Chapter 10
Quinn
I step back out into that function hall like I’m walking through a dream. My heart races, and I can feel the heat blooming through my face as I make my way through the crowd. No one has any idea what I’ve just done. No one has the slightest clue that I’ve just had my hands tied behind my back while the most incredible, dominant, gorgeous man in the world fucked me like I’ve never been fucked before, giving me every inch of his big cock until I screamed in pleasure.
I blush again, my legs feeling wobbly as I make my way around groups of politicians and finance types. I can still feel his lips on mine, and his hands gripping me so tightly, like he’ll never in a million years let go of me. And I can still feel him there, between my legs. I groan inside, the heat sparking fiercely at the deliciously sore feeling. I can feel his hot cum leaking out of me, making my panties wet and messy and making my body crave more of him.
The rest of the event is a blur. I make small talk with the little group of ladies I was talking to before. I shake the hands of a few politicians that Gino parades over to me. I do my best to just smile and act like everything’s normal, but I know it’s not.
…I know nothing is going to be normal after this. After Roman.
Because this isn’t some fling. This isn’t me just acting out against Gino and the impossible situation he’s forced me into, keeping me like some sort of pet. This isn’t about me just needing to feel something anymore.
No, this is a lot more than that, and it scares me. It scares me because what I feel when I’m with Roman is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. It’s too big, and too real. And I can’t get enough of it.
The car is silent on the way home. Gino’s sitting next to me, with Roman wordless and scowling looking behind the wheel of the Escalade. I’m also scowling, looking out the window at the neon city rolling past us in order to hide it. I’d been looking forward to some more alone time with Roman. Obviously, Gino being here crushes that hope.
“Quinn.”
I bristle at my name from Gino’s lips.
“Yes.”
“Look at me,” he mutters. I swallow, telling myself that the spike of fear I feel is just my own head messing with me as I turn towards him.
“Where the hell did you go off to tonight?”
I frown. “Excuse me?”
“You fuckin’ heard me,” he mutters. “I had some people for you to smile pretty for, and I couldn’t fuckin’ find you for half the goddamn night.”
I swear I hear Roman growl from the front seat, and from the corner of my eye, I almost imagine I can see his hands tightening on the wheel.
“I— I was…” I shake my head. “I wasn’t anywhere.”
“Yeah, no shit. Anywhere to be fuckin’ found,” Gino hisses, turning to glare out his own window. I chance a look at the rearview mirror and catch Roman’s eyes for a split second before he looks back at the road.
We pull into the driveway. Roman shuts the engine off and gets out. He lets me out first, helping me out of the SUV, and his hand lingers on mine a dangerous few seconds longer than it should before he goes around to open Gino’s door.
“Boss, if I could…” I hear his voice, low and deep like he’s confiding something to Gino, still over by the car as I make my way up the steps to the front door of the house.
“Yeah?”
“She, uh, I mean Mrs. Moretti was gone from the fundraiser for female reasons.”
I almost giggle.
“Huh?”
“She asked me to go pick her up some, well, you know. Products.”
Gino snorts a laugh. “Well shit, that’s what I pay you for I guess, huh?” He laughs. “You know, my pop always told me, never trust anything that bleeds for four days and goes on walking, know what I mean kid?”
He chuckles at his own disgusting joke as I wait at the top of the stairs.
“Guess I’m not getting lucky tonight am I?”
I turn, half expecting to see Roman sink a fist into Gino’s face. But instead, I only see him staring right at me, over a laughing Gino’s head with his gaze locked on mine. “No, boss, you’re not,” he all but growls. I bite my lip, our eyes blazing at each other.
“Well, thanks for the lift, kid.”
Gino claps Roman on the shoulder and turns, wheezing his way up the stairs. I turn once more before walking into the house, my eyes locking with Roman’s and that thrill of heat he always gives me teasing through me.
The door shuts behind me, and suddenly, whatever glow I’ve got inside of me is snuffed out.
The slap comes hard, before I even know it’s coming. I gasp, spinning and catching myself against the door, whirling to see Gino looking at me with fury in his eyes.
Oh God.
For a second, I think he knows, and the fear lances through me like a blade.
“Let’s get one thing fuckin’ straight!” he roars. “We go to functions like that, you fuckin’ talk to who I tell you to talk to. You smile pretty for anyone I tell you to smile for, and you sure as fuck don’t leave. You understand?”
“Gino, I—”
“I don’t give a fuck!” he bellows, snarling at me. “You’re mine, bitch. You understand that? You’re my fuckin’ property. And when I tell you to spend the night being my goddamn arm candy, that’s what you do!”
“I—”
Stars dot my eyes, and the pain explodes through me. I go reeling, and it’s not until my vision clears that I realize he’s just hit me with a fist.
“I don’t need your excuses, or your bullshit, bitch. Do as your fuckin’ told.”
He whirls, storming up the stairs and down the hall to his own wing of the house, leaving me trembling and hugging myself as I slump to the floor of the foyer.
…I have to get the fuck out of here.
Chapter 11
Quinn
I wince as I dab my face with the concealer, gritting my teeth as I try and brush it over the ugly bruise forming around my left eye.
