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The next morning, I rolled out of bed with swollen eyelids.
I slipped on my undergarments, a comfy sweatshirt, black leggings, and my favorite pair of ankle boots. I didn't care to hide myself as I got changed because I didn't care if Ferro was watching me.
I shuffled my feet into the bathroom and twirled my golden red hair up into a sock bun. Then I applied some mascara and lip-gloss. I looked really tired and my eyes were red from crying nearly the whole night, curled up in a ball beneath my comforters like a child.
Ferro left me.
Crying wasn't an option anymore. I was incapable of crying after a certain extent, and this was that extent. Ferro ate me out, and then left. It was a slap to the face to truly realize that I was just someone he wanted to have sex with, nothing more, and nothing less. Nothing "concrete", as he put it.
Now I was angry, and it was pointless to be angry over a bastard like him, so I slipped my purse over my shoulder and slammed my apartment door behind me, just like he had the night before.
Before I became really upset, I tried to figure out if there was anything in my apartment that Ferro might have seen, that would have made him so angry. When I came out of the bathroom, his indent was basically already gone from the bed, so it was clear to me that he had walked around a little.
I threw out Todd's flowers on the way back to my apartment, so it couldn't be that. I didn't have any pictures of Todd around my apartment, despite a few photos of my family that I put on display so that people thought I had a normal family. Not two divorced parents, one of which was a critical mother who left me too many voicemails, and the other, my father, who rarely even give me a call to say hello.
What could Ferro have possibly seen in my apartment to make him upset?
If there was one thing I knew about Ferro-Valentino La Morte, it was that he was smart, he knew what he did to me and he did it strategically. I was sure that he even watched me cry from his cameras on some monitor in his apartment, because I could feel his gaze on me as I threw myself under the covers and cried to myself. He was probably even laughing and biting his fingers so that I wouldn't hear.
My eyes grazed his door with a fiery rage before I began descending the staircase of our apartment building. I wanted to kick down his door, and slap the crap out of him, but I was positive he wasn't home. He was never home during the day.
Christmas was in only a handful of weeks. I knew the heart of the city would be packed with people because of this, and decided to look for a furniture store around my own apartment building.
I grabbed a hot Carmel latte coffee, to wake me up, and purchased a chocolate chip cookie, then headed towards a cozy furniture store Samantha, my coworker, worked a second job at. She said their love seats were to die for, and I really needed a love seat. I needed something colorful, too, to light up my apartment. I hoped that I didn't fall in love with anything too expensive...
Fifteen minutes into the store, I fell in love with probably most expensive item they had. It was a beautiful red love seat. I almost fell asleep on it while testing it out, and just had to have it. It was just what I needed to make my apartment pop with color.
"Can I help you with anything, sexy-mama?" Samantha came up behind me, whispering seductively in my ear and making her voice deeper.
I spun around with a smile, and we hugged tightly.
"I think I'm going to buy this sucker." I patted the love seat. "But it's expensive... Is this the final price?"
"Yes, it is, but..." Sam checked the price tag with her scanner, and then looked around to see if anyone was watching, cupping her hand over her mouth. "I think I can get you thirty percent! Let me go talk to my manager in the back, she's really rad ."
Thirty percent. I did the calculation quickly in my head as I watched Samantha walk into the back of the store. I was good at math.
"Shit," I said, leafing through my wallet. My fingers brushed against my phone, and for a moment, I considered calling my parents for help.
Mother would have went on an "I told you that you should have taken my money" if I so much as mentioned I fell in love with something that was too expensive. If I called my father, and he answered, I knew he would buy anything for me, but I wasn't the type of person who took charity easily.
Maybe it would be my own Christmas present to myself, since I wasn't so sure I was going to even visit my mom's snobby side of the family during the holidays...
God, my life was really pathetic.
Suddenly, a man with a tickle in his throat went on a slight coughing fit from a dozen or so paces away from me. My head turned, and to my horror, I spotted two men, dressed almost identically to the man who worked for Ferro and came to my workplace that other day.
Suited Man One had a cold and blew his nose with a tissue with one hand, holding a box of silverware in the other. He was middle aged with a lean build, and had light brown hair and brown eyes.
Suited Man Two was clearly pretending to be invested in a medley of mosaic vases. He was around Ferro's age and weight, except maybe a tad taller (If that was at all possible, because Ferro was pretty damn tall), and had blonde hair and light blue-green eyes.
