Page 63 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Daniela

They take me to a hotel, and it’s the irony to end all ironies; for five years, my prison was hidden inside of a hotel. To find my freedom, I have to delve into another—with a monster at my side—all while wearing a black corset hidden underneath a long coat.

“Look pretty,” Mack snarled before pressing the clothes into my hands and shoving me into the back of a van while Dante rode shotgun.

Pretty. It was Vinny’s favorite word, but would he apply it to me now? The concierge who pretends not to notice me entering the lobby doesn’t seem liable to. He averts his gaze with a practice that I figure this particular establishment has trained its employees to perfect.

Lavish wealth drapes everything from the polished marble floors to the shining oak-paneled walls with gold filigree.

Once you take the elevator up to floor thirty-seven, however, that extravagant atmosphere gives way to a simpler layout of black carpeting and forest-green walls.

It’s dark. Discreet. It’s the perfect place for a man to have a half-naked woman delivered to his door just as easily as he might order a bottle of wine.

I inhale sharply as we turn the corner in search of suite number eighty-eight.

Dante’s silent beside me, and I know without even having to look at his face that he doesn’t appreciate my bold little sacrifice.

In the same breath, it doesn’t faze him.

He’ll stand by the door and wait patiently while I fuck another man for coveted information.

He’ll let someone else leave their mark on my ruined flesh, and he won’t give a damn.

It’s a dizzying thought. I have to brace one hand against my chest to keep my heart there, neatly in place. Something firm nudges my fingers, and I pretend that it’s one of the ribs of my corset so that my face gives nothing away.

These men treat heroin like candy. They dole it out in prefilled syringes with neat, clear caps and seem almost too eager to jab the poison into your veins to send you off to Neverland.

The moment the van pulled up to the hotel, Mack couldn’t wait to yank a syringe from his pocket and free the needle.

“Now be a good girl and hold still,” he warned before reaching for me from the driver’s seat while Lucifer watched.

Like a patient lamb, I waited until right before he could jab the tip into my vein. “Not there,” I protested.

After all, we wouldn’t want the buyer to know that his little bit of collateral wasn’t fully present, now would we?

How could he make her scream for Vinny’s benefit?

I knew of other discreet places. My legs maybe?

When Mack seemed more than willing to jab his needle there as well, I asked to do it myself.

Rolling his eyes, he gaze me the syringe, and I brought it to my thigh, hissing on cue at the burning pinch.

Only God knows why he didn’t asked for the syringe back—maybe, for the first time in five years, Lucifer’s vengeful maker was finally on my side?

He’s gotten me this far, after all—a room at the very end of a long hallway, where a balding man in a two-sizes-too-small three-piece suit opens the door with a grin .

Mack’s buyer is at least fifty, with a bulging gut and graying black hair styled carefully around that crowning bald spot. “You wait outside,” he tells Dante before ushering me inside with a hearty chuckle.

Shock nearly roots me to the floor, and I have to swallow it down before I can move.

I expected some faceless monster. Some stranger.

But...I know this man. I met him just once before at a dinner Vinny hosted in a lavish restaurant downtown.

It was one of the few times he brought me along to his business meetings, and I was suffocating in a red dress with a collar that choked my throat and reinforced his possession.

There were two other men there, and they all spoke in code about “kittens” that needed “new homes” and were eager and willing to be placed for “adoption.” One of the men had a funny-sounding name.

Don something . Donahugh . He spent most of the night looking at me with long, searching glances that barely disguised the lust lurking within them.

Vinny punished me brutally for that. How dare I catch another man’s gaze—was I a lady or a whore?

The current turn of events is enough to make me snicker as I stagger into a wide suite decorated with elegant, sleek furniture.

A few leather couches frame a breathtaking view of the bay.

It’s a cozy yet secluded atmosphere that seems the perfect backdrop to be captured by the camera set on a tripod in the corner of the room.

“Mack said no directors,” Donahugh scoffs as he waddles over to the camera and flips a switch that I assume turns it on. “But he promised that you’ll be a good little girl. Isn’t that right?”

