Page 42 of Damaged & Deadly

“My sister is coming for me. She’s got a group of gangsters behind her. The Rejects. They’ll come, and when they do, I’m bringing you with me.”

Her movements falter before she corrects herself. She doesn’t respond, and I can tell she doesn’t believe me. I don’t blame her, and I seriously fucking hope what I said is the truth.

When she doesn’t say anything else, I try again, “What’s your name?” Still, she ignores me as she continues to do as Santos ordered. I do my best to block out the sway of her hips and how close her barely covered breasts are to my face as I ramble, “I’m Luc. My sister is a badass. She kills assholes like Santos for fun, and family means everything to her.Imean everything to her.” I swallow back the emotion clogging my throat. “Shewillcome for me.”

The look in her eyes is so indescribably broken that I can’t put words to it, and the emptiness in her voice when she speaks damages me more than Santos’ physical abuse ever could. “Hope like that is a dangerous thing in a place like this. It will only make the crash land to reality hit harder. The sooner you accept that no one is coming to save you, the quicker you can come to terms with your new life. It will be better for you to stop fighting it and just give in.”

Anger licks down my spine. Anger for what Santos did to this girl. Anger for the life she’s endured and how irrevocably broken she is. “Is that what you did? You gave up?”

Her lips pinch, her eyes narrowing. Finally, a spark of emotion has entered her expression. “I learned how to survive, and if you want to make it out of here alive, you’ll take my advice.”

We lapse into silence, her words playing on repeat in my head and crashing into my confidence that Sawyer and the Rejects will come.

By the time Santos returns, he’s in a furious mood. Yanking the girl off me by her hair, he sends her flying across the room as he grabs me by the upper arm, grumbling something under his breath about people interrupting his playtime. His words send a wave of nausea through me, and I’m seriously fucking glad for whatever the hell happened that interfered with whatsoever he had in mind for the rest of the night. If I had any intentions of becoming an Antonelli, I sure as fuck don’t want to now.

He might think alcohol and pussy would endear me to this life, but that’s not me. His blood might run through my veins, but I’m not him, and I never will be.

I’m thrown back in the torture chamber, even though I start kicking and screaming as soon as I realize where we’re going. After a day of relative freedom, the thought of being locked in that darkness again terrifies me. But my efforts are in vain, and in my still weakened state, he manages to fling me into the pitch-black room before locking the door behind me. I’m not tied to the chair this time, but it’s a small mercy.

I lose myself in the darkness, unable to determine the passing of time. It feels like I sit there for days and seconds, all at the same time, before the door is thrown open once again, the light from the hall blinding me as I raise a hand to block it.

Someone lands on the floor not far from me with a pained grunt, and the overhead lights are switched on as the door is slammed shut. Shadows haunt Santos’ face as he glowers first at the man on the floor, then at me. Striding to the table, he unlocks the metal cage around it that prevents me from accessing them and lifts out a gun. Storming over to me, he smacks it into my hands. “Kill him,” he hisses furiously.

“W-what?!” My eyes widen as my gaze darts back and forth between him and the unknown guy on the floor.

“KILL HIM!”

My hand begins to tremble. Hell, my whole body trembles, and I shake my head vehemently. “N-no.”

It’s only when I hear the loud cocking of a gun that I realize I have been staring at the guy on the floor. So when I snap my head toward the sound, I find myself staring down the barrel.

“You or him. Kill. Him.”

Tears course down my face as my brain struggles to catch up with what the hell is happening, and I turn to stare down at the man on the floor. He’s bleeding and badly beaten, half unconscious—an easy target. I have no idea who he is or what he’s done, but I know I can’t kill him. However, am I willing to die? To sacrifice my life for his?

I feel the cold press of metal against my temple, followed by Santos’ cold voice. “Now.”

The tears come harder now as I’m torn between my own desire to keep breathing and my humanity demanding that I cannot kill another living human being. I’m distantly aware of Santos moving around me until he wraps his hand around mine. Lifting my arm, he aims at the man on the floor. I feel his finger pressing against mine on the trigger, and yet I don’t stop him. I don’t say anything. I don’t try to put a stop to this or plead for his life.

I’m still internally arguing with myself, attempting to convince my mind that this isn’t happening, when the gun goes off. The vibration travels up my arm from the kickback, and I gape in shock, unable to comprehend what my eyes see. Even as the pool of blood grows progressively larger around the very still, unbreathing form on the floor.

All I can do is sit there and blink at him. Part of me is aware that I’m in shock, but a more significant part of me no longer gives a fuck. I’m going to die in here. Either at Santos’ hands or because I’ll have stripped away my soul one piece at a time. Regardless, this is where I’m going to die.

I don’t even realize Santos has pulled on my head until the dead man is replaced with his gruesome face.

“What’s your name?” he demands. I swear, if I never hear that god-forsaken question again, it will be too soon.

Silence hangs in the air between us as I struggle to collate my thoughts. Eventually, the last of the adrenaline seems to drop out of me like a bucket, and I hang my head, my shoulders falling under the weight of what I just did. In a husky voice born of grief, pain, and exhaustion, I admit, “Lucifer Ricci.”

There is a second's delay before Santos barks, “And who are you?”

Summoning the last of my energy, I lift my head to meet his gaze with deadened eyes. “I’m an Antonelli.”

Chapter 17

“Teamstorm the castle, check.”

I roll my eyes at his ridiculous team name as Dax’s voice comes over the radio. That’s the last team to check in, confirming they’re in position. We’ve got men blocking every tunnel that leads away from the penthouse, a team surveilling the street, and men waiting for our word when we make it into the building.

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