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“Yes.” My voice doesn’t shake, and I’m proud of that small victory.

“I’ll tell you,” he says, “but understand there’s no going back once you know. Are you certain you can handle it?”

I should say no; tell him to keep his secrets, to leave me in the blessed dark where I can maintain the fiction that the world operates according to rules and laws and decency. Instead, I nod.

He retrieves his phone, taps the screen a few times, then hands it to me. A video begins to play. The quality is high-definition, unforgiving in its clarity. It shows a room—windowless, concrete, clinically bright.

In the center, chained to a chair, is Ben. His face is a mess of bruises, one eye swollen completely shut, blood crusted at the corner of his mouth. He’s screaming. Not in pain, though there’s plenty of evidence he’s experienced that. No, he’s screaming justifications.

“Why the fuck am I here? Someone tell me.” He scoffs like he’s being inconvenienced. “If this is about the bitch Piper, she fucking asked for it. She was teasing me every fucking day. Fuck. The way she dressed, the way she talked. She wanted it. I know she wanted me.”

My stomach heaves. I clamp a hand over my mouth, bile rising in my throat. Not because of what’s been done to him—that, God help me, doesn’t bother me at all—but because of the vile shit he’s spewing.

The video continues. Ben thrashing against his restraints, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth as he rages, as he calls me names I won’t repeat even in my own head.

“Turn it off,” I whisper, and Enzo takes the phone immediately, slipping it back into his pocket.

My hands are shaking, hell, my entire body is. But not with fear, not with disgust—with a pure, clarifying rage I’ve never felt before.

Enzo might have touched me in my sleep, but I did want that. I had written it down, fantasized about it, made it clear in my private thoughts that the idea aroused me. There was a violation of process, perhaps, but not of desire.

What Ben intended was nothing I ever wanted. Nothing I ever invited. Nothing I deserved. I might be refusing to even acknowledge the thoughts, but just because I like living in denial doesn’t mean I can’t see through the illusions I create in my mind.

Ben was going to rape me.

“What are you going to do with him?” I ask, surprised at how cold my voice has become.

“What would you like me to do with him?” The question hangs between us. He’s giving me a choice.

Insisting he let Ben go or suggest we call the police are the right answers, the morally correct answers, the answers that would let me sleep at night believing I’m a good person.

But Ben tried to steal my choice. He would have used my unconscious body for his pleasure without a moment’s hesitation. And that’s not even the worst part. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure I’m not his first victim.

Obviously, I could be wrong, but I don’t feel like giving him the benefit of the doubt. After hearing what I just heard, I’m not that generous.

“I want to see him,” I say finally, the words coming from somewhere deep and dark inside me, a place I didn’t know existed until this moment. “Face to face.”

Chapter 35

Lorenzo

The sensation of wetness coating my cock drags me from the depths of unconsciousness. For a disorienting moment, rage ignites—a violent impulse to destroy whoever dares to touch me without permission. Then my eyes adjust to the darkness.

Piper. My toy.

Her head bobbing between my thighs, moonlight catching on the curve of her cheek, the hollow of her throat. The rage doesn’t dissipate; it mutates, coiling into something equally dark but infinitely more pleasurable.

My hand moves without thought, fingers tangling in her hair, silken strands knotting around my knuckles like nooses. I want to yank her head back hard, to tear a gasp from her throat. Instead, I pull slowly, savoring the stretch of her neck, the power trembling under my palm as her mouth slides off with a delicious pop.

Her lips are swollen and glistening in the half-light. There’s a small string of saliva trailing from her bottom lip to the tip of my dick. The sight makes my cock jerk against her cheek.

“Why did you stop me?” she pouts, looking up at me through long lashes, defiance blazing in her eyes.

“Having fun, Toy?” My voice scrapes out of me like it’s been dragged over broken glass, thick with sleep and want.

The smile that curves her lips is pure sin. “I wanted to see if you’d like it,” she breathes against my skin. “And I was curious.”

I loosen my grip on her hair, not holding her in place anymore, just maintaining contact. “Curious about what?”