A few weeks earlier…
I watched Enzo walk into the elevator, my entire body numb with disbelief.
He was leaving me.
He was fucking leaving me.
How was this possible? My mind couldn’t correlate this man with the man I’d gotten to know these last weeks. The one who’d offered me an obscene amount of money just to fuck me. Who’d hunted down the bastard who’d sold me to human traffickers. The man who’d then stolen me back, killing everyone who got in his way. The man who’d lost his mind when I’d tried to leave him. I could not equate that man with this man who had just cold-heartedly turned me back over to my father. The one person in the world I was trying to escape.
Luca was talking. Saying something to my father, then to me. But I couldn’t hear him through the roar of blood rushing through my head.
The next thing I knew, my father was throwing his arms in the air, spittle flying from his mouth, and then two of my father’s men appeared on either side of me. They took ahold of my arms, and in a daze, I stumbled along between them as they walked me into the elevator.
I was shoved into the back corner and nearly fell on my face when the heel of one of my shoes caught on the edge of the elevator floor, but I instinctively threw up my hands to steady myself on the back wall just in time. Yet, the world still tilted around me as I turned to face the doors. Between the shoulders of my father’s men who stood in front of me blocking my way out, my eyes clashed with Luca’s: hurt and disbelief in mine, anger and worry in his.
The doors began to slide closed and I blinked, waking up from the trance-like state that had held me immobile up until now. I lunged for the opening in a fit of panic and saw Luca take a step forward before he remembered himself and stopped. I was caught and held roughly. “Nooo!” I screamed as the doors slid shut.
A hand covered in rings flew toward my face, and then I remembered nothing else until I woke up on a private plane just as it hit the tarmac in Dallas.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Fina?”
I was in my room. The one I’d walked out of months ago and swore I would never see again. We’d just arrived from the airport, and my father had had his two goons escort me up here. I turned around slowly, seeing my four-poster bed with the white comforter covered in giant pink watercolor flowers, the walk-in closet still full of the clothes I’d left, the large white dresser, the small white desk and chair where I would sit and do my homework when I was in school, and the hope chest at the foot of the bed that held nothing but some extra blankets because nothing in this house was private. “Don’t call me that.”
“What did you say to me?”
Anger rose up inside of me as I turned to face my father. “I said not to call me that. I hate that name.”
His neck and jowls flushed red. “It’s your father’s name for you. Are you telling me that you hate your father? That you hate me? The man who raised you? Who tried to protect you and keep you safe?”
“You kept me a prisoner.”
He stepped closer to me, but I refused to be cowed. Not this time. “Of course, I did. I did what I had to do, Fina.” His eyes swept over me, seeing past the pretty dress to the woman underneath. “Look at what happened as soon as you leave my house.”
“And what is that?” I asked him.
His mouth twisted in disgust. “You became a whore. Just like your mother.”
“Maybe if you’d kept her happy, she wouldn’t have had to find it somewhere else.”
A loud smack reverberated through the room. The sound hit my ears before I felt the pain. It started in my jaw before traveling up to my temple.
“You will remember who you are speaking to,” he hissed.
Even with the physical reminder he’d just given me, it was surreal to me that I was back in this place. I hadn’t been gone very long in the grand scheme of things, and yet it felt like those years I’d spent living in this house—in this room—were a lifetime ago. Maybe because I’d worked so hard to forget them.
I worked my jaw to make sure it wasn’t broken. It hurt, but everything appeared to be in working order.
This was bullshit.
I didn’t have to stay here.
Fuck these men and their over-inflated egos. They didn’t have the right to tell me how I was going to live my life.
Without looking at my father, I started walking toward the bedroom door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he shouted after me.
I didn’t bother to answer him. I wasn’t going to stand here and argue about whether or not I had the right to decide what I was going to do with my own life.
“Fina! I’m talking to you!”
Reaching the door my father had slammed closed when we arrived, I turned the knob and yanked it open. I didn’t try to bring anything with me. There was nothing I wanted that would remind me of this life. I also didn’t have a car this time, and it wouldn’t be so easy to get through the gates. I’m sure my father had all of the guards on alert. But none of that stopped me. I had to get out of there.
The two men who’d pulled me out of the room above Luca’s club appeared in front of me, blocking my way. I tried to duck around one of them, but he grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me hard, sending me stumbling back into the room. As if they were one person, they stepped over the threshold and blocked the only exit.
I spun around and faced my father. “You can’t keep me here against my will.”
But he just laughed. “Yes. I can.”
“I’m a grown woman! I’m capable of making my own decisions for my life!”
“You are my daughter!” he yelled. “And you will do what I fucking tell you!” He stalked toward me, lowering his voice. And somehow that was more frightening than when he yelled. “And I’m telling you that you will stay here. You’re a pretty woman, Fina. There are men who will still want you, despite the fact that you’re used goods now.”
