Page 27 of The Beast Who Broke Me
“So?”
“So your Boss saw me kiss you. The Morellis heard you give your word. I have beenpublicly claimed, Dami. If I disappear, or turn up dead, every eye will be on you. Which means you need me alive, you need me cooperative, and you need me telling a consistent story. Especially now that everyone knows we’re fucking.”
“The hell we are,” he says at once, hard and cold.
“Wewere. Just the other night, in fact. And…there’s no reason we have to stop.”
He gives a sour laugh. “I leave you down here in the dark for five goddamn minutes, and you lose your mind.”
“It was longer than five minutes.”
“Elevator took a while, I guess. And as for fucking you—I’d rather stick my dick in a damn beehive.”
I crawl toward him across the bed. Slowly. “We both know that’s not true, Dami.” I stop at the edge of the mattress, close enough that I could reach out and touch him. Or he could reach out and touch me. “And besides...”
“Besideswhat?”
“You paid ten million dollars for me. I’m sure you want to get good use out of your property.”
His breath stutters. He covers it fast. “You reallyhavelost your fucking mind.”
I hold his gaze, the last heir of a dead Family looking at the man who wants to bury him. Slowly, I tilt my head to bare my throatwhere the collar sat moments ago. “You can’t break me, Dami. But imagine all the fun you could have trying.”
CHAPTER 11
DAMIANO
He thinkshe’s so fucking smart.
He thinks he can control me with his magical asshole.
He thinks the sex between us is the best I’ve ever had, instead of just the first he’s had.
The fucking arrogance of him.
I spent six minutes and fifty-three seconds pacing the foyer upstairs, watching him on the camera feed on my phone. I knew he’d crumble as soon as I left, and it made me glad to see how much it affected him. He’d never show me that amount of terror, not to my face, but in all his planning, he seemed to forget about the cameras.
Seemedto.
Or maybe he just didn’t plan on me turning out the light. I hope those minutes felt like an eternity. I hope he thought I’d leave him down thereforever.
My mind kept pulling me back to dinner. The way he sat inmychair. Rosa’s glowing face. The whole damn lot of them orbitingCaligula Clemenza like he was the sun and I was just another cold dead rock in the rotation.
I only have myself to blame, though. Because when I picked up that knife, I didn’t slice it through his throat like I wanted to, did I? Iobeyedhim.
And I came back like a beaten dog to the basement, too, in the end. I’m obeying his every whim. Put the collar on, take it off. Come here. Sit. Roll over.
Beg.
He thinks offering himself is the greatest prize I could want. Howdarehe presume I’d still want to fuck him, the man who threatens those under my protection, the man whose father killed mine, the man who learned me and played me andleft me.
But he’s not the only one who can play games. I’ve been learning him, just like he’s learned me. If I can’t kill him, then I can do the next best thing and torture him.
I rise from the seat abruptly, pleased to see him warily shrink back. I lean over and grab him by the shirt—one of the shirtsIput on his back—and haul him off the bed. He weighs nothing. I can move him wherever I want with one hand.
I drag him toward his grandfather’s study. By the time he registers what I’m doing, it’s too late. All the seduction has fled from his face, so I can see the real man underneath. He’s a Clemenza through and through, that manipulative mind turning over even as his feet kick helplessly.
I throw him on his back on the desk, knocking the air out of him. His back arches, his head tips back, and for a second he’s just asacrifice laid out across his dead grandfather’s altar, gold-bronze hair spilling over the edge, chest heaving.
