Page 44 of Ruthless

I need to focus. This is about him, not me. Besides, he’ll only use whatever I tell him against me later. When I don’t respond, hetsksbut doesn’t let me go. “You certainly haven’t gotten any better at cooking.”

My heart leaps at the sight of his teasing smile. Heissoftening up. I’m not imagining it after all.

Since his empty bowl proves that he’s lying, I ignore the dig and croon a flirtatious reply. “I suppose you’re a rather distracting audience.”

His grip slackens, and he starts to return a playful volley, but I watch the flip switch in real time. The abrupt, violent change startles me as Dante tightens his hand around my throat and drags me between his legs. The floor is so smooth that I slide in place before I even realize what’s happening. He reclines in his seat, his intention painfully obvious.

He removes his hand from my throat and jerks his chin. “Get to work.”

The dark rumble would normally have a disconcerting effect on my lower belly, but now I’m just jittery. A part of me forgot that this excursion to the kitchen was supposed to serve as yetanother punishment. Why else would he let me out of my cell if not to harm me?

I have to turn this around. If he doesn’t start viewing me as an equal, I’ll never be able to convince him to let me go. Practically vibrating with nerves, I glide my hands up his jean-clad thighs. I’m close enough that I can see the way his pupils bloom with desire.

Leaning forward, I press my lips against his inner leg. The denim feels rough beneath my kiss, but I continue, absorbing how the tiny action causes his quads to flex. Instead of quick and soulless like he wants, I’m giving him slow and intimate. I’m shocked when Dante doesn’t stop me. My hands stroke his thighs in a provocative dance.

While my head is in his lap, I decide to take another chance. “If you really want a use for me, why don’t you put me on the medical team?”

His expression shifts from reflective to suspicious before finally landing on irritated. “Did Angela tell you to ask me that?”

“No!” I force myself to calm down. “I know you and your men get hurt a lot. Gregor says people are in and out of the clinic all the time. I can help ease some of the workload.”

A vein swells in his neck. I’m toeing a line of total destruction, but I’m too far in now to abandon ship.

Resting my cheek against his leg, I peer up at him through my lashes, channeling my inner Sabrina Carpenter. “If you won’t let me help you withwhateverit is you’re hunting for, you can at least allow me to do this. I want to be useful.”

Rage twists his features as he recoils from the table.

Oh, god. I’ve pushed him too far.

He grabs a handful of my hair and yanks me to my feet, ignoring my sharp cry. The haunted shadows in his eyes pain me.

“You want to be useful,coniglietta?” He kisses me roughly, and the dark chuckle that follows triggers an eruption of goosebumps. “Just wait. I’ve got big plans for you.”

Chapter 15

Dante

I’m not sure how long my captors kept me hogtied. The isolation and darkness tormented my mind with awaiting horrors long before anyone laid a finger, or in this case, a blade, on me. The loneliness was the most excruciating part. The hours bled together, my thoughts fragmented, and sometimes I couldn’t tell whether I was alive or dead.

After they started inflicting pain, they would leave me in that twisted solitary confinement again. Days with nothing but a crippling hunger and pain as my companions as I lay in my own filth.

Limbo is staring at the same stained wall, day in and day out, and agonizing over whether Sara was all right or if she’d been captured as well as collateral.

Nothing could have prepared me for the truth.

Now, remembering how naive I was only makes me that much more determined to pay her back, tenfold, for what she put me through. The morning after Sara cooked for me, I empty the townhouse. I send my men—Luca included—to Marco’s and take up residence next door. Gregor and one of the other men load a week’s worth of nonperishable food and plastic jugs of water into the cell next to Sara’s before they leave.

Thanks to Jeremy Boyd solving my security problem with his new program, I’m able to lock down the property without any trouble. I should tell Sara about her innovative brother, but given the circumstances, I doubt she’d appreciate the news.

When Sara wakes up on Tuesday, she finds the door to her cell ajar. I observe from one of my laptops as joy and confusion brighten and then immediately darken her expression. Cautiously, she ventures outside of her cell and bolts for the door to the basement.

I shouldn’t be disappointed by how eager she is to get away, but I am. She races through the lower level, checking doors and attempting to get into the elevator, which I’ve shut down. She has no windows to break or locks to pick, and while she’s able to explore the full length of the basement, she won’t find anything to aid in her escape. She wanders around helplessly, inspecting the massive gas-powered furnace for minutes, before she discovers the provisions in the other cell. Eventually she returns to her own and crawls under the blanket until the automatic lights shroud her in darkness.

Still hopeful the next morning, she inspects each room again like she expects to discover someone lurking just around the corner. When she’s met with only silence and stillness and emptiness, panic sets in. I watch her motions become frantic as she hunts for a way out, rattling at locked doors and standing in front of every camera she can locate to scream and hurl curses at me.

That fire fades in stages. Eventually, she stops clawing at the doors like a wild animal, and her visits to the cameras to demand her release dwindle down to nothing. I savor her erosion, checking the feed with obsessive fervor several times a day just to enjoy the slow, dawning devastation on her face.

I can no longer deny my fixation with her anymore. Sara must have noted my weakness, which explains her attempt tomanipulate me in the kitchen. Did she really think I would fall for her bullshit? If she cared so much about helping me, she wouldn’t have ratted me out for money all those years ago.