Page 55 of Velvet Cruelty

Chapter Ten

Elliot Morelli

The truth of being a boss means waking up every morning to maintain a thousand-part machine that despite constant upkeep is one mistake from exploding. I should be happy. I should be fucking ecstatic. Everything following the cathedral has gone perfectly. Minimal underworld complaints, minimal police interference, enough journalists greased to keep a pretty debutante’s disappearance out of the news. I expected trouble from the outside—Parker’s supporters, rival families, the Whitehalls funneling money into ex-Mossad agents. Instead, the chaos is coming from inside Velvet House.

I thought January would break like a wave on the shore. She was to be a pleasurable inconvenience. A way to torment Parker before we ended him in fair retribution for what he did to us seventeen years ago. But every day I hold the girl in my basement, she becomes a larger thorn in my side.

She should be begging to leave the cage by any means necessary but she’s eating and sleeping well and her moods are stable. Meanwhile, my brothers, the men I need focused on and in fighting form, are tearing each other apart. Day and night they argue about what to do with January Whitehall. Twice, Adriano physically separated Bobby and Doc. Three times Bobby’s headed Adriano away from the basement, sure—as I am—he was planning to kill the girl. And on four separate occasions, Adriano has hauled Doc away from the security monitors where he’s passed out drunk, watching her. The last time he had a lit cigarette between his fingers. The fucking idiot could have burned Velvet House to the ground.

It’s enough to drive a man insane. But if I mention how irrational and idiotic they’re being, all I hear is that I’m pissed January didn’t choose me. Which I am. If the little brat had taken my rubies and agreed to be my mistress, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

I never should have given her a choice. Doing so rendered her off limits, while we awaited her decision—a decision she’ll never make. We abducted January to send Parker footage of her getting passed between the four of us like a bachelor party hooker. Now none of us knows how to proceed. Not when what we desire is in complete conflict. Who has the right to get what they want? The four of us have never competed over anything more serious than poker, let alone a girl. But now we are. And I fear what each of us is capable of.

Ten days after January arrived, I find my friends in the dining room, a live feed of her cage playing on a nearby screen.

“Even if she decides to marry you,” Doc is telling Bobby. “I’ll fuck it up.”

Bobby lays his hands on the table. “If she chooses to marry me, you have to back off. It’s what we all agreed.”

Doc blows into the barrel of the revolver he’s cleaning. “I didn’t agree to that shit. I want to fuck her. And I get what I want.”

Bobby’s eyes narrow. “Not this time.”

Adriano lifts his gaze from his phone. “I can make it so no one has her.”

Doc points the gun at him. “You stamp out that pussy before I’ve had a taste, you’ll get a knife through the ear.”

I clear my throat. “Nice to see this is still going on.”

My friends don’t even glance at me.

“You screwed up everything between me and January,” Bobby tells Adriano. “If it wasn’t for you making me kill her bodyguard—”

“You’re not the little whore’s math tutor,” Adriano snarls. “You wanna delude yourself, that’s your business. But you’re not pretending in front of me.”

My gaze falls on the monitor. January is sitting on her bed in a white dress, her hair loose around her shoulders. She’s grown thinner in the days since she arrived, but it’s only sharpened her beauty. Her mouth opens in a red ‘O’ and I realize she’s singing. I watch her croon with her eyes closed and it seems to me she is drawing strength from us like a flower absorbing sunshine.

“I should have killed her at the altar,” Adriano says. “Slit her throat in front of her family.”

Doc slaps the clip into his revolver. “Bullshit.”

“What did you say?”

“I said bullshit,” Doc spins the colt on his finger like a gunslinger. “You want to stick your cock in her. Maybe you want to do it while you kill her, but don’t act like you’re above it. Even once we had enough info from her studio, you were back there every week. Watching her.”

Adriano lunges across the table and Doc pulls away laughing. “What? You gonna kill me like your little Pryntsesa?”

Adriano stands, shoving his chair back. Doc will be lucky to come away whole from this one. And the two of them are the oldest friends of the four of us, neighbors from when they were six or seven.

A memory comes to me. Mama breaking up a fight between my brother Kit and I on Christmas morning. We were wrestling over a water pistol, and she snatched it away and slapped both of us. “I hope you’re happy. Now, no one gets to have it.”

I know what I have to do. Truthfully, a part of me has known since I left the basement with my necklace still in my pocket.

Adriano advances on Doc, his massive hands balled into fists. Doc throws the revolver onto the table and takes out his butterfly knife, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Bobby hovers like a nervous cop, unsure who to hurt or protect.

I move to stand between them. “That’s enough.”

Doc shows his teeth. “Can we have one fistfight around here?”

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