It has to be him.
As if reading my thoughts, the man behind me circles around to my head, his fingers gripping my chin as he tilts my face up. A tear trails down my cheek, and he catches it with his thumb, his deep, velvet voice enveloping me in warmth.
“What’s the matter,cara? I thought you wanted to play?”
“Angelo,” I breathe his name on a shuddering exhalation.
All the tension in my body melts away as he removes the blindfold. When I look up, his mask is gone, but something in his dark gaze warns me that I’m not out of danger yet. This is theIl Diavolopeople whisper about, and I fear that my fragile heart may not survive whatever punishment he has planned for me tonight.
“Is there anything you want to tell me?” he asks, his voice deceptively calm.
My lips part, but I don’t speak. This is psychological warfare, and Angelo meant what he said when he told me he plays to win.
He wants my secrets.
“You want to see how far I’ll go?” he asks. “Is that it?”
He releases me and reaches for something on the bench beside the platform. It isn’t until he lifts it to my face that I can see it’s a lace mask. When he slips it over my head, it shrouds everything but my mouth and eyes.
A shiver of uncertainty crawls down my spine as he replaces his black balaclava, obscuring his features.
“We’re anonymous here,” he says, as if to warn me.
I let his words sink in as he moves to the leather sofa across the room. He drops into it, stretching out with the kind of ease that makes my skin prickle. He’s familiar with this space, and I know in my gut it must be the Cat House.
Angelo removes something from his pocket that looks like a remote, and a moment later, the door opens and someone in a robe stands on the threshold.
“Dominus et Deus.” The masculine voice greets Angelo. “Would you like your gifts from the Tribunal now?”
“Yes.”
The robed figure steps inside, allowing three naked women to enter behind him before he shuts the door.
A wave of nausea rolls through me as I realize what’s happening.
“You can’t do this,” I cry out, yanking against my restraints.
Angelo removes a strip of fabric from his pocket and hands it to one of the women. “Blindfold her.”
I try to fight it, but the woman successfully secures the blindfold over the lace mask, leaving me in darkness.
“Kneel,” Angelo orders.
There’s some movement. A shuffle of feet, a rustle of clothing.
A gut-wrenching sob rips from my lungs as I beg him not to do this.
He’s going to destroy me.
“You should know how I feel about loyalty,cara.” The words, spoken so closely, startle me. His palm grazes the curve of my hip, the warmth of his body pressing into mine as he brushes his lips against my ear. “Do you really think I waited all this time to have you just to fuck someone else?”
“I hate you for doing this to me,” I sob.
He lets out a humorless laugh. “That was five seconds,bella. Try six fucking years.”
Some of my anger ebbs away when I hear the note of torment in his voice. It isn’t something I like to think about, but if the roles were reversed, and he did what I’ve done to him, it would have wrecked me.
This was a taste of the medicine he thinks I deserve.
