done. Your boss fed you a lie, didn’t he? That you could stick your little knife through my chest. Kill me. Avenge whatever wrong you think I’ve done against you. But he was wrong.” He laughs and presses down on my lip to expose my clenched teeth. “You couldn’t kill me, even if you wanted to. I’ve been dead for a long damn time. You really want to hurt me? Tell me your name. End this game for good. Kill any hope I may have that you could be…”
His hand falls from my face, but his grip on my wrist doesn’t relent, forcing me to feel where a crudely shaped letter y ends, roughly over his heart.
“You are not Safiya,” he tells me, applying so much pressure my nail is driven into his skin. “Say one little word and prove that to me. That will do the job better than any knife,tigre. Because Safiya? I didn’t kill her with my own two hands—that would have been too easy. No. I had to see the look on her face when I delivered her into the arms of a twisted, sick son of a bitch. I had to watch her cry for me, unable to make a sound. She couldn’t scream even if she wanted.”
He shoves me back so hard I slam against the leather seat cushions. Hunched over, he tears at his hair with both hands, but his expression is anything but anguished. He smiles, teeth bared, eyes flashing with a maniacal gleam.
