Page 42 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

“It means asshole.”

I nodded, fighting back a smile. “You’ll have to teach me some Italian.”

“Don’t change the subject. Don’t fight.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

She closed the book and gave me her full attention. Those hazel eyes locked onto mine, unsettling me with their determination. “Tell me why you don’t have a choice. What does Sean have over you? I saw you kill those men, Monster. I know you could easily kill him or any of the men who restrain you. But you don’t. You let them keep you down here like a caged pet. Why?”

I licked my lips, leaned back in the chair, and avoided her gaze. She didn’t understand. She didn’t know how hard it was for me to break open that vaulted box in my brain and dig through the shite that explained why I was the way I was. Why I allowed myself to be exploited, used and tortured by a man I despised. Trauma had a harrowing way of making you feel irrevocably alone in your pain. And talking about it? That meant acknowledging it. Revisiting it. Reliving it. I refused to do that willingly.

When she thought I wasn’t going to say anything, she tried to climb off my lap. I grabbed her hips and pulled her back down, keeping her trapped in my arms.

“Don’t,” she huffed, prying my arms off her. I couldn’t stand her wanting distance from me. She gave up and sagged against me. “I just want to know you, but you won’t let me. Do you not trust me?”

The hurt in her voice sharpened something in my chest. I groaned and dropped my head back against the chair, knowing my past wouldn’t change anything. But for some reason, she was adamant it would.

“I stay here so my family stays safe. I suffer so they can live a life I can’t. If I ever tried to kill McKenna, they’d be dead before he drew his last breath. He’s made sure of it.”

She fell silent, giving me space to talk about something I had never told a soul. My heart raced as I forced the words up my throat to give her the basic facts.

“McKenna likes mind games. He killed my parents in front of me. I chose to go with him to save my siblings’ lives.”

“That’s awful. I’m so sorry,” she whispered, pressing her forehead to my temple. I closed my eyes as horrific, fragmented memories tried to surface. I attempted to put them in chronological order. Make sense of them enough to share even a snippet of what I’d lived through. Some things were too dark to share.

“At the beginning, I was kept at the bottom of a well with my father’s corpse, thrown scraps of leftover meat until I learned my worth. I don’t know for how long. Then he let me out.

He showed me what obedience would grant me. Education. Food. Warm clothes. A bedroom. No abuse. He’d make me sit at his table and eat meals with him and treat me like his own son. And somehow that was worse. He talked about my family constantly, fuelling the guilt and shame that I was letting him care for me. I died a little more inside every time he patted me on the head, gave me a gift or praised me. And he knew. He pushed and pushed until I snapped. But every time I did, I’d find myself at the bottom of that well, in the dark, watching my father’s corpse rot. Sometimes for a night. Sometimes it felt never-ending. He’d let me out, and the cycle would start again.

I tried to kill him when I was fifteen. That scar on his face? I gave it to him. I was so full of rage and anger. And that’s when he saw the monster he knew he could force me to become. From then on, he put all his effort into conditioning me to react to touch, noise and suffering. He trained me to kill for him until I had no control of my own mind.”

“I’m so sorry.” She leaned into my chest. I let her. We stayed like that for a while as I regulated my breathing to match hers. She stroked my forearm tenderly, running her fingers over the small scarred lines that were hidden beneath my ink. “When he took you away the other day… what happened to you?”

“Don’t ask me to give you more,” I said, my voice shaking as I tried to shut down, so no more memories could push through. I closed my eyes tightly. “I can’t.”

“Okay,” she whispered. Her fingertips reached up and caressed the side of my face. It was something I should have hated, but with her, it calmed the demons in my mind. I turned my cheek into her palm as her fingers brushed along my eyebrow. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to push you. I can see how hard it is to talk about.”

I exhaled and cracked my neck, forcing my eyes open to meet hers. There was that look again, the one that made me feel like a human being worth something.

“So let’s talk about somethin’ else. Tell me what you need. A warm duvet?”

She gave me a sad smile and curled up against my chest. “Yes, please. And birth control would probably be sensible.” I snorted, but she didn’t laugh. “I’m serious. I can’t get pregnant. Imagine bringing a baby into this fucked-up situation.”

I went still. Fucked-up situation. Part of me knew she was right to call it that. But it still felt as if she’d stabbed me in the chest, because that’s all this would ever be to her.

“We’ll be careful,” I said curtly. Not because I didn’t want her on birth control, but because I didn’t trust McKenna to get it for her. Fuck knows what he’d drug her with. “I have condoms.”

“I like it better without them,” she groaned. I agreed.

“There are plenty of other body parts I’d like to cum on.”

It was her turn to snort. “Let me guess, my tits.”

“Tits, ass, stomach, face. Hell, I’d bet I could even come on your toes. Every part of you turns me on.”

She laughed so freely, and I realised I’d rip my heart out to hear it on repeat.

“I once read a book where the man came in her ear while she slept.”