Motherfucker.
It’s one more nail in this coffin — one more slice cutting me down to size. It’s not the first time Gino’s hit me, but it’s the most scared I’ve ever been when it’s happened. There’ve been slaps here and there before, but last night? Well, last night felt different. Last night, I was actually terrified.
Maybe it was the Roman thing. Maybe this time, there was that knowledge of what I’d done, and wondering at first if the violence was retaliation for it. I won’t call it “my guilt,” because there’s nothing to feel guilty about. There’s no “wrong” with Roman, just the first light of something good I’ve felt in too long. I might be “married” to Gino, but you’d have to be insane to look at it in pure black and white.
Gino is a cruel, manipulative, sadistic asshole who’s only married to me to protect his reputation from what he really is. Fuck, it would almost be sad if he wasn’t such a piece of shit. Me falling into Roman isn’t cheating. It’s not “stepping out.”
It’s finding freedom.
The sharp knock on my door has me gasping and whirling towards the sound.
“Quinn.”
I pale at the sound of Gino’s voice. My eyes dart to the doorknob, and a brief breath or relief tumbles out as I notice it’s locked.
“Quinn!” The knock comes again, and I jump a little in my chair in front of my vanity.
“Yes?”
“I have something I need you to go do.”
How about go fuck yourself.
I’m still trying to find an answer that won’t provoke him to come crashing through the door when he continues anyways.
“One of Nico’s girls — she’s got cold feed and I need a, uh, female perspective down there talking a little reason into her.”
One of Nico’s girls. My jaw clenches, and I shake my head in disgust. Nico Moretti, Gino’s hot-headed nephew, has recently decided to open a porn studio in Vegas. Now, I’m not going to knock any woman who wants to do that for a li
ving. No way. But Nico is a real piece of garbage, and the stories I’ve heard around Gino’s crew is that this little business of his is a lot less “professional actresses looking for work with a promising new studio” and more drug addicts, girls with nowhere else to go, or worse, girls who owe the family.
Thinking of it makes me physically sick.
Gino’s made a big show about making sure everyone knows it’s Nico’s studio, not his, and that he has nothing to do with it. But I know that’s bullshit. Gino runs this with the family with too much of an iron fist to let something like that just “manage itself.”
“I— I can’t.”
There’s a moment of silence before he responds.
“I wasn’t fucking asking,” Gino mutters through my locked door. “Mikey is downstairs ready to drive you over to the studio. They’re on a schedule, Quinn, and time is fuckin’ money. Talk to this broad, and get her to get back to work, capice?”
I close my eyes, shaking my head. “Fine.”
“Good, good. Her name is Rose, by the way.” He clears his throat. “Hey, ah, sorry about last night.”
My lips curl back in a silent snarl, and I flip him off with both middle fingers through the door. Fuck his lame attempts at apologiz—
“But you know I had to do that.”
I scream into a pillow as I hear his footsteps moving away from my door and back down the hall.
Roman’s waiting in the lobby of the shitty old hotel that sits a block away from Nico’s porn studio. God, it takes everything in me not to run right into his arms, but I know I can’t. Not when the place is crawling with Gino’s men. Instead, I only give him a quick nod, sunglasses on, as I step past him into the elevator.
He rides up with me and two of Gino’s goons, stepping out first and marching over to the door of this pornstar that I’m somehow supposed to convince to go do her job. Besides the fact that we share a gender, I have zero idea why the hell it’s me doing this, but whatever.
Roman knocks, listens, and then steps through, giving the room a glance before he steps out and nods at me. It’s dim in the hallway, an I’m still wearing my shades, along with the concealer. But I wonder what he’d do if he saw the bruise. I wonder if he’d hide his rage or just let it explode.
Alright let’s get this over with.
I step past Roman and walk into the room as I pull my sunglasses off.
Oh please tell me you’re fucking kidding me.
No way. My mood goes from annoyed to flat out horrified as I step into the room and lay eyes on the girl. She’s not a pornstar. That’s easy to see in about a quarter of a second. She looks so scared, and so out of place, and so young. I feel the rage boil inside of me, all of the horrifying stories I’ve heard about Nico’s porn studio coming rushing back.
She’s curled up in a chair by the dingy window reading a freaking Harry Potter book, and when she looks up at me with these big, scared eyes, my heart breaks a little.
"It's Rose, right?" I say softly.
She nods. “Yes.”
I step into the room, turning to shut the door behind me. The two goons try and push it back open, but I watch Roman lay a hand on both of their shoulders and shake his head before nodding at me to go ahead.
I turn back to the girl. ”How are you doing, hon?"
She looks a little put off by my tone, biting her lip and looking at me like she’s trying to weigh out what to say. I don’t even blame her. I can only imagine what the hell these assholes have on her to keep her in this place and make her do, well, what she’s there to do.
“Well, I'll start with what you don't want to hear." Yeah, she’s going to know my name, and it’s not exactly going to smooth things over. But I might as well get it out of the way.
I put my hand out. ”Quinn Moretti."
She goes pale, her eyes darting past me to the door and her breath coming faster.
