Page 26 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Daniela

Lucifer doesn’t talk much. He leaves me again but returns before I can really notice the silence his absence creates. Under one arm, he’s carrying a laptop—the same one that displayed the video of that girl.

He places it on the coffee table and lifts the lid.

There’s a crack jutting through the center of the screen, but the man plugs it in anyway, and it comes on without difficulty.

When he circles around to place his hands on the laptop’s keys, I shift over, making room on the couch, but he remains standing.

I can’t see what he does or what icons he clicks, but when he steps back to stand beside the couch, there is a website dominating the screen.

Girls! Girls! Girls! proclaims the blazing headline that flashes across the header.

A small video window floats amid a sea of obscene pictures of nude women in various poses.

When Lucifer hits play, the scene opens with a shot of a busty blonde watering the lawn.

Spotting the handsome gardener across the yard, she decides to take her skimpy bottoms off. Then...

God. I grit my teeth and dig my nails into my palms. I don’t look away—I won’t.

I shut a part of myself off, and then I take notes.

I observe every obscene gesture. Every position and every forced moan.

It all seems so fake. The two “leads” spend more time staring at the camera than they do each other.

One would think that I wouldn’t need the extra research after all of the “performances” Vinny’s put on for me, but at least these women aren’t writhing in pain and biting their palms to silence their cries.

They smile widely. They “ooh” and “aah.” They don’t flinch when the man slaps them on the ass and tells them to take it like a “good, dirty slut.” They manhandle him right back, palming his cock until he winces before attempting to shove it down their throats.

I don’t find any joy in it. No pleasure. When the video ends, Lucifer steps forward to hunt for another, and I find myself watching him more than I do the screen—a selection entitled The Laddie and the Sexy Tramp.

Does this arouse him, Lucifer? His posture reveals nothing. He stands straight. He doesn’t flex his hips when he’s erect the way Vinny does—if he even is...

After that video ends, he finds another.

And yet another. By the tenth clip, my mind swims with vulgar phrases.

I’ve seen a cock go into more places on the human body than I’m comfortable with.

Silly, nonsensical questions form before I can help it.

Anal or vaginal? Missionary or doggy style? Which one would piss Vinny off more?

I’m so caught up on the logistics that I don’t even notice when the laptop screen finally goes black. Lucifer’s been watching me, though I’m not sure for how long. His expression is almost easy to read for once. He thinks I’m disgusted.

I’m determined. “When will it happen?” I ask.

He shrugs. “When—”

There’s a knock on the door. I jump at the sound, but Lucifer’s already across the room .

“Who is it?” he demands in a tone that makes something inside me quake.

“Arno.”

The door opens, revealing the red-haired man.

“I do have a key for this fucking place, you know,” he says, but his playful smile dissipates the moment his eyes leave Lucifer and focus on me.

“It’s showtime, princess,” he snarls while he throws something at me over Lucifer’s shoulder: a box that bounces across the floor and lands at my feet.

It’s black, with Trojan written across the sides in gleaming silver script.

Ribbed for her pleasure proclaims the tagline. “We do this now,” Arno says.

Now. I blink and only now do I seem to realize how dark it is. The laptop’s screen casts a bluish light that paints everything in a morbid glow. It reflects off Lucifer’s back, emphasizing the muscle straining the cotton of a shirt nearly identical to the one hanging on me.

“Take her across the hall,” Arno tells Lucifer, who seems to stiffen at the request disguised as an order.

There’s an uneasy truce between these two men, I sense. Lucifer isn’t one of his lapdogs, and yet helps him out of a reason other than fear. Loyalty? It’s such a strange contrast to the way Vinny interacts with his goons. They are loyal to his money but obey him solely out of fear.

Lucifer sighs a violent sound. Then he cuts his gaze to me and jerks his head toward the doorway. “Come on.”

I scuttle from the couch and bend to grab the box of condoms. They weigh me down as I enter another hallway lined with several closed doors.

Only one is open now, displaying what appears to be another apartment, but the layout is different from Lucifer’s.

I swallow hard as I creep up behind him and toe the edge of the doorway.

In the space meant to serve as the living room, someone placed a bed. Black sheets hang from the walls, obscuring the windows. Perched on a tripod in the far corner is a camera, its lens centered on the mattress.

