Play Me Right

  But then Sebastian is there, behind me, one hand stroking down my spine while the other curves protectively around my left hip. “It’s going to be okay,” he reassures me, pressing soft kisses against my temple.

  I shrug, because it either is or it isn’t, and at this point there’s not all that much I’m going to be able to do about it either way. The knowledge should calm me down, but somehow it just makes me sicker. Sebastian has been suffering the sins of his father for ten years and has managed to hold it together. To be strong, in control, kind. I’ve only been dealing with them for fourteen months and I can barely handle it.

  I’ve never felt more out of control in my life than when I open my mouth to speak. But then Sebastian puts his hands on my shoulders, squeezes, before wrapping his arms around me from behind. And somehow I have the strength—the control—to say, “My father is Gabriel Santini.” I don’t stop to ask if he knows who that is—if he knows Nico Valducci, he knows who my father is. Nico might have his hands in a lot of the casino’s pies, but my father runs Las Vegas and everyone who is anyone knows it.

  “Gabriel Santini.” His hands don’t move from where they’re holding me but I feel him stiffen against me. Not that I blame him. It’s a lot to take in. “And you’re working as a cocktail waitress and living in a hovel?”

  I start to take offense, to tell him my apartment isn’t a hovel. But truthfully, it is. And even if it wasn’t, that so isn’t the point right now. Not when there’s so much else that needs to be said.

  “My father and I are…estranged.”

  “Estranged? As in he kicked you out?” He still doesn’t move, but I can feel him fairly vibrating with fury. “Left you with nothing?”

  “Estranged as in I couldn’t live with his way of life any longer and so fourteen months ago I walked away from almost everything. Including my last name.”

  He seems to digest that for a moment and then he does move, spinning me around so he can look me in the eye. There’s a part of me that’s afraid to look at his face, afraid to see what’s reflected there. But if living as my father’s pampered princess for twenty-three years taught me nothing else, it taught me that burying my head, hiding from unpleasant things, never helps anything. The problem just gets bigger and more out of control while you refuse to look at it.

  And so I force myself to look at Sebastian, to try to see what he’s actually thinking and feeling right now as opposed to what I’m afraid of seeing—or what I’m hoping to see.

  But his face is impassive, his eyes carefully blank. Panic assails me and for a second, I feel lost. Sebastian has looked at me a lot of different ways in the days since we first met. But this is the first time there’s been absolutely no emotion there. Nothing that I can hold on to.

  But his hands are still on my shoulders, and I can feel the warmth of his palms even through my shirt. It grounds me, makes it easier for me to answer when he repeats, “Almost?”

  “Yeah. I thought of moving away, of going somewhere my father’s name was less recognizable. But my sister has brittle bone disease. One of the bad kinds and she probably doesn’t have more than a decade left unless there are some major leaps forward in biotechnology. We’re close and she depends on me to keep my mom from wrapping her in cotton and not letting her do anything. I couldn’t just walk away from Lucy, too.

  “So I stayed in Vegas. I changed my last name to give me some semblance of distance from my family and got a job at the Atlantis. I’ve been working here ever since.”

  “Why the Atlantis? Why a cocktail waitress? You’re obviously smart and well-educated—”

  “At first, I didn’t want to show my degree around because it has my real last name on it. And by the time I got everything changed legally, I was comfortable here. Besides, my dad made it so that I couldn’t get a job many other place. The other casinos all asked flat-out about my family connections—I don’t know if he got to them or not—but the Atlantis didn’t. So when they were willing to hire me, I didn’t want to do or say anything that might rock the boat.”

  “Because my father has been in bed with Nico Valducci for twenty-five years. And since your father and Valducci aren’t exactly the best of pals right now—”

  That news shakes me almost more than the thought of the story I still need to tell him. As does the knowledge that Valducci has a hand in the Atlantis. But first things first. “What do you mean? Since when are my father and Nico at odds?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just what I’ve heard since I put out feelers. Something happened last year that—” He breaks off. Eyes me with concern as he starts putting pieces together. “What happened fourteen months ago that made you walk away from the only life you’d ever known?”

  I’m still reeling in shock from the information that my dad and Nico are no longer friends and business associates when for so long theirs was a match made in hell. But at least with those thoughts reverberating in my head, it’s easier to say what I have to. Easier to tell him what it still shames me to admit.

  “I was engaged to Carlo Valducci.”

  He does stiffen then, does pull away. It’s no more than I expect, though. No more than I deserve, so I don’t try to hold on to him when he steps back. No matter how much I want to. No matter how much my body aches for the comfort of his.

  “Our fathers arranged it years ago, when we were young, like a couple of feudal lords. They wanted a union to cement their alliance and there Carlo and I were. And so it was arranged.

  “The only problem was I never really liked him. We’d grown up together and I’d seen that he has a cruel streak. You know, when you grow up in the kind of family I grew up in, you learn about the different types of men pretty early on. The men who do their duty because they believe it’s the right thing to do, the men who don’t like the life but are too weak to try to leave it, even the men who do leave and end up crawling back later because they can’t make it without the family. Those men—all of those men—hurt others, even kill others, because they have to. Or because it’s expedient. Or because they need to make a point or a name for themselves. I’m not making excuses for them, but that’s how it is.

