I screw my eyes shut. “Domenico.”
“Yeah, say my fucking name.” He runs a thumb over my waxed outer lips, and a moan escapes me.
Doc lets out a low laugh. “You want to get fiddled, baby? You want to come?”
He makes it sound revolting, cheap, and ugly. The way I’ll be if I let him do this. I push his chest. “I don’t want this.”
“Oh yeah, what do you want?”
“I want to go home!” It bursts out of me, tearful and pathetic, and something in me shifts. “Get off me! I want to go home!”
Doc bares his teeth and I’m sure he’s going to slap me. Then the pressure on my lower body vanishes. He stands beside me, looming over the bed. “You’re pathetic.”
I yank the blanket up, covering myself. “I want to go home.”
“Home to what? Being trapped and controlled? Having your mom cash checks on your pussy?”
My chest contracts. “Don’t talk about my mom!”
“You mean your pimp?”
“Shut up!”
He gives a mean jagged laugh. “If some trailer park bitch did what she did, the cops’d throw her in jail. Your mom sells you to the highest bidder and the Governor comes to the wedding.”
Tears burn in my eyes. There’s nothing nice about these truths. Nothing exhilarating. They’re ugly and even though I want to, I can’t dispute them.
“When are you gonna get it, moron? You were already for sale. Now you don’t have to sit around crying about it. You’ve got a choice.”
“By working for you?” I sob.
Doc thumps a fist into his chest. “Yes! Freedom. Money. Self-respect. Whoever you want to fuck whenever you want to fuck them.”
My stomach churns so hard I almost throw up. Has it really come to this? All my ballet lessons and bodyguards. My wedding plans and my acceptance into Columbia. Is my only real chance for freedom to be Eli’s sugar baby or a stripper? My gaze falls on the tiny gold pendant on my dresser. Protection for whenever you journey from home. I meet Doc’s gaze. “No. I won’t work for you.”
“Because you’re a weak little girl?”
I move so fast I don’t feel myself do it. One minute I’m on the bed, the next I have a finger in Doc’s face. “Because you don’t deserve me!”
He takes a step back. I move with him, pressing my finger into his chest. “Maybe my mom sold me. Maybe I was always going to be someone’s property, but at least Mr. Parker was respectful! At least Eli tried to make being with him sound nice! You come down here with Reece’s Pieces, telling me you couldn’t care less who I sleep with and that I’m stupid and you expect me to want to be with you?”
Doc grabs my finger and reels me in like a fish. “I could make you want it. I could make you so desperate you’d fuck me on the cathedral altar in front of your whole family.”
My bravery vanishes in the blink of an eye. “What do you—”
His hand closes around my throat. “You want me to show you? Take the choice right out of your hands?”
I sense a genuine question and while I have no idea how he could take my choice away, the last thing I want is less choice. I shake my head.
“Fine.” Doc releases my throat and heads for the cage door, pulling his keys from his pocket. “You’ve got three options. You can strip in my clubs, you can eat a bullet, or you can get sold to the Bratva. Know what that is?”
“No.”
He shoves the key in the lock and wrenches it open. “Russian mafia. You’ll earn on your back. Get fucked two dozen times a day. Come on so many strangers’ cocks you won’t walk a block without seeing someone who’s railed you.”
He moves through the cage door and slams the bars between us. My heart shrinks in my chest. Despite everything, I don’t want to be alone again. I put my arms through the cage. “Doc?”
He doesn’t look back. There’s still a card I can play. Maybe the only one I have left. “Who’s Alessia Valente?”
