Page 58 of Beautiful Torment (Empire of Kings #1)

ABELLA

A ngelo doesn’t return that night, and by the third day, I’m irritable and on edge. Much to Nonna’s dismay, I turned down two additional meals in that span of time, and only then did I receive a text from Angelo.

Eat.

One word. No other explanations. That’s all I get.

I ignore it and try to focus on work, which is usually my escape, but even that doesn’t seem to be helping right now.

By the time I’m ready to leave the office on Wednesday evening, I feel completely checked out. But when I step out into the hall, an unfamiliar guard greets me. I try to recall if he was one of those ten guards I met the night we boarded the yacht, but I can’t remember.

“Mrs. Vitale.” He nods at me. “Ready to go?”

“Yes.” A flicker of uncertainty passes over me as I scan the hall. “Where are the rest of the guards?”

“Downstairs,” he says. “There’s been a minor security breach today, and we’ll be using the service entrance to leave.”

“Is everything okay?” I follow him into the elevator.

“Of course,” he assures me. “Nothing to be concerned about. It’s standard protocol to change our routine in events like these.”

“Where’s Nicky?” I ask.

“He’s dealing with the breach himself,” the guard explains. “I’m Max. You met me briefly before your honeymoon.”

“Right.” I force a smile.

When the elevator arrives on the ground floor, Max escorts me to the service entrance. Four of my usual guards are already outside, and I breathe a little easier when I see their faces. One of them opens the door to the car for me.

Before I even make it there, I hear the sound of screeching tires and turn just in time to see a van pulling up. It happens too fast for me to grasp—one second, I’m beside Max, and the next, four men in black tactical gear and balaclavas surround me.

Someone yanks me back and drags me toward the van. I try to fight, and I think I manage to scream, but it’s a wasted effort. A moment later, I’m facedown on the floor of the stripped-out van.

My wrists and ankles are restrained with leather cuffs and linked together before someone slips a blindfold over my eyes. When they stuff what feels like a rubber gag into my mouth and strap it around my head, fear grabs me by the throat.

I can’t move or speak. All I can do is lie there and wait for whatever comes next. The men don’t talk or make any noise at all. It only amplifies my anxiety.

This can’t be happening.

How long will it take for Angelo to realize I’m gone?

I think about the guards we left behind and wonder why they didn’t help me. For a while, I struggle against the restraints, but I get nowhere. All I’ve managed to do is exhaust myself. I haven’t been eating or sleeping well, and now I’m paying the consequences.

After what feels like the longest ride of my life, the van pulls to a stop. I hear the back doors open, and there’s some shuffling before one of the men picks me up. He bands an arm around my torso and pins me to his chest, leaving my feet to dangle as he carries me like a ragdoll.

He jumps from the van, the movement jarring, but he doesn’t loosen his grip. When his boots slap against the floor, they echo around us, indicating we must be in some kind of cavernous space. My first thoughts are a warehouse or parking garage.

I decide it’s best to preserve what little energy I have rather than fight him now. There are any number of reasons I might be abducted, and until I know what they want, I need to stay as calm as I can.

A door opens, and I hear a woman’s low voice as the man carrying me pauses briefly before continuing. The scent of vanilla perfumes the air, and as we move further into the unknown space, I start to hear other things.

Things like…moaning. Flirtatious laughter. Soft music. The low chatter of multiple conversations. Wherever we are, there are a lot of people.

I try to speak around the gag in my mouth, but all that comes out are indecipherable noises, and even then, nobody seems to notice or care.

After a long walk, I hear another door opening, and we turn, entering what must be a different room. The door shuts behind us, effectively silencing all the other noise.

This room is painfully quiet, and from what I can tell, it’s just me and the man carrying me now.

His footsteps are the only ones I hear as he lays me facedown over what feels like a bolstered cushion on an elevated platform.

He pulls me back, readjusting me so my torso lays flat over the cushion and my bended knees rest on the platform below.

It’s at this point I start to panic and try to rear up, but he presses me down with little effort on his part.

He unlinks the leather cuffs restraining my ankles and pries my legs apart. Then he inserts what feels like a cold, metal bar between the cuffs around my ankles, securing it there. Once it’s in place, he pulls my cuffed wrists behind my back and locks them together, effectively immobilizing me.

