Since the light was already rising, I couldn’t risk climbing back up the trellis to her balcony. The servants were stirring, and I knew Rosabel would already be up, making her famous breakfast pastries in the main kitchen. Free of that fucking cloak, I skirted the edge of the courtyard, slipped inside the north wing, and held still in the stairwell, listening for the sound of footsteps. When I didn’t hear any, I moved up the steps. Halfway to the second level, the sound of a woman’s scream met my ears, stilling my movement.
Panic and fear ignited a fury in my blood, and I flew up the rest of the steps to the second floor and sprinted down the corridor, slowing as I approached Natalie’s closed door. My pulse thundered and my adrenaline surged as I reached for the door handle and turned to find it locked. I stepped back, ready to break the door down with my body, when I heard another feminine scream. Only this one hadn’t come from Natalie’s room. It came from farther down the hall, in a suite three doors down. And it was followed by a deep, male, very familiar voice growling “Again” in Italian.
Terror grabbed me by the throat and squeezed because I knew that voice as Dante’s. I rushed down the hall as quietly as I could and stopped outside the door. The scream echoed in my ears again, ramping up my adrenaline, but this close, I could tell it wasn’t Natalie’s scream. It was different. Higher pitched. I reached for the handle only to discover the door wasn’t closed. It was ajar, pushed open five inches. Enough for me to see inside.
If Natalie wasn’t in there, I didn’t want to alert Dante to my presence. Sickness gathered in my gut. If she was in there, I needed to know who else was with him before I went barreling in.
I stepped to the side so I could see better. A naked woman was bent over the footboard of the bed, her legs tied to the corners of the posts and spread wide, her arms secured with rope to the ends of the footboard and pulled in opposite directions. Blonde hair fell over her face, telling me she wasn’t Natalie, and my immediate relief was all-consuming. But when she whimpered, when I saw the red welts and lines across the backs of her thighs and all along her ass, that relief turned to bubbling rage.
My little brother, the one who’d been an innocent kid when I’d left home twelve years ago and nothing more than an insolent university student when I’d last visited Italy, walked around behind her holding a cane, dressed in nothing but his jeans. I knew people were into all kinds of perversions. I knew all about the line between pleasure and pain and how it enhanced arousal. But the tears I saw welling in Maricella’s eyes and the fear tightening her features told me she wasn’t enjoying this. This wasn’t about pleasure. This was about my sick-as-fuck brother taking out his frustrations on Maricella because he hadn’t been able to take them out on those beta slaves in the woods.
I pushed the door open hard. The wood cracked against the stucco wall with a thwack. Maricella jerked at the sound but was unable to move more than a few muscles. Her eyes grew wide as they focused on me. Dante whipped his head my way and stared at me with both shock and superiority. So much my temper shot straight through the roof.
The fucker knew this kind of play was forbidden during daylight hours or when outsiders visited. He also knew if our father caught him, he’d be punished. But he’d done it anyway because he liked the mind fuck more than the actual act of fucking. And he’d done it here in this wing because he’d wanted Natalie to hear it.
“Put the cane down,” I said calmly in English.
“Vaffanculo,” he sneered at me. “She likes it.” He looked back at Maricella and lifted the cane in the air. The whirring sound caused her whole body to tense and her eyes to slam shut in anticipation of the blow.
I was on him in two strides, catching his arm at the wrist before he could strike her. I wrenched it behind his back.
“Che cazzo, pompinara!” he cried.
I shoved him face-first into the wall. He grunted and let go of the cane. It clattered against the ground at our feet. “You wanna call me a cocksucker again?” I twisted his arm harder, and he cried out in pain. “Or tell me to fuck off? You worthless piece of shit. I should beat the crap out of you like you’re doing to that poor girl.”
On the bed, Maricella pressed her face into the comforter and whimpered. The sound only amplified my need for blood.
Dante’s mismatched eyes widened, but with my hand against the back of his head, shoving his face into the plaster, and my other hand pinning him to the wall with a twist of his arm, he couldn’t move. “She’s my kitten, you fucking asshole. I can do whatever the hell I want to her.”
“Not here you can’t. And you damn well know that.”
“You think you’re all high and mighty, don’t you? You think you’re better than me? You’re not. You’re a fucking disappointment to our House. If you weren’t a Salvatici, you’d already be dead.”
His words reeked with truth. I knew I was alive only because of my family name. I also knew that name would mean nothing if anyone found out what Natalie had seen.
Thirty-two years of frustration and disgust and fury over what I’d been born into coiled in my veins, begging to be unleashed. I’d loved Dante once. I’d loved the innocent boy and the goofy teen he’d been not long ago. But I didn’t know this man. And I wanted nothing to do with the sick perversions he’d learned from our so-called House.
I shoved his face harder into the plaster, then released him. He stumbled back and rubbed his bruised cheek where I’d held him against the wall. “You fucking untie that girl right now. She’s sobbing, you piece of shit. Newsflash, asshole. When they’re crying like that, they’re not enjoying it.”
