A promise, I realized now with dread in the pit of my stomach, that he might not be able to fulfil thanks to Lorenzo. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I started walking toward town, how Lorenzo had known his brothers had been killed. He’d told me he didn’t have anything to do with them, that they hadn’t spoken in years, so how could he know? The problem twisted itself in my gut, maybe because it was easier to focus on that than it was to focus on the fact that I was going to be at the center of his fierce temper when I finally got there.
All the years that I’d known Lorenzo from a distance, he’d seemed such a nice man. Calm, cool, collected. A businessman with a good head on his shoulders and strong family values. Yet after that night at the Crest where he’d forced himself into my mouth, I knew there was a much darker side to him, and he’d proved himself with every meeting since. He had a wicked temper and a dark and calculating side to him. That part of him I was terrified of. Maybe even more than I had been of his brothers.
I walked for fifteen minutes and was about to call Lorenzo back and beg him to give me more time to get there when a smooth black car pulled up beside me. I remembered the car and knew instantly that it was him. The windows were tinted but when the locks unclicked, and I got in without question.
“Looking pretty tonight, Belle,” he said, his accent sounding thicker as he pulled away and started to drive again.
“Where’s Jenna?”
“Do you remember the last time we were in this car together?”
“Where is she?” I looked across at him, hating him in that moment more than I’d hated Mateo.
“Do you remember the fun we had?” he teased, his hand going to my thigh and stroking up it. I batted his hand away.
“Get off of me!” I snapped, and he laughed manically. He seemed almost unhinged.
“Calm yourself down. It’s not like we haven’t done this before anyway, what’s one more time for old times’ sake?” His hand slid higher, pushing my skirt further up my legs, and I pushed it back down and attempted to pry his fingers off of me but he gripped me tight enough to make me whimper.
His hand moved higher and then his head snapped to look at me, his nostrils flaring and his eyes wide. “No panties? Little whore!”
“Where is she? Where’s Jenna?” I sobbed, fear and desperation making me break. I’d wanted to be strong like Beast, like the woman I had been back in the basement when I’d killed Mateo, but I couldn’t find her now.
I felt weak and small.
I felt devastatingly alone.
He swore in Italian, his words no longer sounding romanticized but vile and ugly. His fingers tried desperately to reach to my most private parts but I continued to bat his hands away from me.
“Get off me!” I screamed.
Lorenzo’s hand let go of my thigh and he swerved the car as he reached back and slapped my face. At the awkward angle it was less painful, but it still stunned me into submission enough to stop fighting him momentarily.
“Stop fucking fighting me, little whore. I’m not going to hurt you. At least not yet. I need you alive so I can make that piece-of-trash boyfriend of yours pay for what he’s done to my brothers.” He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and I whimpered, swiping away the drop of blood I could feel on my bottom lip.
It was darkness on either side of the car. Night had fallen, and out there no one was around to help me. I remembered Beast’s hands on my skin, his lips on mine and the feel of him buried deep inside of me, and I gritted my teeth.
I loved him.
I loved him so much that I’d give my life for his.
“It was me,” I said, quietly, my gaze out the front window.
“What did you just say?” Lorenzo replied.
I turned to look at him, seeing the amusement on his face. He didn’t believe me.
“I killed them both,” I said, my voice growing bolder, the lie only small. Beast had killed Carlos, but I had killed Mateo.
Lorenzo laughed harder and continued to drive. “Nice try, Belle, but you can’t save that piece-of-shit biker of yours. His fate has been sealed. He’ll pay for what he’s done. Do you want to know how?”
“It was me,” I said between gritted teeth, my stomach rolling in fear.
“I’m going to send pieces of you back to him. A finger. A toe. A hand. A foot. Each piece delivered daily so that he comes to dread each package.” Lorenzo smirked like he was the cleverest man on the planet. “And then finally, I’ll send him your fucking head.”
Terror threaded its way through my muscles because I believed him. Every single word. It took everything I had to force myself to sit still and not tremble uncontrollably.
“I stabbed him in the side,” I said, my voice quiet, my mind going calm as I remembered the things I had done to Mateo. “I took my knife and I sliced it down his chest all the way down to his stomach.”
My voice sounded foreign to my ears, like it didn’t belong to me at all but to some imposter that had taken over my body. But the voice wasn’t lying; I had done those evil things, and I didn’t regret any of them.
“And when he begged for me to stop, crying like a baby and pleading with me, I cut his face and made it look like he was still smiling.” I turned and looked at Lorenzo, his gaze no longer on the road but on me. “I took the tip of my knife and I cut him here,” I said, pointing to the right corner of my mouth, “and here.”
His eyes were filled with hatred and pure, unadulterated rage. “Mateo would never beg,” he said slowly, carefully, like what I was saying was starting to make sense to him.
“But he did,” I replied, still looking at him. The car was beginning to swerve across the road because he wasn’t looking where he was going, too intent on glaring at me. “He begged for his mom—for his mia madre. He didn’t beg for Carlos though, because he was already dead, gutted like the pig he was.”
Lorenzo suddenly lunged for me, his voice high-pitched as he screamed at me. “Bastarda!” If it wasn’t for his seatbelt jarring him backwards, he would have had his hands wrapped around my throat already. “Puttana, ti ucciderò!”
My hand fumbled in my bag momentarily, seeking out the gun, but when I pulled it out and aimed it at him, squeezing the trigger without fear, nothing happened.
“Stupida puttana! You think you can kill me!” he roared, steering the car straight again before to keep it from driving into a tree. One of his hands batted the gun from my grip and I cried out as it flew under the seat. “New plan, Belle! I’m going to fuck every hole of yours until you bleed. Until you can’t walk ever again. I’m going to keep you alive, trapped as my own personal sex slave until I’m done with you. How does that sound?” He laughed with wickedness in his tone, his fury growing.
My hand was back in my purse but he was too intent on his fury at me, his sadistic plan coming together in his head as he drove faster and faster, to notice.
“I’m going to make your sofferenza exquisite, Belle. You’ve never felt pain like the kind I’m going to put you through.” He laughed insanely, and I should have been frightened. I should have been terrified, but all I felt was emptiness. “Beg, princess—beg me, and maybe when the time comes I’ll slit your throat quickly and be done with it.”