Page 5 of Deal with the Devil

“Where is your gangster?”

He loosens his hold around my throat to allow me to choke out the words. “I—don’t—know.”

A dark laugh spills into the room and the hands around my throat tighten again. My eyes bulge. I realize just now that tears are leaking from my eyes, spilling rivers across my temples and into my hair.

I can’t die like this.God, please, don’t let me die like this.

“An—” I can’t get the words out.

He loosens his stranglehold. “What was that?”

I gasp in air. “Antonio?”

“Sent me. To kill him.” His voiceis filled with something terrifying at the possibility. Almost like—arousal. “Too bad he’s not here.”

Ice. A shield of it. Slams into me.

If I had any air in my lungs to knock out, it’d have done the trick.

Still, I manage to wheeze. “He—sent you?”

“Without the gangster here, I’ll just deliver a little message.” His hands around my throat squeeze once more, as though he just can’t resist the pleasure of crushing my windpipe, before he rears back off my body. I’m already trying to scramble away from him, but it’s no use. He catches a fistful of my hair in seconds, yanking me across the bed.

I scream. Loudly. I let it rip from my lungs, knowing without doubt that I’ll wake at least one of my neighbors.

The crack of a fist on the side of my face has something cracking in my jaw. Or maybe it’s my teeth clapping together, I don’t know. I can’t tell past the explosion of pain. I can’t think past the dribble of warm blood I feel spilling from my now split lip.

“Quiet,” he murmurs softly, as though he’s talking to a small child. “Or I will have to punish you.”

Antonio sent this monster. Antonio, the man I’d let into my body—the man I once considered spending my life with—sent a monster to hurt me.

How can this be real?

The monster pulls me close, hauling me into his body. “You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?”

Now that my eyes have adjusted to the unusual dark in my apartment, I can see he’s in black tactical gear and a black mask. His outfit terrifies me. The experience it says he has in this kind of crime.

My heart skips a couple beats. Threatening cardiac arrest.

Not like this. I can’t go like this…

Mom and Dad. They won’t survive it. Uncle Miguel, he’ll spend his life looking to avenge me—never suspecting the man who promised to love me.

“Please,” I rasp again.

He ignores me, stuck on whatever crazy train his thought process has him riding. “I can see why he can’t let you go. Why he hired me to convince you to see your mistake. To understand the terms of your relationship going forward.” There’s a thoughtful pause. “I had someone like you. Beautiful.”

The pain in my jaw is muffling my thought process. I don’t understand his words.

As though sensing this, he leans in to speak directly against my ear. I feel his breath push through the mask to assault my flesh. “You’re going to return to him, but more specifically, you’re going to crawl to him.”

“No.” I shake my head in what I think is brave refusal only to find it was foolish. Veryfoolish.

The man shoves me away from him and I stumble, falling to the floor with a crash. He’s on me before I can even find my knees, another fist to the face. Another crack. More blood. This time, it’s up by my eyebrow. The roll of warmth oddly takes me back to running long range track when sweat would gather at my brow to roll down my face.

“He’s not going to hide his affairs from you anymore. He likes pussy and can have as many as he wants, without the need for your bitching. You’ll smile like a good little wife when he comes home smelling like another cunt.” The monster leans down as I sob on the floor. “In fact, you’ll take his dick however he wants to feed it to you, clean or stinking like another bitch, and you’ll do it with a smile, got it?”

I don’t know where the courage comes from, but I shake my head.

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