The first time I’d seen her, I’d suspected what he had in store for her, which was exactly why I’d warned her off. It was his standard modus operandi.
First throw some lavish party and invite young girls eager to spend time with the prestigious other guests. Then, from the pickings, find some down-on her luck waif to get in bed with him, then get her hooked on opium and whatever the fuck else. And then treat her like shit with impunity, becoming both her dealer and abuser.
How that motherfucker and I were related, I couldn’t even comprehend.
She looked up at me, wide-eyed and terrified as a sick doe. She was hooked on something and whatever it was, she was hooked bad. Her pupils were dilated but there was no life in those eyes.
“I… I couldn’t,” she stammered softly.
“Get your useless ass back in here now,” my brother snapped from inside the bedroom.
For a long second, she and I faced off like that. Me willing her to do what was good for her and get the fuck away from him, she looking petrified, frozen, stuck between worlds.
“I’ll reward you,” my brother said, his voice smoother, softer. More cunning.
Bastard. For the first time, her eyes sparkled to life and she burst back through the door, leaving it wide open for my entrance. I gave the door jamb a single knock and stepped inside.
The sickly-sweet scent of opium hung in the air, just as I’d suspected. But it wasn’t just opium he’d gotten her hooked on. She scurried over to where he lay in bed, and took a snort of something from that snuffbox-like crevice where the tendons of the thumb meet the back of the wrist.
She inhaled hard and shivered to some semblance of life.
As if she didn’t even know I was standing there, she hooked her leg over his body and straddled him on her knees with her back to me. He ran his pale hands up her body, clearly showing off the bruises he’d left all over her thighs and back. A square-edged bruise on her lower back the shape of a belt buckle was dangerously close to her spine.
“You’re such a piece of shit,” I growled at him.
Petre pulled her down lower onto him, and she curled up in an addicted little ball in his arms. The sleeve of her robe slid up and I saw deep purple bruises on the inside of her bone-thin wrist.
I knew that all this was, in part, to show me what Valeria was in for. But little did he know that Valeria would never go through the hell that this poor girl had been through. Not as long as I fucking lived.
“What do you want?” My brother did nothing to disguise his annoyance at my presence.
To feed you to the pigs down in the valley, you degenerate cocksucker.
I steeled myself against my own rage and sat down in the chair near the door. As much as I wanted to give my brother a bloody bruise in the middle of his fucking face, I knew a better way to get him where it hurt.
What I was about to say was exactly the opposite of what I wanted, but I needed Petre on the defensive.
“Thought I should tell you in person. I’m joining the family business again,” I said. “And Dad wants to put me in charge. I’m here to make it official.”
The look on his face was fucking priceless. Like I’d kicked him right in the nuts.* * *Petre stormed out of his bedroom, leaving the poor girl alone in his bed. Following him down the hall, but taking my sweet time, I signaled to one of the servants. “Get her out of there. Take her to the east wing, take care of her.”
“Yes, sir,” the maid said, lowering her eyes. “Absolutely.”
“Call Doctor Lucian if you have to.”
“Of course, sir,” she said with a curtsy, and turned back toward Petre’s room.
Down the hall, Petre emerged from his dressing room in a red silk robe, trimmed in gold cord. He’d always been a sucker for silks and gold. I was exactly the opposite.
“You really are such a bastard,” he snarled at me, stomping now into his own private drawing room.
I followed him in there, enjoying watching him squirm. And I took even more satisfaction than usual from it now—all that shit he did to women, all his brutality, it was nothing but show.
Deep down, he was petrified. A cockroach that would scurry way from the daylight.
Welcome to a new day, you motherfucker.
On the long sideboard by the window, the servants had laid out a full spread for breakfast. Warming pans held eggs, sausage, and roasted potatoes. Big silver platters held fruits and jams.
Scattered around the drawing room, eating in three groups of two, were Petre’s hired muscle, some of whom had been at the poker game the night before and from the looks of them, it had lasted all night.