I expected Dante to lash out at me. I expected him to tell me to fuck off again. What I didn’t expect was for his gaze to shoot toward Maricella bent over the bed and panic to fill his eyes when he took a good look at her shaking in her restraints.
He pushed past me and quickly untied her legs and then her hands. She slumped back into him, still shaking. Dante picked her up gently, cradled her in his arms, and carried her to the side of the bed, where he sat and held her against him, tenderly whispering reassurances in her ear in Italian as he smoothed her hair and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
I was sure I was seeing an act. That he was putting on a show for my benefit so I wouldn’t tell our father what I’d seen. But the way Maricella responded to him, instantly relaxing and clinging to his shoulders as he rocked her, told me it wasn’t. And the expression on Dante’s face—more pained than the one on Maricella’s—made me think…maybe the depraved pieces of our House hadn’t consumed him yet.
My need for blood waned, and my thoughts immediately shot to Natalie. Urgency resurged inside me to get her out of this wretched castle as quickly as humanly possible.
Crossing the room without another word, I moved quickly back out into the hall and closed the door at my back. My footsteps sounded in the corridor, but I didn’t care who heard. It was close to six a.m. It was late enough for me to visit Natalie and wake her—even if I knew she’d never gone to sleep.
Nerves churned inside me as I lifted my hand to knock. I knew she had a million questions. I knew she was likely pissed at me. I could deal with all that so long as she listened and followed instructions so we could get out of here without incident.
My knuckles rapped against the door, and I held my breath and listened for her movement on the other side. But fear swirled in my gut when I remembered the numb look I’d seen in Natalie’s pretty blue eyes just before I’d left her. And as the seconds stretched in silence with no footsteps or rasps of cloth or shallow breaths from her room, that fear turned to chilling panic.
I reached for the door handle and turned, but it was locked. Knocking again, I said, “Natalie? It’s Luc.”
Still nothing. Nothing but absolute silence.
The hair on my nape prickled, and sweat beaded along my spine. I gripped the door handle and shoved my shoulder into the wood. The old door didn’t even budge. If she had the desk inside still pushed up against it, kicki
ng and slamming my body against the door would do no good. My pulse shot up as I pictured her balcony. Before I could change my mind, I rushed back for the stairs and took them two at a time until I reached the ground level.
The courtyard was still empty when I reached it. I ran out ten yards and looked up at her windows. They were dark, and her balcony door was closed, just as I’d told her to leave it. My pulse pounded with options. I couldn’t yell—that would alert anyone who was awake, and I didn’t want to scare her if she’d finally fallen asleep. But the tightness in my chest told me she wasn’t sleeping.
I sprinted to the trellis and climbed it in record time. My boots landed against the stone balcony with a clap. I reached for the door handles, expecting them to be locked, but to my horror, they pulled right open. Heart in my throat, I rushed into the room only to find it empty.
“Natalie?”
I searched everywhere—the bedroom, the balcony, the bathroom—but couldn’t find her. My panic went stratospheric, and my first thought was Dante just down the hall, but a quick glance at the door told me the desk was indeed still pushed up against it. Dante couldn’t have gotten in that way, and if he’d come in through the balcony, he’d have had to take her out that way as well.
There were no signs of a struggle. I couldn’t see Natalie going anywhere with Dante or anyone after last night…not without a fight. I looked around again, trying to piece together what had happened and where she was, and stilled when I spotted her cell on the bed.
My nerves shot up as I reached for her phone and flipped it over, checking her call log. She hadn’t called anyone nor received any calls or texts. I opened her web browser, then sucked in a sharp breath at the article she’d left open.
My stomach pitched as I rushed to her wardrobe and tossed the contents. Her clothes were there. Her purse, wallet, and her passport, which I’d returned to her after we’d checked out of the hotel in Venice, were not.
Dread enveloped me, a mixture of fear and panic that tightened my chest until I wanted to scream. As soon as my parents realized Natalie was gone, they’d know she was a threat. A person didn’t run unless they were scared. And there was nothing here to be scared of except that ritual held last night.
Options spun through my mind like a vortex. I could try to play it off to them that we’d had a fight and that she was angry with me, but I knew my father would never buy that. Salvatici men did not argue with their women. They controlled them. If I couldn’t contain one simple American female, he’d still send our House after her because, according to him, an insolent woman who couldn’t be dominated wasn’t worth her space on this planet. Which meant…
My stomach churned with a bitter sickness that chilled my blood.
Which meant, in one night, my entire world had tilted right off its axis. I had to get to her before anyone else did.
Slipping her cell phone into my pocket, I turned quickly for the balcony, but pressure condensed in my chest before I could even reach the doors. And in a rush of pure terror, I realized I had no idea where she was headed—back to New York or home to Idaho.
If I chose the wrong location, we could both be dead before I even recognized my mistake.
Chapter Twenty-One
Natalie
I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life.
I wasn’t sure how many hours I’d traveled. It was all a blur in my mind—running down the long Salvatici drive in the dark, terrified I’d be caught. Staying in the shadows along the road in the wee hours of morning, searching for anyone who could help me. Realizing I’d left my cell phone behind but determined not to go back. Finding a convent—ironically—across the small valley from Luc’s family compound and begging them to take me anywhere so long as it was away from Tuscany.
