A Vow of Love and Vengeance

“Ren—”

He dropped a kiss onto my head before stepping away. He took a handful of dirt from the pile beside the grave and tossed it on top of the coffin. The sound of earth hitting the lacquered surface had my chest tightening.

The fucked up part of all this was I knew I wouldn’t mourn the man if I hadn’t been the one to kill him.

I glanced at my brother, his shoulders hunched, chin dropped to his chest. He was the best person I knew, and he could tell me my father deserved it, pretend he didn’t care, but I knew Renzo. He was trying to hide his grief from me, and it wasn’t fair. He was entitled to it, and I suddenly felt like an intruder standing there.

“You should stay a while, Ren,” I said before stepping away.

“Emi, no—”

I waved him off and practically ran to the house. Back to my solitude because I needed a few minutes of escape.

Once inside Gio’s room, the familiar self-loathing threatened to consume me. Would I ever get through an entire day without feeling like this? Did I even want to? Life was suffering. I’d caused it, so I would endure it.

My fingers practically tore at my zipper before I slipped out of the black dress and got into the shower. Icy water sucked the breath from my lungs, and I cranked the temperature to its max, waiting for it to heat, then burn. Here, I could pretend I was okay, allow the water to hide my tears and ground me in the sweet sting of pain. It was all I had, the only way I knew to hold myself together.

I was standing in the shower, the scalding water pummeling my skin when I sensed him. Gio. His energy always seemed to consume a room, his gaze like a physical brush over my skin.

I turned around and braced my shoulder blades against the cold tile as he approached, stripping out of his shirt, then pants and boxers. If pain distracted me, then Gio naked melted my brain. My pulse spiked, my thighs pressing together with each careful step closer. This was what addiction felt like, a rabid craving clawing away at the inside of my skin.

He opened the door, his gaze sweeping over me with pinched brows. “Emilia—” He reached for the controls, recoiling with a hiss when the water touched his hand. “What the fuck?” He quickly turned down the temperature, and for a moment, we both just stared at each other.

I expected him to berate me, judge me, something. Instead, though, he simply stepped beneath the spray of the water and wound his hand around my throat, harder than normal. Then he kissed me. It was a ruthless kiss, hard and violent, full of tongue and the sharp sting of his teeth.

I fell into it like he was the darkest abyss and I wanted him to plummet within his depths.

His fingers dug into my throat in a way I knew would bruise, and I relished in it, in the way my mind honed in on that one sensation to the detriment of everything else. The world shrank around me, forgotten, inconsequential.

“Is this what you want, princess? To suffer?” It didn’t feel like suffering. His lips left mine before brushing the reddened, sensitive skin of my shoulder. “You want to hurt? To be punished?” His gaze met mine, narrowed, assessing, but I couldn’t answer him. His grip on my throat tightened, and I choked on a breath. “Is this what you need, piccola?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Why?” His hold softened enough to allow me to speak.

“I don’t know.” A distraction? Punishment? Exterior pain to detract from the interior? I wasn’t sure. I just knew it felt like relief, like that first full breath of air when I used to dive into the lake and kick for the surface.

“You do.”

“I just don’t want to feel…anything.”

A beat of silence passed between us, interrupted only by the wash of water over tile. “Then you come to me for it. I will control it. How much, when, where.” At his words, my heartbeat ticked up, my pussy aching at the thought—I’d become so messed up. “Do you understand, princess?”

A smile twisted his lips when I nodded. “Good.” His lips crashed against mine, and I moaned when blood tainted my tongue, my lip splitting beneath his teeth.

“I’ll always give you what you need, Emilia,” he breathed, pressing a hand between my legs and burying two fingers in my pussy.

The sudden stretch was harsh, and I gasped as my body tried to adjust. I wasn’t sure if he was angry or just giving me what I had asked for.

“So fucking tight,” he groaned before he dropped to his knees, hooking one leg over his shoulder. That sinful mouth descended on me in a frenzy—licking, sucking, and biting my clit until I felt wild, feverish, lost in a sea of pain-tinged pleasure. He wound me higher and higher, the lash of his tongue combined with the merciless thrust of his fingers driving me to the edge in what felt like seconds.