As if sensing my stare, they both looked up at me.
I tore my gaze away, eyes widening.
"That motherfucker," I hissed under my breath.
He had two men watching me now.
I casually moved to a different section of the store and saw in a long mirror on display, that the suited man was following me. And when I slipped into an aisle to lose him, I nearly came face to face with another suited man.
"Crap!" I gasped out, startled.
"Hello, sweetheart," Suited Man Three said.
The first thing I noticed about this one was his eye patch, then his black hair. He looked like a classy pirate, with dark stubble like Ferro. He wore an all black suit that dripped money. He was more ruggedly handsome looking than the two other men and definitely a couple years older than Ferro. His exposed eye was a silvery grey and there was a tattoo snaking up his neck.
"A little average though, isn't she?" Suited Man One said, blowing his nose again, now directly behind me. His brown eyes hungrily drank me in. "She looks like a sl*t, though. Maybe the boss will say no to her, and we can fuck her."
I turned sharply around. "Excuse me?"
"SCARLETT!" My eyes darted over the shoulder of the suited man with the cold. "LET....GO...OF...ME! I'LL HAVE THE MONEY NEXT WEEK!" Samantha being held captive blonde haired suited man. She was crying, and there was blood on her slightly torn blouse, but it wasn't hers. Her managers? "SCARLETT, HELP!"
"I forgot how amazing her t*ts were," Blondie said, his light green eyes wicked and thrilled. Sam didn't fight him one bit as maneuvered her so that she was in a headlock, choking her. "She'll make a great selection for the boss, don't you think?"
The boss? Was the boss Orlando, if they were picking up women? My heart hammered in my chest. Orlando. Orlando was that friend of Ferro's who I found in an alleyway. The trafficker!
"No," Samantha choked out, pulling at her captive's arm around her throat. "Please, don't, I'll do anything," she pleaded. "Please."
"DON'T FUCKING TOUCH HER!" I ran forward, when—
Eye Patch grabbed me with one hand by the back of the neck, pulling me back. I stiffened under his steel grip, and my scream lodged in my throat.
"Easy, Red," Eye Patch shushed at my ear.
"Don't call me that!" I shouted, and then did the unthinkable.
I turned around and swung at the man with the eye patch.
He easily grabbed my fist and slapped me with his free hand, so hard that I fell to the ground and my vision momentarily went black.
"Well, look at that!" he laughed out, completely astonished. His silver eye trailed. "You're a gutsy, aren't you, Red?"
"Don't fuck with them, Scarlett!" Samantha screamed out to me. "They'll kill you!"
I touched my cheek, stunned and looking up at Eye Patch from the ground. I fought back the instinct to cry. This man absolutely terrified me. He had rough voice, and had the capability to get my attention without even raising his volume. "Now, shouldn't you be apologizing? That's not any way a lady should talk, now is it?" He reached down and lifted me up harshly, hurting my arm with his grip. "IS IT?!" he shouted in my face, demanding an answer.
I jerked, turning my face away from him. "I'm sorry," I stuttered out.
"That's what I thought." Eye Patch switched his eyes to Samantha and the blonde suited man. "Knock that whiney bitch out. We'll take her, but she's getting on my last fucking nerves with that screaming," he spat.
Samantha locked her panicked eyes with me. I watched her slowly lose consciousness as her captive strangled her, eyes shutting. Her body slumped like a rag doll in Blondie's arms. He threw her over her shoulder like she weighed nothing.
"Think he'll want this one too?" Sneezy asked, poking me in the ribs. I shot him a filthy looked and shifted away.
"He'll definitely want Red. She's gutsy," Eye Patch said, nudging the gun into my neck. "What do you say we go for a walk now, Red?"
I glared at him, not answering.
"Fico, I don't think redhead is going willingly, either."
"I think you're right," Eye Patch agreed.
"You told Fico what?" Ferro's voice echoed in my head, from the first night at my apartment. "You stupid wh0re! Puttana! Do you have any idea what he'll do to me if he finds out it was my idea? He'll cut my dick off!"
My heart lodged in my throat. The best scenario for me, and it didn't even seem like the best scenario, was that these men happened to work for Ferro and would be taking me to him. Regardless, I feared unconsciousness around these men.
I slowly looked back at the mysterious grey-eyed man. "I'll go willingly," I suddenly said, my voice trembling. "I'll go willingly, I swear."
