“Worried? It seems you knew exactly where I was, darling,” I said, mocking a concerned tone. “How did you know?” I asked, pitching my voice low enough for only him to hear.
My lips pursed at the look of satisfaction that crossed his face as he smirked triumphantly. I didn’t want to indulge him, but I had to know where I went wrong. How to fix it, if and when I tried again.
“Give us some room,” he instructed his guards, and the three men, including the two that had manhandled me in the airport, moved to the back of the plane, out of earshot. They chuckled to themselves, giving me a dark look as they passed, reveling in the scolding they knew I was about to receive. I vowed silently in that moment, before I got free, I would take them down, some way, somehow …
I swallowed thickly at the distance. Even though I knew they couldn’t help me, having them close gave me the illusion of safety. His guards would never lift a finger against him, many had watched time and time again without saying a word as Tommaso berated me. Not that I blamed them. If they’d stepped in to combat the verbal abuse, it would’ve cost them their lives. His guards usually gave me sympathetic looks, not that I wanted their pity, but at least it showed that they had a shred of humanity left in their dark souls.
“So you want to know how I found you?” Tommaso asked, standing from his seat to hover over me. The soft fabric of his suit swished as he moved past me, his hand trailing over my exposed knee in a teasing caress. I shuddered in a mix of lust and revulsion, hating that he could still make me feel both after everything he’d done.
My stomach churned, and I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. Pushing down the hem of my floral skirt, I turned my glare on him. He smirked at the look, taking pleasure in the fact that he knew how to get under my skin. His gaze roved over the flush spreading along my chest, and I worked to draw in a long, steady breath.
“It’s honestly hilarious that you thought I wouldn’t find you, mi amore.” He chuckled, shaking his head as he leaned against my seat. I knew why he stood exactly when he did it. He needed that power, that reassurance he was in control, that he had won. “You think I don’t have a hand in every shady business in the city? I knew the moment you went to get your fake papers. I put an alert out at that very moment to be notified if any plane, train, or boat tickets were placed under that name.”
That key I thought had been my salvation, was actually my downfall it seemed. I thought I’d been so careful. I got the information from someone who wasn’t connected to Tommaso or his family. I stayed clear of his usual suppliers. But his reach was further than I could have ever imagined. I should have known, should have taken more care to get the passport out of the city. But where would I have gone? I was barely able to escape him for an afternoon to go to the seedy underbelly of the black market without him traipsing behind me. I’d thought getting out of the country was the first step, but I would need to be more cautious next time, get the documents out of his clutches first before fleeing the country.
“I knew the moment you booked that plane ticket, along with the cruise to Alaska.” He smirked smugly, lowering his face closer to mine. Only inches separated us now. I could smell the crisp citrus and deep mahogany of his aftershave. I knew the smell would haunt me for years to come, even if I eventually escaped him. “It was so fun watching you squirm—listening to the lies spilling from those pretty lips.”
His mouth stilled so close to mine—too close. I knew leaning back would do no good. He’d only close the distance between us again, just as he’d done when he pinned me against the door in the interview room. His breath feathered across my skin, and the smell of whiskey curled in my nostrils.
“You better think about how you’ll use those pretty lips to make it up to me,” he whispered, the warm scent turning sour as his words sank in. An unbidden, indignant gasp left my mouth, and I reeled back. He grinned maniacally at my reaction, mistaking the heat in my cheeks as desire rather than anger. There’d always been a thin line between anger and lust with us, but not anymore, not when he hurt someone innocent in a jealous rage and forced me to watch.
He stood to his full height, and before I could drag my eyes up, his hips were in my eyeline, the zipper of his pants now bulging, clearly showing the outline of his cock hardening at the idea of what he wanted me to do. I swallowed the curses I wished I could spew at him, knowing it would only make matters worse.
To my relief, he slid back into the seat across from me with a lascivious grin splitting his face. His eyes trailed up my form, taking in my curves and the low neckline of my summer dress. A shiver of fear ran up my spine at his attention. Instead of acting on that lust, he pulled out his phone and leaned back in his seat, his legs spreading wide to encase mine within them. Even when sitting here, his phone in his hand, he needed that sense of control to make sure I didn’t move.