He removes my heels, and I start to tremble, pleading around the gag. Then I feel something slice through the fabric of my skirt, and I freeze. In one swift motion, he splits the skirt in half and tosses it to the floor, followed by my blouse.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember how to breathe. He pulls on something that sounds like a roll of tape, ripping off a piece before he winds it around one thigh, then the other. He obscures Angelo’s name, and does the same to the tattoo on the back of my neck.

After he removes my gag, he stands there for what feels like the longest minute of my life. Even blindfolded, I can feel his gaze moving over me. The only scraps of clothing shielding the intimate parts of my body are a bra and a thong.

My mind is racing through a dozen different scenarios, wondering how this will play out. As I consider the guards’ lack of reactions when the van pulled up, and the fact that nobody here seemed to care that I was restrained, I have to believe this is Angelo’s doing.

What he asked me on our honeymoon is at the forefront of my thoughts.

Do you want me to terrorize you, cara ?

You should know it will always be me who catches you.

He asked me if I wanted him to capture me even when I didn’t know it was him, and I said yes. I know with bone-deep certainty, he’d never allow another man to take me like this.

It has to be him.

As if reading my thoughts, the man behind me circles around to my head, his fingers gripping my chin as he tilts my face up. A tear trails down my cheek, and he catches it with his thumb, his deep, velvet voice enveloping me in warmth.

“What’s the matter, cara ? I thought you wanted to play?”

“Angelo,” I breathe his name on a shuddering exhalation.

All the tension in my body melts away as he removes the blindfold.

When I look up, his mask is gone, but something in his dark gaze warns me that I’m not out of danger yet.

This is the Il Diavolo people whisper about, and I fear that my fragile heart may not survive whatever punishment he has planned for me tonight.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?” he asks, his voice deceptively calm.

My lips part, but I don’t speak. This is psychological warfare, and Angelo meant what he said when he told me he plays to win.

He wants my secrets.

“You want to see how far I’ll go?” he asks. “Is that it?”

He releases me and reaches for something on the bench beside the platform. It isn’t until he lifts it to my face that I can see it’s a lace mask. When he slips it over my head, it shrouds everything but my mouth and eyes.

A shiver of uncertainty crawls down my spine as he replaces his black balaclava, obscuring his features.

“We’re anonymous here,” he says, as if to warn me.

I let his words sink in as he moves to the leather sofa across the room. He drops into it, stretching out with the kind of ease that makes my skin prickle. He’s familiar with this space, and I know in my gut it must be the Cat House.

Angelo removes something from his pocket that looks like a remote, and a moment later, the door opens and someone in a robe stands on the threshold.

“ Dominus et Deus .” The masculine voice greets Angelo. “Would you like your gifts from the Tribunal now?”

“Yes.”

The robed figure steps inside, allowing three naked women to enter behind him before he shuts the door.

A wave of nausea rolls through me as I realize what’s happening.

“You can’t do this,” I cry out, yanking against my restraints.

Angelo removes a strip of fabric from his pocket and hands it to one of the women. “Blindfold her.”

I try to fight it, but the woman successfully secures the blindfold over the lace mask, leaving me in darkness.

“Kneel,” Angelo orders.

There’s some movement. A shuffle of feet, a rustle of clothing.

A gut-wrenching sob rips from my lungs as I beg him not to do this.

He’s going to destroy me.

“You should know how I feel about loyalty, cara .” The words, spoken so closely, startle me. His palm grazes the curve of my hip, the warmth of his body pressing into mine as he brushes his lips against my ear. “Do you really think I waited all this time to have you just to fuck someone else?”

“I hate you for doing this to me,” I sob.

He lets out a humorless laugh. “That was five seconds, bella . Try six fucking years.”

Some of my anger ebbs away when I hear the note of torment in his voice. It isn’t something I like to think about, but if the roles were reversed, and he did what I’ve done to him, it would have wrecked me.

This was a taste of the medicine he thinks I deserve.

Somehow, he seems to know the second I come to terms with it, and he decides to torture me a little more.

His palms sweep over the curves of my ass, grabbing two handfuls as he pulls me apart.

“Look how much you hate me,” he says, voice rough. “So much you’re soaked with it.”

Mostly, I just hate that he’s right. Even after his emotional torment, I still hunger for him. The broken part of me needs his reassurance that I’m the only one he wants.

“Do you want me to make it better?” he asks.

I bite my lip and nod.