  “And then there are men like Carlo. Like Nico. Who not only do their duty but who revel in it. Who enjoy bullying those weaker than them. Who like going in for the kill. Those are the ones you need to watch out for, because you never know when they’re going to snap. Never know when something is going to set them off and they’ll use it as an excuse…”

  “An excuse for what?” Sebastian asks. His hands are clenched by his sides and though his face is still an impassive mask, his eyes are alight with a fury I haven’t seen in fourteen long months. There’s a part of me that wants to back away, but there’s another part—a more rational part—that knows that isn’t necessary. Sebastian might destroy me emotionally, might rip me to shreds with his unconcern later, but I don’t believe for a second that he’d ever hurt me physically. Not the way Nico and Carlo hurt people. Not when he’s been so careful to make sure his employees are taken care of the best way he can. Not when he’s been so careful to make sure that I’m taken care of.

  I turn away from him. I’m committed to telling this story now, but I can’t do it looking into his eyes. And so I look out at the Strip that has been both my prison and my sanctuary and I tell the story Sebastian has already figured out. The story that’s so clichéd and unoriginal that it should be a late night women’s fiction movie—except in the movie you always see the warning signs and the way out. When it’s happening to you, it’s nowhere near as easy to predict…or understand.

  “Carlo always had a temper. Even when we were kids. Little things would set him off and he’d pick fights with the other boys. He broke a few bones, gave a few of them concussions with how hard he hit—”

  “And this is who your father handpicked for you to marry?” Sebastian demands.

  “For years they had the boys will be boys mentality—”

  “He’s not a fucking boy an
ymore. He’s a man in his late twenties and he should fucking know better than to lay a hand on a woman.”

  “Yeah, well, he much preferred to use his feet so that argument doesn’t really—”

  “Son of a bitch!” The words explode from Sebastian, interrupting my one attempt at being flippant.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Do you think that fucking matters to me? It could be ten years ago or ten hours ago. I don’t actually give a fuck.”

  “I know that. And I appreciate it. I really do.”

  “How long did you stay with him?” he demands.

  “Too long.” I shrug when he looks at me incredulously. “In my house, family duty is a pretty big deal. So I put up with it until I couldn’t hide the bruises anymore.”

  Sebastian growls deep in his throat, looks like he wants to hit something. It doesn’t scare me though, doesn’t have me drawing back in fear the way I would have with Carlo. Partly that’s because I know Sebastian would never hurt me like that, but it’s also partly because of me. Because I’m not the same woman I was when I left home fourteen months ago. Not the same doormat who caves because it’s easier than fighting, even if it means getting hurt.

  With the thought comes the worst of the memories and tears bloom in my eyes. I try to blink them back, try to pretend it doesn’t still hurt, but the fact is it does. And it probably always will. Not Carlo, not what he did to me, but what came after.

  “God, baby, please don’t cry,” Sebastian says, pressing his lips to my cheek and kissing my tears away, one at a time. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

  I don’t know how to tell him that that isn’t why I’m crying. That I’m over Carlo and what he did to me—have been over it for months. It’s his outrage that gets me, his fury that someone would do something like that to me. His desire to do something to make it stop when my own family didn’t give a damn.

  This is where the story gets hard to tell. Not that talking about the fact that my fiancé beat me is ever easy, but this part…it’s this betrayal that made everything so much worse.

  “Carlo isn’t why I left,” I tell him softly. My hands are tangled in his shirt now and though I want to pretend I don’t need the support, it isn’t true. I’ve never told anyone what I’m about to tell Sebastian and if I couldn’t touch him, couldn’t have him hold me while I tell the story, I don’t think I’d ever be able to do it.

  But he is here and he has a right to know. Especially after what happened between us in his suite the other day, how I reacted to the way he pushed and pushed and pushed. “My parents wanted me to marry him anyway.”

  For long seconds he doesn’t react and I’m afraid he’s so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear me. That I’ll have to say it again.

  But then he pulls back and stares at me with eyes so dark they are nearly black. “They wanted you to marry a man who beat you?”

  I nod, and am so ashamed I want to look away. But he’s got my face in his hands and though he’s shaking with rage, his touch is more gentle than it’s ever been. “That’s why I stayed for so long. Because I didn’t want to disappoint them. Because I didn’t know how to be anything but the woman they wanted me to be.

  “They had such control over me, held the reins so tightly that for a long time, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but what they expected of me. I could just take it and take it and take it.”

  I see it, the moment it registers on him. The moment he figures out why I broke in his suite four days ago. A look of such self-loathing comes over his face that this time I’m the one who moves. This time, I’m the one who puts my arms around him and pulls him close.

  “You didn’t know,” I whisper as I press kisses to his mouth. “You didn’t know what had happened to me.”

  “That’s not a good enough excuse. Not when I hurt you. Not when I made you feel helpless.” He bows his head, rests his forehead against mine. And for the first time I see the tears in his eyes. Tears of sorrow and remorse and fury. It’s a deadly combination, one that will corrode his insides until there’s nothing left but acid so caustic it hurts to swallow. To breathe.