“Father? Yes, we’re on the plane now,” Tommaso said, his attention on the conversation even though his eyes stayed locked on mine.
A leaden weight sunk in my stomach at the mention of his father. He was part of the reason I didn’t want to go back home. He was worse than Tommaso and had taught him everything he knew of power and control, fostering the need for it in his son long before I’d been dragged into this dark world.
“Is the house set up for us? Perfect. We’ll be settling in for the next few days, but we’ll plan dinner for the end of the week.”
That promise had dread pooling in my stomach. Dinner with his family was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. I couldn’t be there, see his parents, an image of what would likely become of us. His father was a ruthless man. He needed to be to run this empire of drugs, sex, and guns—they really had a hand in everything. My skin crawled at the thought of being near him, remembering his leering gazes. We’d always been in public spaces with his parents since Tommaso and I left for New York, and I couldn’t shake the stories I’d heard whispered about how Angelo Barone preyed on women.
And his mother … she was a shell of the woman she must have been before. Her vacant gaze was cold and haunting. She’d had to retreat so far into herself long ago, something I already felt happening to me. But she could never leave him, escape his grasp. And being legally wed … that was something I couldn’t let happen to me. I would rather die than become any version of her. That piece of paper would be like the order for my execution. There would be nothing left of me then.
“See you then,” he announced, disconnecting the call and sliding his phone back into his pocket.
“You have a house in East Haven?” I asked hesitantly.How did I not know that?We left when I was eighteen and he’d lived with his parents before that. We’d flown back a few times over the years, but usually only for a few hours, needing to go to some sort of stuffy event with his father. He never told me about a house or any sort of plans for leaving New York. He took the opportunity of me wanting to move out there for school to solidify his father’s business in the city, and I figured that would be something that was permanent with their crime empire always expanding.
“Wehave a house, mi amore. You and me. We’re about to be married now after all,” he said darkly. “We were always going to go back, you just sped up the process.”
A weight I hadn’t realized was there lifted at his declaration. I thought it was my actions that triggered this move and he just solidified it. But it was always going to happen. I was living on borrowed time, and I was sure Tommaso wouldn’t have been happy to wait for much longer. Especially since I’d been putting off the wedding for six years now. I came up with excuse after excuse—college, my career—but now there was nothing left to hold off this inevitable ending.
A wedding and marriage were supposed to be exciting, the start of something new. But to me, it felt like the final nail in my coffin, the penultimate piece of the puzzle before the last of my willpower slipped away.
He leaned closer, his fingers trailing over my knee again and tracing circles on the soft skin of my thigh, easing my dress upward.
“If you knew this the whole time, why didn’t you stop me? Why did you let it get so far?” I asked, my lips tingling as fear and excitement rushed through me.
I knew I had to forgive myself for feeling any lust toward him. It was purely human nature, it had always only been that deep for the six years we’d been together. He’d been the only person I was with since I was eighteen. He would never have my heart, but my mind couldn’t seem to forget what he could do to my body.
“I needed you to feel that hope slip away, to realize just how useless it is to run from me,” he whispered, his voice soft and filled with lust.
His words crashed over me like a bucket of ice water, freezing me to my core, and the tendrils of desire that flickered to life inside of me at his touch turned to ash. Any time I felt anything for this man, I needed to bring up this moment, replay it in my mind like a record on repeat. All he wanted was to own me, to use my body as he saw fit, and to claim the right to call me his.
“I needed you to finally give in completely and realize that we’re meant to be. You’re mine, and I don’t let what’s mine slip through my fingers.” I wrenched my leg from his grasp—every stroke of his fingers had churned my stomach. His eyes hardened at the slight, but to my relief he let me go. Leaning back in his chair, he swirled his glass of whiskey, bringing the crystal to his lips to take a long pull, his eyes shuttering as he let out a groan of pleasure.
“Why can’t we just stay in New York?” I asked, knowing the answer, yet I had to try. If I thought things were bad in the city, they would undoubtedly get worse with his father’s influence. I hadn’t missed the slight tinge of purple that shone through his mother’s makeup beneath the right light during our last encounter. No matter how hard she tried to hide it, I could see the subtle winces of pain. Tommaso hadn’t hit me, not yet, but he came close, which was why I knew I needed to get out of there, out of his clutches.