Page 71 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY

Dante

I lift the tinfoil from the plate just enough to make out two pieces of fried chicken, a hunk of mashed potatoes, and some macaroni and cheese.

It’s not enough to share with the woman in the bedroom—a fact I can’t ignore.

Darcy was never rude, so the only other explanation is that she, for whatever reason, didn’t think there would be another mouth left to feed.

I drag my gaze along her face, searching the smooth planes of it for any hint of what Mack could possibly be planning. I know she’s aware of the suspicion, but she just smiles and pushes the plate toward me.

“Eat up. I don’t think Mack brought along any snacks on your little ‘boys’ outing—”

“Not hungry.” I cut my gaze over to the door and wonder if the little bitch would stick her nose up at it over fucking Thai though—that is, if Darcy were being honest about Mack’s having been nowhere near it.

“I thought Arno would have taken her back by now,” Darcy admits, swirling the edge of her thumb along the rim of the plate .

“Why?” The question comes out more harshly than I mean it to, and Darcy flinches. After all, the bitch is Arno’s problem. His responsibility. His prize. His ...

And he can fucking try to take her if he wants to. My fingers flex at the thought of it, burning hot. He can try .

“He said that was why she was here.” Darcy nods to the bedroom, but I’m already scanning the scarred wood as if I can see her leaning against the other side of it. Hell, I can smell her, the nosy little cunt. “He said that she was part of his plan for getting revenge for Parish—”

“You can tell Arno that he can have her...when I’m done fucking her.” I make my voice loud enough for her to hear and hate that I can only picture her reaction.

How would the little princess react to being referred to as my whore? If she lets out a haughty little gasp in disgust, I don’t hear it above the sound of Darcy choking.

Clutching her throat with one hand, she lunges for the sink while I swipe a plastic cup from the cupboard above her head.

“Here.”

She downs two glasses and then sets the cup aside. Her cheeks are red, and I do a double take, my eyebrow raised. If I’m not mistaken, she’s blushing, and a woman who—at one point, at least—fucked strangers for a living has some damn nerve blushing at the mention of the word.

If she notices the look I give her, she doesn’t let it show.

Instead, she wipes her mouth off with the back of her hand and then tucks a blond curl behind her ear.

Mack must like her to dress like a bar bunny, even in the middle of October.

The jean shorts and the pink, low-cut top leave little to the imagination, but the tattoo above her right breast proves without a doubt just who owns her.

Mack . I try to remember how she dressed before, as one of the girls Dino kept on his payroll to please the men riled by the violence of a cage fight.

Apart from a hazy image of her lurking around the outskirts of the ring, I don’t recall much .

“It’s been a while,” she says softly, as if sensing the thoughts circling my head. “Oh! I brought you something.” She reaches into her pocket and withdraws something clasped in her fist. “Do you remember when I first gave this to you?”

She opens her hand and lying on her palm is a silver necklace—the cheap kind women like her seem to love trading the money they’ve earned on their backs and knees for. Hanging from a silver chain is a line of script that forms a single name: Dante .

“I remember,” I admit.

Birthday present, she claimed, though seeing as how she didn’t know the exact date of mine, I assumed the gift was more or less a “so you didn’t die during your first round in the cage” present.

She gave it to me right after I’d gotten my tattoo.

Maybe it was her way of reminding me that, at some point, I used to be this person named Dante —though she didn’t know just how eager I was to shed that weak, pathetic bastard.

“You left it behind,” Darcy says, dangling the chain from her finger. “When... I want you to have it.” She curls it gently within her fingers and presses it against my palm.

I snatch for it and tuck it, chain and all, into my pocket. “Thanks.”

She shrugs, but an odd expression tugs at her mouth. A smile? She can look back at the old days and smile. I look back...and I find nothing worth grinning about.

“See you around, Dante.” Darcy slips past me and leaves, wiggling her fingers in a parting wave.

I wait until the door shuts behind her and I hear her descend the stairs. Then I turn to the bedroom and swipe the plate closer to me with an outstretched hand. “You hungry?” My voice could be heard from the pit, but the bitch doesn’t answer.

So the little princess wants to play pretend.

Scoffing, I snatch the plate up with one hand and head for the bedroom door.

