I froze, staring into the abyss of his dark gaze, terrified of the demon lurking beneath the surface—the part of him that could end me with a word.
Instinctively, I stood and stepped back.
He moved.
One deliberate step.
Then another.
Until the space between us shrank to nothing, until the air itself felt too thin to breathe.
For a heartbeat, he simply stared, silent, suffocating.
And then—
His voice, calm and controlled, carried through the tension like steel:
“You are innocent of your own deeds. Yet the blood in your veins binds you to the man who destroyed me—and that is enough.”
His eyes were dark storms, heavy with anger and ancient hatred.
“Eighteen years ago...” His tone sharpened, colder now, each word a blade. “I was kidnapped from my father’s home in Italy... and trafficked to California.”
My brows knit.
“Guess who kidnapped me?” His voice was rough, every word like a whip across my chest. “Who locked me in darkness, starved me, beat me... over and over, until I was nothing but blood and fear?”
I swallowed hard.
“You found me at that cave,” he continued, his presence suffocating. “Bruised. Broken. Bleeding. And you... you asked who did this, what had happened. But I was too scared. Too terrified to speak. Too haunted to tell the truth.”
He let the words hang in the air, sharp and cutting.
“You kept wiping the blood that wouldn’t stop—flowing, dripping, from between my legs. Even after two hours, it still poured. Do you even know where it came from? Do you know the source of the pain, the bruises that cut deeper than anything you could see?”
My chest tightened. Memories slammed back—
The heat. The hidden cove. A boy, pale, trembling, soaked in his own blood. My fear had been real. Yet something—something about him—had made me stay.
“Yes, I was beaten—whipped, flogged, scarred until my body was one raw, bleeding canvas. But that thick, unyielding blood you saw that day,”—his gaze drilled into mine—“the blood that refused to stop, that drained me of every ounce of strength...”
He paused, a shadow crossing his features, voice tightening as if the words themselves inflicted pain. “...that wasn’t from the whips, the slaps, the punches... no.”
He swallowed hard, jaw clenching, before the words finally fell like ice. “That came from... what they did to me... from the places they should never have touched.”
“I was violated.”
The words cut through the air like a blade.
My chest seized.
I choked, my voice trembling, faltering under the weight of what he had just revealed. “I... I didn’t know... Oh my... Vin... I—”
He cut me off with a growl that vibrated in the air between us.
“You think ignorance absolves you? No. You carry your father’s blood—the man who ruined me. You exist in the world he destroyed. And that... that makes you mine to punish.”
He stepped even closer, the heat from his body crushing me.
