“You look concerned.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m a wimp when you mention things like that, but I know it’s an empty threat.”
Subconsciously, I roll my sleeves up. Her lips part as she watches. “I understand that I may have over-used these empty threats on you so far, Sofia. But this is serious. Your family hasn’t been keeping up with their payments, and they aren’t even treating me with respect. As the new boss, I can’t allow that to happen. Now. Tell me why the sudden change in their behavior?”
She turns away as if putting the weights back is more important than this conversation. “I have no idea. All I do is work out, find various ways to entertain myself without a phone or wifi, and sleep.”
I take a few steps towards her and pull her hair back so she has to look up at me. “Say that to me again. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t know what’s going on with them.”
“I have no idea.” Her voice wavers, and I can sense fear and apprehension in her.
“Are you lying to me?”
“No.” She struggles to make eye-contact.
“You are, aren’t you?” She has had nothing but time on her hands to figure out a way to contact her family. She could have found a spare phone in this wing before I swept the place, or maybe she convinced one of my guards or staff to help her. This makes me realize that one employee quit without warning recently—Tommaso. Something seemed off with him, so I question whether he’s the culprit, but I want to hear it from Sofia.
She rapidly shakes her head.
“You want to do this the fun way, then?” I purr, spotting some resistance bands across the room. I’m angry with myself because I know I’m going to treat this situation the same way when I found out that she tried to escape. But I can’t stop myself.
I let go of her, causing her eyes to glance towards the door out of the gym.
“Run and we’ll have a fun chase, but there’s nowhere for you to go without me or one of my men catching you first.” She takes a step back, meeting my eyes again. “Now, grab one of those resistance bands.”
A rosy blush grows on her cheeks as she pieces together what my plans for her are. And, surprisingly, she doesn’t hesitate to do as she’s told.
She hands me a red band. I test its flexibility and decide it will work well enough for binding her hands. My eyes scan the room, landing on the pull-up bar mounted on the wall. I nod towards it. “Stand beneath that.”
Again, she obeys. It’s as if a switch flips with her anytime there’s a sexual undertone. Instead of being defiant for the annoying sake of it, she follows what I say to a tee.
She even holds her wrists towards me as she stands under it.
That makes me chuckle. “You want this, don’t you?”
I bind her wrists together and then pull her arms up over her head, tethering them to the bar above her. It’s the perfect height as she’s forced to stand on her tiptoes underneath it. She doesn’t answer me as I pull a knife out of my pocket. Still closed, I flip it around in my hand, playing with it and watching her face. She looks afraid for a second, but she gnaws on her lip in a way that shows she wants to play.
“Does this frighten you?”
“Should it?”
I don’t answer her and flick the blade open. “I want you to know in the future that I don’t consider this tiny piece of fabric to be ashirt.” I cut at it until it drops to the ground. “I will go through your closet and burn anything similar to it.”
Her brown eyes are nearly black from how dilated her eyes are.
“Don’t you have anything to say about that? No snide remarks? No calling me names?”
“No, sir.”
I take a step back, wondering if those two words were in fact a snide remark, but she looks at me with earnest anticipation. No smirk lingering on her face.
Blood rushes to my cock at those two words. With Sofia? There’s something about her submitting to me… trusting me. It drives me insane, making me forget the reason I came down to find her in the first place.
I toss my knife to the ground and then undo the zipper in the front of her sports bra. I palm one of them and feel her nipple harden to my touch.
“Can you tell me now?” I purr. “What did you do to make your family stop paying?”
“I… I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