When I wrench it open, she isn’t there lurking on the other side of it.

Instead, she’s watching me from the bed, sitting cross-legged on the bedspread.

Her head is cocked, but she meets my gaze almost as if daring me to challenge her coy little act.

She could have fooled me—almost. But her chest is heaving beneath her sweatshirt.

Not only that, but the comforter is slightly off-center as if someone had leaped onto it.

I consider calling her out. Instead, I step forward and drop the plate onto the bed, spraying a glob of macaroni and cheese onto the mattress. “Eat.”

She reaches for a leg of chicken without hesitation, and I catch myself staring.

So many women are odd when it comes to food, but she doesn’t seem to care that I watch her rip into the meat with her teeth and swallow down chunks whole.

She moans. Her free hand comes to pick a bit of macaroni between two fingers, and she samples that too.

There’s something wild about the little lamb when she thinks the wolf isn’t watching.

I wonder what she’s like when she’s with him, the bastard who stabbed his name into her chest. Does she lick her fingers when she’s finished and carefully strip every bone of flesh like she’s doing now?

I try to compare this woman to the one Arno kidnapped: the bitch who could watch another being abused and laugh.

I’m not sure which woman is staring back, pushing the now licked-clean plate toward me. I take it and leave to toss it into the sink. When I return, she’s still sitting, watching me, waiting.

Ignoring her, I scan the wall, prepared to pick a corner to sleep in—maybe within those hours of silence, I’ll finally figure out a way to deal with Vinny Stacatto’s whore. I head for one near the window, but the girl surprises me by leaping from the mattress before I can even take a step.

“You sleep.” She jerks her head toward the bed. However, when I don’t move, she staggers backward until she occupies my corner herself. “ You sleep.” She sinks down to her knees, stretching her legs out in front of her.

I should snatch her from the floor and strap her to the fucking bed. I close the door and sink down onto the mattress instead, my back facing her. “Suit yourself.”

She makes a soft sound in response. Part acknowledgment and part satisfaction. Okay, I will.

I can’t understand why the sound irritates me so fucking much as I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.

Prison can teach the deepest of fucking sleepers how to jolt awake at the slightest noise.

Sleep becomes as steady as blinking—you take it in little fucking snatches at a time, always on alert.

For hours, I’ve listened to her shift against the floor.

I knew the exact moment when she rose to her feet, trying and failing not to make a sound.

I felt the bed shift with her weight. I smelled her. Felt the heat of her skin with every careful move she made toward me. I kept still even as she straddled me, balancing her weight across my stomach, inches away from my already hardening cock.

It’s only when she presses her knife against my throat that I finally let my eyes open.

She doesn’t so much as blink. Her eyes gleam in the grayish light of dawn filtering in through the window. It paints her skin, making her glow. She’s a ghost on my chest, threatening me with a dull-ass blade.

“Do you think I won’t do it?” she asks, jerking her chin at the weapon.

“You won’t.” There isn’t a shred of doubt in my voice. No fear.

Vinny’s whore may have entertained the idea of hacking a man’s dick off, but she can’t drive her knife through my throat—even though it would probably be in her best interest to.

“You would have done it already.”

She doesn’t challenge that. Instead, she tilts her wrist, digging the blade in just a fraction deeper. “If you were Vinny, I would.” As if she’s not quite sure of that, the knife digs in even deeper. “I would .”

She’s not ready when I shift my weight and throw her off. Within seconds, I have her pinned beneath me with the hand holding the knife trapped against the headboard. When my gaze meets hers, she lets the knife go, and it bounces across the pillow.

“Are you going to give me back to him?” she demands in that haughty little tone of hers, proving once and for all that she really was listening in last night. “To Arno?”

I choke out something that might be a laugh, but it’s too damn cold. “Do you want me to?”

I expect her to cringe and shake her head no. I expect her eyes to widen at the thought of spreading her legs for Arno or his men. Instead, her frown deepens. She’s thinking.

“I guess...Vinny wouldn’t care how many men I’ve fucked when he gets me back.”

Red flashes across my vision, painting her. I don’t know if it’s anger at the blatant way she assumes I won’t fulfill my promise to kill her or the fact that she’s so fucking cavalier about the possibility of being...fucked.