Fico's silvery grey eye lifted over my head towards Sneezy. He looked absolutely amused that I had said that. "I don't really care," he said.
Pain erupted at the back of my head and I fell forward. Sneezy, who had been standing behind me, must have slammed something into the back of my head.
Everything went black.
* * *
"Get up and get changed."
I awoke sharply to the sensation of somebody throwing something at my face. Eye Patch, or, to my recent discovery, Fico, was standing above me. We were in some sort of small changing room, with vanity mirrors lined up along the walls and pieces of fabric scattered all over the place.
"I said. Get. Changed," Fico repeated, nastier.
"What—where did you take me? Where am I?" I demanded. Clutching my throbbing head, I started to sit up, and then looked down at my lap. There, I found a red bustier, matched with lace underwear and a sheer kimono robe.
Lingerie. Fucking lingerie?
"You're fucking kidding me," I said, starting to panic. This was it. These men worked for Orlando, or some criminal organization, and now I was—what? Going to be some sl*t, if the "boss" liked me. "I'm not wearing these clothes! Where's Samantha!"
He glared at me.
"Do you work for Orlando?" I asked, fear tightening my chest. "Do you know F--?"
He pulled out a gun and the world narrowed in on it.
"Get changed, and stop talking." This time, he inclined his head towards a changing stall to his left, which I hadn't noticed. When I didn't get up, he hauled me off the ground and shoved me into the stall. "Now. You have one minute or I'll shoot you between the eyes. And stop talking."
He sharply closed the curtain, leaving me in a tight space. My eyes narrowed in on an unmistakable smudge of blood on the floor, appearing to be a mess that someone had recently cleaned up, but not thoroughly. Was this Samantha's blood?
"Forty seconds!" Fico barked.
Trembling, fighting tears back in my eyes, I slipped out of my sweater, leggings, and bra, and replaced them with the flimsy red outfit. There was a full-length mirror in the stall, which revealed a bustier looking version of myself. My breasts and private area felt exposed, and the kimono robe didn't offer much help.
"Zero," Fico said, throwing open the curtain. I covered myself the best I could. He looked down at me, noticeably approving. He cleared his throat. "This should win him over. If you're lucky, he'll keep you and fuck you. If he doesn't want you, we all fuck you, we fuck you and let you go, or we kill you. I'm only helping you by making you wear this shit, giving you a chance at a better option."
He threw me a pair of ruby stilettos.
"You're not in Kansas, anymore."
I caught the shoes, never releasing the fierce look in my eyes. I slipped them on, hiding behind the curtain to avoid his stare. He moved the curtain back, watching me.
I exploded. "Go fuck yourself!"
"See, that's what Samantha told me, and now neither of us knows where she is," Fico snickered, and my eyes went wide. He gripped me hard by the arm, yanking me right out of the room and into a hallway. I struggled to keep up with his pace, his fingers digging into my skin. "Here's your chance of survival, Red. In the thirty seconds, you'll have to prove yourself. No talking, unless he says to talk. Be polite. If he says to shake your ass in his face, then you shake your ass in his face, or someone cuts your ass. Understand?"
"Where's Samantha?" I demanded, irritated by this callous man. "I want to know where she is! Did you kill her!" I dragged my heels on the ground, stopping him slightly. "Tell me where she is! Tell me right now."
Fico leaned into me, terrifying up close, and the way he said my friend's name made her seem like scum on the bottom of his shit. "Don't worry about Samantha, because you'll never see Samantha again. The the only thing that bitch will see for the rest of her life, if she's lucky, is the tip of a man's d!ck before he shoves it deep down her throat and fucks her mouth. Now shut your mouth, and don't fuck with me, or that'll be your fate, too."
Fico pressed his gun against the center of my back, and I had nothing else to say.
He shoved me into a dimly lit dance club, but it was not a dance club I had ever seen before. It was something frightening, more elite. The atmosphere was slower, methodic, and women, some completely topless, danced up in cages in front of nicely dressed men, with shadowy faces. The music was sexually inviting. It recognized the current song as Undisclosed Desires, by Muse, and the women up in the cages swayed their hips mechanically to the rhythm.
"This way!" Fico yelled over the music. "Don't talk to anyone!"