“No, hang on, no.” I shake my head. “Rose, it's not like that. I’m not…" I sigh, my lips going tight. "I'm Gino's…"
Ugh. I hate saying it out loud. Always.
I knit my brows together as I chew on my lip.
"I'm Gino's wife.”
It feels like I’m spitting the words out, like they’re a bad taste. Rose just nods.
"I know that makes you not trust me at all, and probably hate me by association, but you have to know, I'm not…" I glance back at the door before I move closer to her and lower my voice.
Gino wants me to convince this girl to go shoot porn for his scumbag nephew?
Yeah, fuck that.
“Look, it’s not what you think, okay? I think what they're doing to you is fucked, and I'm going to do everything I can to get you out of here.”
The girl looks away, swallowing thickly before her eyes move back to mine.
"Why would you want to do that?"
"You mean besides that this is disgusting, and wrong on every level, and besides that the Moretti's are all sick pieces of shit?"
She blinks at me in shock, and I smile.
“I’m here to help you, alright,” I say quietly. "Because I'm just as much a prisoner as you, trust me.”
Her eyes narrow at me. ”No offense," she mutters, her eyes dropping to the expensive jewelry and clothes I’m wearing. "But you don't exactly look like a prisoner."
“No?" I grit my teeth and hold out the big glittering diamond ring that I only put on when I have to leave the house.
“Well trust me, I am." I sigh, my shoulders slumping. "I know it's not quite the same as you, though. Not even close. But, I might not have much of it, but I do have some power, and trust me when I say whatever I have, I'm going to use to help you out of this. Because this whole thing?" I shake my head angrily. “This is crossing a line, even for that scumbag Nico.”
I look at her sadly, before suddenly, I can’t even help it and move over to hug her. She tenses, but slowly, she hugs me back, her breath hitching a little.
“I'm so sorry this is happening to you," I whisper, pulling back and glancing around her dingy, crappy little hotel room.
"Okay, first things first, we're getting you an upgrade. I know it's a small thing, but I'm working on the rest of it. Just trust me, okay?"
I look her right in the eye.
“I’m getting you out of this cage.”
Chapter 12
I’m at my apartment when I get the call from Big Tony, one of Gino’s guys, that I’m needed to watch “Mrs. Moretti.”
“She at the house?”
“Nah. She’s at the Royale. You know, Nico’s place.”
I frown. Nico’s place…
But then it hits me, and something cold shivers down my back. The Royale is this piece of shit old hotel near Nico’s fucking porn studio. I know he’s run girls out of the place, and who the hell knows what else. The bigger question though is why the fuck Quinn is there.
“The hell is she doing there?”
Tony sighs. “I dunno. The boss wanted her to go talk to one of Nico’s chicks. You know how them porn girls get.”
I close my eyes, the pain in my heart slicing through me like a blade, like it always does when this sort of subject comes up. And just like every other time, I think of Deliah.
…I think of my little sister.
Neither of us had it easy growing up, but Deliah got the shit end of the stick of it. After our mom ditched out, our dad used to lay into us pretty hard. He may have hit me harder, but he was just fuckin’ meaner to her. I was lucky. I had Gray and Dylan growing up, but my sister got mixed up with some bad people a little too young. Heroine, crack, run-ins with the law — all of that shit. I helped when I could — giving her money when I could, bailing her out, and even moving her into my shitty studio apartment to get her way from our dad and to try and get her away from the pieces of shit she hung out with.
…But it never stuck. And it never helped for long.
And then, Deliah went the way a lot of girls with fucked up backgrounds and addiction proble
ms go in this place — she shot fucking porn. I was down at the recruiting center, signing up for the Marines when she went and did it, and I’ve hated myself for years for not being there that day. For all the days I tried to help and it didn’t do a thing, that was the day I missed — the day it could’ve mattered.
The guys she went with weren’t even a real studio or anything like that. They were just some fucking scumbags with a camera who paid her in cash and smack. Like I said, a lot of girls go this way when they’ve got nowhere else to go in this town. But Deliah wasn’t “a lot of girls.”
She was my sister.
She was brighter than that.
…And it turns out, she couldn’t deal with it at all.
Deliah shot herself up with a triple dose of heroin a few hours after she did that fucking movie. She OD-ed before I even got home.
Fuck, I wanted to find the guys who’d hired her and murder them with my bare fucking hands. I’d wanted to light the whole fucking city on fire and watch the whole thing burn to neon ashes if it meant getting to them.
It was Gray and Dylan who’d talked me down. We were shipping out in two days, and the Marines were my one ticket out of the hell I knew. And I knew Deliah would want that for me.
For us.
“Roman.”
There’s a ringing in my ears.
“Roman!”
I blink, realizing I’m still on the phone with Big Tony.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Wonderful. So get down there.”
I frown. “How’d she get there anyway? I’m her driver.”
There’s a pause, and I can hear Tony clearing his throat. Tony’s one of those old-school guys who came out to Vegas from the New York families back in the 80’s. He’s a decent guy, despite working for Gino fucking Moretti.
…It occurs to me that I hope someone’s thinking the same thing about me.
“Kid, let me give you some advice.”
“Tony, I’m just curious—”