Maddox doesn’t shout my name like he did earlier, but I know he’s shadowing my walk. Not only does his gasp hit my neck when an Audi A4 pulls up to the nightclub’s back exit doors within a second of me bursting through them, but his eyes also shoot to the agent he pointed out as fast as mine.
I don’t want to be witnessed sliding into my uncle’s car by a federal agent. I’m aware of the many reasons he’s being tailed by the FBI, but the silent opening of the back-passenger door doesn’t give me any other option. Col never sits in the front. He feels superior when he’s in the back. It’s where he wheels and deals, and more times than I care admit, where he punishes me for being disobedient.
Mercifully, only my ego has been walloped into submission since I reached womanhood.
Cheek slaps are reserved for special occasions.
“Demi…” Maddox whispers in warning when I step toward my uncle’s idling vehicle.
I keep my eyes forward, but I direct my voice in Maddox’s direction. “I’m fine,” I force out, issuing my go-to reply anytime I feel snowed under. “Innocent until proven guilty, right?”
The thud of my pulse in my ears could have me mistaken, but I swear Maddox gabbles out, “Not in his fucking realm,” a mere second before I slip into the back of my uncle’s car and am driven away for my second trial tonight.
9
Demi
“It went flat a little over an hour ago.”
Ignoring me, my uncle snatches my cell phone out of my hand before he plugs it into the charging cable dangling out of the door of his pricy vehicle. He may have stained our family name in dirt multiple times the past four decades, but that doesn’t mean he’s struggling to make ends meet. That hustle is left to the people below him—the shitkickers, as he likes to call them. The people like me who do everything he asks but get paid a pittance for it. I could earn more in hell than I ever will from him. It’s why I’m so generous with the tips I receive. Not one of the staff at Petretti’s is there because they want to be. They all owe my uncle in some way.
“Was that before or after I called?” my uncle asks, shifting his focus back to me.
I smile at him like a brainless idiot. Unlike the Walsh brothers, my uncle prefers docile, submissive women. “Was what before or after you called—”
He steals my words with a vicious backhanded slap. It reddens my cheek in an instant and has my molars crunching together, but since it was an open-hand hit, I act as if not even the faintest sting is creeping across my face.
“It was in my purse, so I’m unsure. P-perhaps it was after.”
The quick balling of his hands warns me he’s bordering on retaliating with more than a slap. I’d be worried if all my concentration wasn’t focused on the frustrating stutter of my words. Furthermore, I deserve to be punished. Maddox said half the men I’ve recruited into my uncle’s fighting syndicate were murdered within weeks of them signing the dotted line. Half.
I deserve so much more than an open-hand slap.
I should be hung.
When my uncle growls at me in warning, my lips get flapping. “I attended the gyms you requested yesterday morning. I signed another three recruits. I did as you asked.”
“But you haven’t secured the man I want!” he interrupts, yelling. “You had orders to bring me the best. You’re not bringing me the best!”
With two fights already under my belt this weekend, I pray like hell the third time really is the charm. “Because he doesn’t want to fight for you. That isn’t my fault—”
I should have paid more attention to his balled fists. They hurt more than any slap ever could. The hit he splits my cheek with juts my head back so far, the back of my skull comes close to shattering the glass next to my head. I feel instantly woozy, and the tangy taste of blood has me forgetting the amount of garlic my dinner was laced in.
I want to say I’m surprised he hit me, but in all honesty, I’m not. He’s wanted Maddox fighting under him for even longer than Maddox has been contending in the underground circuit at his university. It’s why I bolted when Maddox caught my relieved sigh from Saint kissing Sloane, and it’s why I acted like I had no interest in him even with my crush being borderline psychotic.
While rubbing away a smear of blood from his hand like it isn’t from his niece, my uncle sinks into his seat. “If he isn’t interested in fighting for me, what was tonight’s date about?”
“It wasn’t a date.” The brutal shudder of my lips chops up my words. “He… umm…” I’m usually more on the ball with thinking on the spot, but since my brain was just rattled against my skull, I’m a little slow off the mark. “He needed help with a paper.”
He tsks me as if I’m a child. “You didn’t go to college, so how could you possibly help him?”
I didn’t go to college because I didn’t want to owe you anything, is what I want to reply, but since I can’t, I continue with my ploy to pull the wool over his eyes. “His paper was based on an experiment we did at Seacoast Private. I supplied him the evidence, so he supplied me a free meal.”
I thought he’d appreciate my wheeling and dealing—he’d sell my lung on the black market for a free meal—so you can picture my shock when disdain hardens his features instead of anger. “A man doesn’t buy a woman steak unless he wants to fuck her.” My skin crawls when he unlatches his seat belt so he can scoot to my side of the cabin. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you, sweet innocent Demi?” I can’t see my face, but when he drags the back of his index finger down my cheek, I know the exact area that’s starting to welt. It whitens along with the rest of my skin when the reasoning behind his gentleness comes to light. “You have so many of your father’s features, I often forget you’re as pretty as your mother.”
I want to scream at him that I’m his niece when his finger drops to my collarbone before it moves to the neckline of my dress, but no matter how loud the words are shouted in my head, I can’t force them out of my mouth.
Denying him only ends one way.
Death.
While he traces the outline of my strapless bra through the thin material of my dress, he mutters, “I was disappointed when you failed to answer my calls tonight. When word got out you were seen dining with Ravenshoe royalty yesterday…” he spits out Ravenshoe like it scorched his throat, “… I thought you had finally done as asked.” He tsks me again. “Should have known better. You’re just like your father. Stupid and incapable. You’d be more useful to me dead. Alas…” he sighs like he’s doing me a favor, “… I promised your mother I’d take care of you.” I’ve seen men almost beaten to death, yet it has nothing on the smirk my uncle releases while saying, “She paid very well to ensure your safety. Perhaps I should make you do the same?”
When he reaches for his belt, I sneak a hand around my back to secure a firm grip on the door handle. Rolling onto asphalt at seventy miles an hour will hurt, but I doubt it’ll be as painful as discovering there was a reason for the horrified gleam in my cousin’s eyes anytime she begged to have a sleepover. Ophelia only ever pleaded to stay the night when her father returned from ‘business’ trips. It was rare for her request to be granted since my uncle refused to let her go on the basis he had barely seen her the months prior.