The door slammed the door behind us and Fico pushed me forward. The further we entered the club, the more disturbed I became. Women in flimsy clothes, similar to mine, walked around with trays of food and expensive alcohol, sometimes sitting on men's laps and getting a tip between their breasts. The men openly smoked cigars and talked amongst each other. Some of them turned their head as I walked by and stared.
As we neared a set of doors at the back of the club, I spotted a man and women against the wall, who were unquestionably having sex. Fico knocked loudly on the door and a woman in a mask answered. My gaze immediately fell on her exposed breasts, and I became even more sickened than I already was.
Noticing Fico, the woman fluttered her eyelashes. "Fico," she breathed out, her voice sultry. "What can I do for you?"
"Mask with the standard veil." He looked away from her, appearing uninterested in her half-nakedness. "Red or black."
The woman, clearly hurt, shifted her gaze to me and gave me a dirty look, then quickly disappeared into the room. She came back with velvet red mask, slapping it into Fico's hand, seeking his eyes. If he noticed her clear hostility, as I did, he didn't care one bit.
She scoffed and slammed the door.
"Why a veil?" I asked, and my words sounded slurred out. Fico gave me a sharp look.
No talking, I thought, biting down on my lip, Ok...
"I'm offering your body to him, not your face," Fico surprisingly said, slipping the mask over my head and flipping the red veil over my features. I knew it was expensive, like the clothes, the moment the fabric touched my skin. It was silky and molded around my face.
We moved to a different door. Fico knocked again, but this time pulled me aside, behind him. A man answered this time.
"Ciao." Fico inclined his head towards me. "Sto cercando Dante."
Dante? My blood ran cold, and the foreign name made me tense, but I found myself unable to move. Probably because of the fact that Fico had a gun pressed against my side. Dante? Who the hell was Dante?
"Sì." The man turned over his shoulder. "Dante?"
"Prego," a deep voice answered. "Come in."
I knew that voice.
This room was darker than the nightclub, if at all possible, with a few suited men shadowing the entrance of the door. My eyes fell to an arrangement of massive where half naked women sprawled across each other, kissing and touching one another. There was a raised portion of the pillows at the center, where a man sat with his head back, watching the smoke leave his mouth as he exhaled a cigar.
The "boss" wore a an all black suit, similar to Fico's, except his had a black vest underneath and he was wearing a dark red red dress shirt beneath it all. His thick black hair was brushed back from his face, and he sported a pair of dark sunglasses.
My mouth fell into a thin line.
Ferro.
Fico's tone of voice changed. He sounded more subservient, below the man in front of him. "I've brought a gift for you, Dante," Fico announced.
Dante.
He had yet to even look in my direction, tapping his thigh for one of the half-naked women to sit on his lap. "A gift? What kind of gift?"
"A woman," Fico clarified, and that made Ferro arch a dark eyebrow. Still, it was not enough to gain his attention, as he caressed the practically naked woman on his lap.
I was hurt. I was jealous. Then, I was angry all over again.
My gaze trained on each woman sprawled on the pillow, carefully taking in her features. They were gorgeous, big-breasted, obedient, and practically pleaded for Ferro's attention. And they all wore a mask and a veil, similar to mine.
So this is what Ferro did in his spare time.
Fico pulled me out from behind him. I stood a bit gracelessly in my heels, feeling the gaze of all of the men in the room, but Ferro's the weightiest. It was beyond humiliating to be in this damn place, especially given the fact that Ferro had let me cry on him, ate me out, and then left me to dry, the night before.
A part of me hoped that Ferro recognized me. Recognized my body, since my face was hidden. But as I glanced at the women around a very powerful, private man, I knew my body was nothing special, and for him to remember it, I would have to have a lot more to offer.
"Found her during a collection. I thought she was...lively." The Eye Patch, son of a bitch, smirked. "She's got spirit. And despite her hair color, she appears to have Italian roots..."
The man, who I knew as Ferro, shifted only slightly in seat, lifting his chin to look at me. "Ah. È bellissimo. What a beautiful gift for me, Fico. A beautiful woman."
Despite my anger, I smile perhaps twitched behind my red veil. Beautiful.
My smile dropped. Fico was trading me like a freaking object, and I was smiling? This was sick. This was awful.
"For an common man, that is," Ferro continued, with a smug smile. The half-naked women around him, as well as the suited men in the shadows, laughed loudly. Uninterested didn't even come close to how Ferro was currently looking at me. "She is quite average, Fico." There was a hint of playfulness behind his voice. "I expect more from you, as my underboss. All the years that you've known me, and you honestly expected me to fuck that?"