  I know, because I lived through that same cocktail of emotions. For days, weeks, months.

  “You didn’t know,” I tell him, “because I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t admit that when I first went to my mom and asked for help, she showed me which concealers cover bruises best. And when I went to my father a couple months later, he told me that I should act better if I didn’t want my fiancé to hurt me. That I should stop making mistakes.”

  I shake my head, still astonished at their cruelty, their blindness, after all these months. “But I wasn’t making mistakes. I was doing everything exactly how Carlo wanted it and still he came up with a reason to hurt me.”

  “Because it made him feel good.”

  “Yes.”

  Sebastian’s fists clench before he takes a few deep breaths, makes himself relax. “So what made you decide to leave? I’m grateful you did, but what—”

  “Carlo…went crazy. A friend of mine from college was in town and we were having lunch—lunch, not drinks, not dinner, not sex—just lunch. Catching up on what had been going on in our lives since college. We’d never been more than friends—I met him because he was dating my roommate for most of our four years at school—but Carlo didn’t see it that way. He was furious, accused me of cheating on him. He beat James almost to death in front of me, had a couple of his men hold me back while he did.

  “And then he started on me. He nearly killed me—not that I was in any state to put up a fight. How could I be when James’s battered, unconscious body was lying only a few feet away from me? All I could think was that I had done that. I was the one responsible for his death—the one who caused it and the one, who, in the end did nothing to stop it.”

  I wait for Sebastian’s condemnation. Wait for him to withdraw from me as I so richly deserve. But seconds tick by, become minutes, and he still doesn’t move away from me. Instead, he just stands there, fists clenched and jaw locked together. His green eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them and for a moment—just a moment—he looks like Carlo did that night.

  A man on the brink. Self-control shattered. Rage running over.

  Again, I brace myself for the explosion. Again, it never comes.

  Instead he asks, his voice low and tight and gravelly, “What did he do to you?”

  “To me?” I’m confused at the question. What happened to me isn’t important. It’s what happened to James that matters.

  “I don’t believe he nearly killed a man with his bare hands and then just walked away from you without some kind of retaliation.”

  “No. Of course not. But it isn’t imp—”

  “Don’t tell me what’s important and what’s not!” Sebastian snaps at me. “I want to know what that son of a bitch did to you. Either it comes from you or I go ask him.”

  “No! You can’t.” Just the thought of him anywhere near Carlo terrifies me. Sebastian is smart, powerful, more than capable of holding his own in any normal situation. But Carlo…Carlo is a monster. And a devious one at that. He doesn’t play fair, doesn’t play by any rules I’ve ever heard of. He does what he wants when he wants to and because he’s a Valducci, no one ever tells him he can’t.

  “Then tell me what he did to you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. And even if you were, I still need to know what happened.”

  “No.” No one needs to know that.

  “Tell me,” he orders, and this time he reaches for me, pulls me against him.

  I go, because I’m weak and useless and I don’t want to fight him. Not now, not on this. Not when I’ve just spent four days without Sebastian.

  “He hurt you.” It isn’t a question.

  I nod against his chest.

  His already taut muscles grow even stiffer. But the hand that strokes my hair is gent
le, sweet. “Tell me.” This time it’s a request, an almost desperate one. And while it’s easy to defy Sebastian when he’s ordering me around, I can’t deny him anything when he asks. When he holds me this tenderly. Not even the story I’d do anything not to tell.

  “I thought he was dead. James, I mean. He was so bloody and broken and still…I was sure Carlo had killed him. I went crazy, started screaming at him. Two of his men were still holding me back and no matter how hard I tried to get away from them, how hard I tried to get to James, I couldn’t.

  “When he was finished with James, Carlo walked over to me. He was covered in my friend’s blood and there was this look in his eyes—this bloodlust—that hurting James had done nothing to alleviate. I knew it was going to be bad, but to be honest, I didn’t care. Something about seeing James lying there, thinking he was dead…I snapped. In that moment, I wanted Carlo to kill me. Wanted it to be over. In that moment, I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life living like that.”

  The admission hurts, but Sebastian wanted the truth. Besides, I’m just so sick of lying—to him and to myself. It’s past time for all my ugly secrets to come out.

  “He hit me and instead of apologizing like I normally did, I taunted him. I refused to back down. If he was going to kill me, then I wasn’t going to go out whimpering. Or at least, that’s what I figured.”

  “He didn’t kill you.” It’s more growl than actual words at this point.

  “No. But he came close. By the time he was done, he’d given me a concussion, broken three of my ribs and damaged my spleen. I was in the hospital for over a week. Two days before I was set to be released, when my parents came for their daily visit, I asked for their help. My dad said he’d talked to Carlo, and assured me that it wouldn’t happen again. He also told me he’d paid for James’s medical care and paid him—or scared him—enough to keep quiet. It wasn’t enough. Wasn’t nearly enough. And then my mom started in on wedding plans like we were at afternoon tea and not in my hospital room where I was recovering from being beaten half to death.