“Change.” The red-haired man, Arno, shoves another object in my direction. It’s a bag. Victoria’s Secret is written along the side.

My fingers shake when I take it. Then I force myself to step over the apartment’s threshold. It smells different than Lucifer’s. There’s the lingering scent of cigarette smoke and the faint odor of the men who most likely set up this little showroom.

I don’t let myself picture which of those men might be chosen as my costar. I’ll survive. I’ll live long enough to at least make a dent in the shackles Vinny has enslaved me in for so long. I will...

But my traitorous body isn’t as easy to reassure.

It tenses as I creep across the room and find a narrow bathroom nearly identical to the one in Lucifer’s apartment.

I strip his shirt and then fish my “costume” from the depths of the shopping bag.

It looks like something the women in those videos might wear: panties and a black bra that seem to contain more bits of revealing lace than they do fabric.

My nipples show through the bra, and Vinny’s brand is a blazing reminder of the man and his rules.

The panties are just a triangular strip and then a slender line of string that I guess is meant to separate my legs.

I pull them on woodenly, observing my reflection with a frown.

Lynn is a disjointed mess. Her bruised face serves as a harsh reminder of the duress she’s under. I’ll have to do my best to pretend—no, to act . I want this.

“You want this,” I tell myself, though my trembling voice has trouble even reaching my own eardrums—let alone Lucifer’s.

He’s waiting on the other side of the door when I come out. His face is expressionless, though a part of me shivers with the grim knowledge that he heard what I said.

“Are you the one—”

“No,” he says coldly, and I can’t smother a relieved sigh.

Some nameless, faceless man who smells...I can handle. Not Lucifer. His eyes see too much. His body is too big—too much like Vinny’s. My act won’t hold up around him. It’s a good thing if...

I shake my head. “Who, then?”

He focuses his gaze down the hall, toward the main room, as if wondering that very thing himself. “Wait here.”

Dante

“So, who is it?” I demand of Arno.

He’s seated on the bed. Both hands are braced on his knees, and for the first time since Parish...I see a hint of the old dog peeking through the haze of grief.

“Why?” he snaps. “You want her?”

“Cut the shit,” I snap. I picture the girl—I can’t help it.

Wearing the shit Arno bought for her, she looked like a child hooker.

I know she has to be legal if she’s legally engaged to Stacatto, but still.

.. There’s something inherently creepy about seeing her tits bound by a push-up bra, her eyes wide and empty in porcelain sockets.

“I know the perfect man for the job,” Arno insists.

“Who?”

He holds my gaze for a second, his eyes narrowed. Then, all at once, his shoulders slump, weighed down by exhaustion. He looks ten years older, and something tells me that, despite that promise to sleep, he hasn’t laid off the drink since this morning. “You,” he says.

I whirl on him. “The hell I am—”

“ Please , Dante.” He stands and starts to pace.

He moves his hands through the air as if to illustrate the fucking insanity his mind must be entertaining if he thinks I’ll agree.

“I’ve been thinking,” he starts. “You’re right.

If we play our cards...Stacatto will be willing to negotiate for her.

And, fuck, I want... I need to make the fucker squirm.

” His eyes glow with an unsteady gleam. Stacatto will pay, all right—and dearly—if Arno has any say in it.

“But this shit has to go down properly. I can’t trust one of those other fuckers to do it right.

To let her... I would ask Francisco, but he’s gay.

” He breaks off suddenly, his eyebrow raised. “Unless you’re...”

I roll my eyes and bunch my hands into fists, trying to ignore the infernal itching. It creeps up again, inching toward the first knuckle of every single finger. “I’m not.”

“You’ve just... I’ve never seen you take a girl,” Arno says quickly. “And, even if you were gay, that would change nothing between us.”

I don’t know whether to be irritated or honored by the fact that he seems to mean it.

“But if you aren’t ...”

“No.”

“It’s free ass, Dante.”

“No.”

“I’d do it myself, but I’ll kill her.” His eyes are desperate. He can’t seem to stop flexing his fingers as if already wrapping them around the girl’s slender throat. “I can’t...I can’t. Please .”