Something shattered within me, too painful to have just been my heart.
"Yes, but you did say you were beginning to favor red." Fico laughed, but was not fazed by Ferro's harsh comment. "My mistake, Dante. It's not every day you cross a lively, natural red head. What do you suppose I do with her?"
Ferro inhaled from his cigar, blowing it out slowly from his nose. "Come closer."
I planted my feet. I was afraid to speak out. Afraid of the men lining the perimeter of the room and the guns they had stored underneath their coats. But I couldn't get any closer to this man, when I was this angry.
"Is this girl deaf?" Ferro asked, his voice dropping to a frigid level.
Ferro was truly was not the man I thought him to be the night before.
He was a monster. A mobster.
Now I had Ferro's complete attention. The mobster inclined his finger, pushing the woman off of his lap as if she was a piece of trash. "Come here, and sit on my lap, sl*t." His jaw tightened. "I won't say it again."
Fico turned his head towards me, his eye patch hidden by the shadows of the room and his silver eye furious. "Move," he commanded silently.
I raised my chin high. "No," I said, making my voice a little deeper than usual. A part of me wanted him to come to me, so he could be my bitch, and knock him straight on his fucking ass with my fist.
Ferro's features hardened into stone, and every aspect of his well-built frame few absolutely motionless. I shouldn't have been afraid of him, but I was.
The room went dead silent.
The head mobster ground his teeth together, and I swear, I could hear it across the room. "Do you have any idea who I am, puttana?"
Puttana. That's what did it for me. That's what made me hate Ferro, or Dante, as Fico called him, if Ferro was even his name. I only knew a handful of Italian words, but I definitely knew that one. I knew it, because on the night at my apartment, I heard him utter those words to a woman he killed. I translated the word online the next day. Whore
"I sincerely apologize, Dante." Fico grabbed my arm. "I'll get rid of her."
"No." Ferro undid his belt, sliding it out of the loops of his black slacks. Like hell, I would let him hit me with that. "No, you won't take her anywhere, Fico. Not until I am done with her."
Fico looked down at me, and to my surprise, he was a little stunned. Fearful? He hesitated for a sliver of a second before grabbing me again. It was clear that "Ferro" the "boss" had a reputation, and that even Fico, my current captor and a cruel bastard, did not want this fate for me.
Fico only dragged me a few steps, but I pulled myself out of his hold and began to walk myself, honing in on my target before me. My heels clicked on the floor and my heart pounded in my ears, and it was as if they were the only two sounds in the room at all.
Everyone disappeared. The girls, who I stepped over, were nonexistent, and Ferro and I were now the only two people in the room. But he did not know who I was; he could not recognize me past the veil.
I stopped just before the women, incapable to moving any further. The dark haired criminal glared at me with his hooded eyes. I had never seen anyone so angry in my life. He was embarrassed. Insulted. Inclining his head slightly to the side, he beckoned me forward with his finger.
His smile was cruel. He gripped his belt with white knuckles, and the women before him all stared at it with horror. "Closer."
What would he do once he recognized me?
My mind drifted to a darker place, darker than the disgusting things I had seen in that very club. Time rewound to the night before, when Ferro's face was between my legs and his tongue was sliding slowly up and down my p*$sy. I ignored the heat that crawled up to my cheeks, and then dripped like molten lava down to my groin. The man last night was passionate, caring, and giving...redeemable.
This man was a cold-blooded monster, who thought I was a woman he met by chance. I couldn't help but relate. I used to think he was someone else, who I met by chance, too.
The mobster inclined his finger towards himself again, where he sat on his throne of pillows, amongst a pool of naked women. As I got closer, I started to tremble, and I was sure it was visibly showing. His smirk was giving it away, like a tyrant watching his enemy squirm.
He put out his cigar as I stood directly in front of him. Nobody had said a word my entire trek to the criminal, and I was positive nobody had breathed.
Ferro's coal eyes fell on my feet, traveling slowly up my legs, settling on my thighs for a great deal of time, my stomach, my pushed up breasts, and then finally, that gaze drilled into the veil covering my features. He seemed to have considered my body for a long length of time, and now, now he was looking right into my eyes, and I had no idea if it had clicked who I was.
"Turn around, and bend over," Ferro said, his voice slicing through the silence of the room.