He returns to me and runs a meaty finger along my chin while I, like “a good little girl,” obediently shed my coat, revealing the outfit underneath.

Beady eyes home in on my cleavage, and his cock practically bulges against his already constricting pants.

He’s so different in his lust than Lucifer or even Vinny.

He’s greedy and eager to fuck his pretty little toy.

It doesn’t matter to him if her eyes are dead and she’s already battered; he’s too damn busy trying to pull his pants down one-handed while he steers her to a leather chaise with the other.

“Lean down,” he tells me, his breath heavy on the back of my neck.

I obey, bracing both hands flat against the leather while he tugs at the back of my corset and unhooks the clasps within seconds. My hands fly to my chest once the garment comes undone as if to preserve what little modesty I have left.

Donahugh is not impressed. “Don’t be shy now, you little slut,” he growls into my good ear. “I saw the video you made. We’ll make a better one, eh? I’ll let you ride me too—”

It’s hard to manipulate a syringe with one hand. The movies make it look so easy, but once you turn and jab the needle into a man’s shoulder, it takes more pressure to apply to the plunger than you’d expect. The muscles resist the poison; it won’t go in.

“What the fuck?” Donahugh bats my hand away, leaving the needle sticking out of his skin, the syringe still filled with heroin.

I have to throw myself at him and brace one hand against his meaty neck, but it still isn’t enough.

He shoves me off, the needle comes free, and I only have seconds to aim for a new spot and jab my thumb on the end of the syringe.

His hand flies to his neck, trying to snatch the needle out, but this part of him accepts the liquid easier.

He’s already losing his balance as he starts to chase me across the room.

I hit my hip off a leather sofa and collapse on top of it just as he manages to wrestle a cell phone from his pocket.

“You fucking little cunt...” He fiddles with the screen, but his fingers are too sloppy. He can’t even get past the lock screen. He comes for me instead but hits the floor on his knees just feet away.

I watch him, panting. Shaking. Shocked. The success of this mad plan is a variable I can’t bother to assess right now .

Mack wanted information. He’ll get it someway. Somehow.

On my terms.

I try to hammer that point in. My terms. I agreed to his plan for me: to prove something to that insane hole in my chest Lucifer has rubbed open and ground salt inside. I wouldn’t let him own me unwillingly. I won’t become his burden.

So I lied. I took initiative. I dragged him along with me without so much as a solid plan. I was reckless. I am insane .

Donahugh seems to agree as he looks up at me with glassy, marble eyes.

He can’t quite get them to focus, and maybe now I understand why Dante fought so hard to keep me anchored to something while I was high—even to him.

Donahugh’s far gone, at war with his own body.

The hate alone isn’t strong enough. His fat lips are already fighting a stupefied smile as the heat consumes every bit of him in hungry little bites.

He doesn’t react when I slip my foot from the edge of the couch and kick him with it, but it’s not a very hard blow, to be fair—so I try again. This time, when my toes connect with his bulging stomach, he groans.

The poor man managed to get his pants halfway down, revealing the hairy tops of his legs and the part of him straining against a pair of white underwear.

Now what, Daniela? My fingers shake when I brace them on either side of me and dig into the leather. Vinny. Girls. Locations. I let those three things rise up and dissolve the revulsion at what I’ll have to do. I’m going to do it. I can. I will. I...

I feel heavy when I stand and stagger toward my discarded corset. Fear, pain, and anger are their own potent opiate. They take me away to some dark inner place inside my fractured soul as I carefully extract the small kitchen knife I managed to hide within the lacy lining.

It’s a familiar weight against my palm, heavy and already primed with the taste of blood. Sammy’s. Mine. Lucifer’s. I can use it to draw more. I’m ready. I’m able to look past the demented insanity of what I’ve done...and of what I will do.

I can.

The world begins to sway when I turn back to Donahugh. My vision blurs and tears slip down when I try to blink. I don’t know if it’s fear of Vinny, of Mack, or of myself that drives them to escape.