“But what if I don’t want them?”
“You will do what you have to do for the good of the family, and you’ll be fucking grateful. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not worth anything to you anymore!” I shouted, my temper getting the best of me. “And I don’t give a shit about you or this fucking family!” I tensed, waiting for the slap that was sure to come after that outburst. But it never did. Not from my father.
One thick hand reached up and grabbed the back of my hair, pulling it from its twist. He pulled until I was bent over backward and he was leaning over me. “You ungrateful bitch.”
I glared up at him. Let him kill me now. I was done sitting here meekly while he pawned me off like a piece of property rather than a child of his own flesh and blood.
After a moment, he released me, and I fell to the floor. He stepped over me like I was nothing but a piece of trash. “Do what you need to do to get her in line,” he told his men. “But she is not to be raped and she is not to leave this room. She might still be worth something.”
Scrambling up from the floor, I shoved my hair from my face and stared at them with a defiant expression.
The guard to my right smiled as he cracked the knuckles of his right hand, and my heart stuttered in my chest.
“Serafina!”
I jumped, hot tea sloshing over the cup I held and burning my fingers. Quickly, I set it down on the table before I dropped it and angered him more.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“I can’t hear you.”
I lifted my chin. My father sat across from me in the kitchen, a cloth napkin tucked into the front of his shirt and a knife and fork in his hands, paused over the steak he’d been cutting as he’d casually told me that he’d found me a husband.
My hands began to shake and I tucked them under my legs, the rough material of the jeans I wore scraping painfully against the new burns. “Yes,” I told him, louder this time. “I heard you.”
His dark eyes studied my face, searching for any hint of rebellion. But that had been beaten out of me days ago. I was still sporting the bruises. And today was the first day I’d been allowed to leave my room. “Aren’t you happy? Now you can finally start your life. Have a family.”
I didn’t ask who the lucky guy was. I was afraid to know.
“He’s even overlooking the fact that you’re a whore. Isn’t that good of him?” He smiled at me, as if he hadn’t just called his only daughter a derogatory word, and shoved a large piece of steak into his mouth, chewing loudly before he swallowed and slurped his wine. “Maybe you’ll even make me a nonno. It would be nice to have some little faces running around.”
My stomach lurched at the thought of giving him more children to torture. My children.
He waved his knife in the air. “You’ll need to do something with that hair. I can have a stylist come to the house.”
“I like my hair,” I told him. And then I froze, half expecting that knife to come flying at my face. The protest had just come out before I thought about what I was saying.
But to my surprise, he only shrugged. “Keep it then. Let your new husband deal with you. I’m tired of fighting.”
The air left my lungs in a rush and spots danced in front of my eyes. I gripped my chair tight, willing myself not to fall out of it. I hadn’t eaten much in the last few days. My stomach tied itself in knots every time my mind replayed Enzo walking away from me. The last thing he’d said constantly ringing in my ears.
“I will not be forced into marrying your daughter. Go ahead and take her if you think you can get anything for her.”
And then, he’d walked away. As though my lack of innocence disgusted him, when he was the one who’d stolen it.
“How much are you getting?” I asked.
My father shook his head, his eyes on his dinner. “That’s not your business, Fina.”
I almost laughed, but I caught myself just in time.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about your fiancé´?”
No. I was too afraid.
But my father kept talking, as if I wasn’t sitting here with this look of terror on my face.
“You know Luigi Morelli?”
My blood cooled as the name registered, gradually turning to ice.
“He’s the boss down in Austin. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”
Yes. I knew who he was very well.
“I thought since you liked it there so much that you would like to go back. Make a real home there with your new husband.”
My hand shook as I picked up my tea. “In other words, you want me to spy for you.”
He looked up from his dinner, an expression of denial on his face. “No, of course not! I would never ask you to betray your new husband. Why would you say such a thing?”
It would’ve almost been convincing if it wasn’t for the calculated look in his eyes.
When I didn’t respond, he shrugged. “But perhaps if you happened to innocently overhear any useful information, you might casually mention it when you speak to me.”
Except there was only one flaw in his plan. Once I was out of here, I planned to never speak to him again.
I may be beaten, but I was not broken.
“You will be married on Christmas Eve,” my father droned on. “I chose that date because I know how much you love Christmas.” He set down his knife and fork. “What do you say to me, Fina?”
I set my cup down carefully, and tried to speak past the lump in my throat. “Thank you.”
Satisfied, my father went back to his meal. I stared down into my tea, my mind blank and my body numb. Later, when I was alone in my room, I would cry. But not now. Not in front of him.
Never in front of him.
