Page 20 of Keeping My Captive

He flinches at my accusation. “I told you before that I don’t rape women. You should have listened to me the first time.”

“You could just be a rapistanda liar!” I exclaim, exasperated.

He’s up and out of his seat before I can even blink. He wraps his large hands around the bars, his knuckles turning white under the strain. His eyes look evil as he threatens, “Put me and the word rapist in the same sentence again and see what happens to you.”

“I don’t know you at all. I’m just trying to get you to see it from my perspective,” I explain, my voice just above a whisper. “You bought me at an auction where women were sold to the highest bidder like prized cattle! What am I supposed to think?”

His expression falters, but then he quickly builds up all of those armored walls once more and shuts me out of his thoughts in an instant. “If I needed pussy, I could have it at any second, any minute, any hour of any day. I can get sucked, fucked or anything I want anytime I want. Do you understand?” he asks through clenched teeth.

I nod emphatically.

He releases the bars and returns to his seat. After a few seconds, I watch as he pulls a coin out of his pocket and begins methodically gliding it across his large knuckles. The motion is almost mesmerizing, but the silence starts to drive me insane. It’s almost deafening as neither one of us speaks for several long minutes and he just keeps flipping around that stupid coin of his. And when I can’t take the tension or quiet anymore, I tell him, “I’ve apologized. There’s nothing else I can do. I think my punishment should end.”

“Your punishment? You thinkthisis your punishment?” he sneers. “Oh no,cariño. This,” he says, motioning towards my cell, “is just where you’re being kept until your true punishment begins.”

Dread and panic threaten to overwhelm me. “Please. Please just let me go,” I beg him.

“If I were a better man, Aria, I would let you go. But, unfortunately for you, I’m not.” He pauses for a moment. “You see, my men need some kind of retribution for what happened. If I set you free, they would see me as weak. And I simply can’t have that,” he explains with a tight expression before glancing around, lost in thought.

Tears cloud my vision, but I refuse to let them fall. “Please, Mateo,” I beg. The mention of his name has his eyes snapping to mine. “I’ll do anything you want.Anything,” I stress. I know he paid for my virginity. Surely, he still wants it.

“I’m afraid it’s too late for bargaining,cariño.”

I watch the coin flip over his knuckles, annoyed that he’s still playing with it. It obviously has some importance to him, because I can see how worn and scratched it is even from here. Maybe he’s a gambling man. Well, if he wants to gamble, maybe I can convince him to bet on this. “Why don’t you flip that coin and decide my fate then?” I question.

“What?” he asks as if he might have misheard me.

“You know, heads I get to leave this cell. Tails, I stay.”

He flips the coin to his pinky and then snatches it in his hand. “You want to determine your destiny like this?” he asks with a dark quirked brow.

“I have a better chance with the coin, don’t I? You already told me I’m not getting out of here. At least, this way, my odds are fifty-fifty.” Maybe I’m just stalling for time or for a miracle, I don’t know, but I just hope something,anythingworks in my favor at this point.

Mateo’s dark eyes pierce mine as he considers my proposition. Then, with a nod of satisfaction, he stands and flips the coin in the air. It lands on the back of his other hand, and he covers it quickly, neither of us knowing the outcome. “Heads, you leave. Tails, you stay right where you are,” he suggests, repeating back what I said earlier.

I give him a slow nod.Oh god, I hope it’s heads.

He removes his hand from the coin and stares at it for a long time before finally revealing to me the outcome.

I see the eagle devouring a rattlesnake and realize…it’s tails. My heart sinks into my stomach, and I bite my lower lip so hard I can taste blood.

Mateo almost looks disappointed for a split second before he puts his usual, stoic mask back into place, not giving anything away about his inner thoughts. “It appears Lady Luck won’t be intervening today,” he tells me with finality. And with that said, he leaves.

I wait until I can no longer hear his footsteps before I let the first of what will no doubt be many tears fall. I lie down on the hard, unforgiving floor and curl into a fetal position as all the horrible thoughts of what my true punishment might actually be threaten to consume me from the inside out.

CHAPTER12

Mateo

IFEEL AS restless as a caged animal while I pace in my office. Back and forth. Back and forth. I swear I’m going to wear a path into the hardwood flooring soon. I light my fifth cigarette of the morning, puffing away on it like it’s going to somehow solve all of my problems.

Today is Aria’s punishment. It will be harsh; there’s no doubt about that. Does she deserve it? Of course. She tried to kill me. And when you hurt or attempt to kill the head of a cartel, well, let’s just say you earn everything that’s coming to you.

But for some reason, I’m feeling conflicted for maybe the first time ever. I know deep down Aria deserves this, but the thought of her being disciplined for it has me torn in two. On one hand, I want to let her go unscathed. But on the other hand, I know I can’t. If I let her get away with this, my men will see me as cowardly. She will ultimately become my weakness, and I can’t let that happen.

My phone rings just then, and I’m quick to answer it. There’s a problem at one of our warehouses, and it takes me a good thirty minutes to fix it. It requires every ounce of my attention, making me temporarily forget all about what’s going to happen today with Aria, and I don’t mind the distraction. In fact, I welcome it.

But when Ignacio barges into my office a short time later without knocking, I know something’s wrong. His eyes are shifting from side to side, as if he’s afraid to look at me. I’ve seen him act this way many times before. I know he needs to tell me something, but he doesn’t necessarily want to because of what my reaction might be.

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