Devil You Hate (The Diavolo Crime Family 1)

Once he finishes, he smiles, showing me straight white teeth. A predator’s move, if I ever saw one. “You’re so sweet and tight. I know men who will pay top dollar for your pretty little pussy.”

I swallow and move away from him. This time he lets me go with a chuckle while walking toward the door.

“Don’t worry, stellina, I don’t plan to kill you. But by the time I sell you to the highest bidder, you might wish I did.”

4

Nic

I can smell her as I enter my security control room the next day. Since I set up the video camera in her cell, I’ve banned my usual security from entering. I don’t want anyone to see her without my permission.

Soo sits in front of the control panel, his long legs propped up on the countertop.

“So, what now?” he asks. He’s changed out of the blood-splattered clothing from last night. But he likely stayed the entire time, not sleeping, so he can monitor the situation.

I don’t bother asking if he witnessed what happened between us in her room. I know he no doubt watched it unfold on the screens. Not that it matters. I have nothing to hide, and Soo’s opinion on what I do to the woman doesn’t matter to me. I shrug and watch her on the monitor. She sits on the mattress, clutching the remnants of her silk slip against her bare breasts. There is no sound but the way her shoulders heave forward, she must be crying again.

I take a moment to watch her, trying to figure out what could be going on in her brain. Crying won’t get her out of that room, it won’t keep me from selling her, and it certainly won’t keep me from touching her again. Even now, my cock is a steel rod against my thigh. Another thing to deal with later.

Soo lingers behind me, and I spin in the chair to face him. “If you have something to say, then say it.”

There are no secrets between us, and he knows my moods can be volatile. It takes him a full minute to form his thoughts and say what’s on his mind.

“Are you sure this is the best way to get your revenge? Selling a little girl for profit?”

My anger rises, but I let it simmer, tucked tight in my gut. He doesn’t deserve my ire for asking a simple question. “One, she is no girl. Two, technically, she has already been sold off. Or do you think what her father was doing with that Gardello idiot is any different?”

He snorts. “Fair point, but I fear this will backfire, regardless.”

My eyes narrow to slits, and I turn to face the monitors again. “Noted.”

While I watch her, he slinks out of the room silently, only the shift in the air, letting me know he’s left. On the screen, she huddles into herself and continues crying, tucking that proud chin into the top of her knees to hide her face.

Since nothing is happening in the room, I queue up the past twenty-four hours of her sitting in the cell. More out of habit than actual interest. I instructed my guys not to go in unless they were feeding her.

Most of the feeds show her crying and attempting to cover herself. She spends a good chunk of time looking for a way to escape. Jokes on her. I designed the room myself, and the only way out is the same way in.

I fast-forward the recording until something catches my eye. She speaks to one of my guys, grabbing his arm.

It’s not her clumsy attempt at the coercion of my guy, but the lingering look he gives her as she throws herself back on the mattress. It’s common knowledge that her father treated his daughters as little more than chattel. At the very least, she lacks the ability to threaten the way her father did.

I sit back in the chair and wait to see if she will try seduction next. As it stands, I owe the guard a fucking head busting for looking at my prisoner the way he did. Like a man starved for something more.

The guard places a tray on the floor by her bed, still eyeing her in a way that makes my lip curl, and then exits the room. I’m almost disappointed. She didn’t try to use her wiles to sway him. Interesting. She may be a Ricci, but she doesn’t know how to use her beauty as an advantage, unlike her father, who did in his younger years. There was even talk he screwed men when he needed to get what he wanted. It must have worked, or he wouldn’t have built his empire to where it stands today.

I drudge up the guard’s name in my memory and shoot Soo a text to find him and bring him to me so we can have a conversation.