Page 49 of Shame

“A girl. I’m an eighteen-year-old girl that you keep torturing. Do you even know what you do to me?”

“I give you a shitload of cash to shut up and take it.”

“Money can’t buy you free from what you’re doing.”

“You got really mouthy all of a sudden.”

I turn my head, resting my other cheek on the damp spot on the sheet, meeting his gaze. “I don’t care anymore. You take everything. You’ve taken everything from me.”

“The boy?”

I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my hands into fists. My heart aches worse than my ass ever could. How do I face Lucas after tonight? Maybe he won’t want me anyway? That would solve a lot of things.

“You’re nothing but meat, Carmen, the two of you, all my men, all the people out there. A life, ten lives, a hundred, means nothing. People cling onto it, so fucking hard, but in the end we all die. If you’d just accept that, your life would be so much easier.”

“You must have had a really fucked up childhood,” I sneer.

Salvatore laughs.

“Oh, it was. It was fucked up beyond anything you can imagine. No one respected me, you see. Society just threw us in a dumpster, my sister and I, like garbage. Our parents worked themselves to an early death and we were left to our own devices. I was always hungry, dirty, always cold. I learned to steal. To fight. To be selfish. To hate. I swore I’d never be disrespected again in my life.

“So you walk all over everybody else instead.”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Don’t you have one ounce of humanity in there at all?”

“I haven’t cared to look in many years.”

“I guess that’s what it takes to be able to do what you do.”

“What is it I do?”

“Pain. Murder. Deceit. I could specify, but I think that’s pointless.”

“How do you know so much, little Carmen?”

“I have eyes and ears.”

“Those can be dangerous things to have.”

“Or good. Are you threatening me?”

“What have you heard?”

“Enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“To put you away for life.”

“And this you tell me, just like that? Aren’t you afraid?”

“I’ve been afraid for a very long time, Mr. Salvatore. Maybe I’m hoping you’ll just put an end to it.”

“I could tie you up instead and never let you leave.”

“Would you?”

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