The sixtyish woman who’d met me at the door had offered to drive me into the nearest village, but I’d balked. It was only when I’d used the Salvatici name that she’d snapped to attention and realized I was escaping a nightmare.
She’d driven me straight to Milan. We’d steered clear of Florence and Rome because she’d said they were too close and that people would look in those places first. I didn’t know how she knew so much about Luc’s family, but I didn’t want to ask for fear my already packed brain might implode. And I’d decided leaving my cell phone behind was probably a blessing in disguise. Luc couldn’t use its GPS signal with some fancy software to track my movements.
In Milan, I’d been able to catch a short flight to London, where I’d sat for hours, waiting for a seat back to the States. Ten hours later, I’d finally landed on American soil in Seattle, and after another hour-and-a-half flight, I stepped off the plane in Boise barely able to move from the hours cramped in coach.
It was dark when the cab driver pulled to a stop in front of my small Cape Cod. My eyes drooped as I fished cash from my wallet and handed it to him with a weak “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, taking the money. “Too bad they lost your suitcase. The airlines suck.”
I forced a smile I didn’t feel and shrugged at my lie, then grabbed my purse and climbed out. As he pulled away from the curb, his brake lights shining red in the darkness, I turned to look at my small rental house, and a wave of despair washed through me.
My hand fumbled in my purse until I found my keys. I felt like I was moving in slow motion as I climbed the front porch. The key turned in the lock with a click, and seconds later I stepped into the cold house, flipped on a light in the entryway, and stared at my silent living room and empty kitchen.
It was just as I’d left it. White couch and matching side chairs I’d saved months to buy after college. The glass coffee table I’d found at a flea market stacked neatly with magazines I’d recycled from the boutique. The flat-screen TV on the wall across the room my mom had insisted on buying for me that I rarely turned on. The adjacent white kitchen counters bare but for a thin layer of dust because no one had used them in weeks.
Since I hadn’t known how long I’d be gone, I’d had an elderly neighbor check on the house regularly. Clearly, she’d done a good job. My house and everything in it was exactly as I’d left it. But I wasn’t. The woman who’d walked out of here for New York, determined and confident, was now battered and broken. Not just in body, but in heart and mind and soul.
Tears welled in my eyes. Tears I didn’t think I had left to cry. All I’d done on the plane was cry, and I was emotionally and physically wrung out. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to forget the last few weeks had ever happened. I wanted to forget Luc, but the pit in the bottom of my soul told me I probably never truly would.
The cordless phone on the kitchen counter blinked red, indicating messages. I knew several were from my mother so I ignored them, just as I’d ignored the messages she’d left on my cell the last week. I couldn’t talk to her now. Didn’t know when I’d have the strength.
Not bothering with the light, I found a bottle of wine in the cupboard, popped the cork, and poured myself a large glass. The red wasn’t as good as the Salvatici wine I’d had in Tuscany, but I tried not to think about that. I tried not to think about anything related to Italy as I carried my wineglass down the dark hall and into my bedroom. But the images were already coming back as I flipped my nightstand light on and moved into the master bath. The masks, the capes, the things I’d read on the Internet, and Luc…
Luc in Rome, when he’d kissed me that first time in the elevator as if he couldn’t stop himself. Luc in Venice, when we’d walked through the city hand in hand and he’d laughed and dragged me into dark corners and teased me until my whole body had been ready to melt. And Luc that last night in Tuscany, when he’d come to my room looking so anguished as he’d apologized and held me tightly to him and told me how much he needed me. When he’d made love to me so sweetly, I’d felt connected to him on another level. When he’d begged me to never leave him.
Emotions closed my throat and pushed tears over my lashes to slide down my cheeks. I couldn’t rec
oncile the two Lucs I’d seen. Swiping at my stupid tears with one hand, I set my wine on the counter, sat on the edge of the tub, and flipped on the water, hoping a bath would drag me toward sleep.
How could he say such tender things to me then leave my bed to join that…that depraved ritual in the woods? How could he touch my heart so sweetly one minute, then turn around and use women as disgustingly as those masked men did? And how could he make me—a woman who was intelligent and independent and strong, dammit—fall so completely and utterly in love with him if he was really a monster like the ones I’d read about on those web pages?
The pain wrenching my heart radiated outward to every cell, making my whole body ache. The only answer I could come up with was that I hadn’t known the real Luc. One of them—and I didn’t know which—had been a lie. An elaborate lie that had demolished not only my world but everything I thought I knew about it. I wanted to go back to being naïve. I wanted to go back to the days when I didn’t know about beta slaves and sex rituals and blackmail and illicit activities and…and Luciano Salvatici.
I dropped my head into my hands and let the tears fall. I let the emotions shake my shoulders and consume my body as the water ran in the tub beside me. At some point, I had to stop crying, right? At some point, I had to realize I’d done the right thing by running and find a way to get over him…right?
“Well now,” a low voice said from the bathroom doorway, interrupting my pity party. “Wine and a bath. Sounds like fun to me.”