Page 8 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

CHAPTER FOUR

Daniela

My cello is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned—though I’m not stupid enough to believe I truly possess it. Vinny commands everything. What’s his is his, and what’s mine is ours. He claims he’s done it all for me—built this world, fought these imaginary battles with men no better than he is.

It’s why he wants me to be a part of it. It’s why he made me drag my cello from my room and set it up in a distant, forgotten corner of his office where even the light doesn’t reach. I’m a part of this. His violence is my entire world, and he’ll never let me forget it.

“Play something nice,” he commands, his words grunted and clipped. His shadow is a stain on the floor, but I don’t look up to see the rest of him.

Three men are occupying this room with me. My fiancé, one of his hired slabs of muscle, and the other...

He’s a stranger I’ve only seen once before: while he aimed a gun at my head. He missed. My eyes squeeze shut to trap the tears welling up, but I obediently settle my bow into position blind. “Play something nice.” I take his loose definition of the word and run with it.

I play something loud. My bow saws, spilling out a melody that washes the harshness of the room away.

It’s Bach, I think. “Cello Suite No. 1.” Prelude.

The composition doesn’t matter either way.

I simply perform, hugging the wooden instrument between my legs, and it’s almost enough to drown out the tortured sounds of the man’s moans.

My upper teeth descend into my bottom lip when a gasp mingles with the notes I’m weaving, but I don’t stop playing. I am nothing in this moment. I’m just sound. I’m endless. I’m...

“You motherfucker!”

The shouting jars with the melody .

“Who the fuck do you work for?”

I play even harder. Sweat beads on my brow. My arm begins to hurt. Something heavy is weighing my left hand down, affecting the precise movements.

“Who?”

There’s a smattering of words in return.

“Fuck you.”

My arm slips, and a false note cuts the air. I pant, hesitating, but an admonishment doesn’t come. Vinny is too busy interrogating to notice. When I continue, the sound isn’t enough to erase what he says next.

“That’s enough of this shit. Get his fucking pants off.”

Off. My arm takes off. I throw myself into the composition, holding nothing back. Every tone. Every subtle note holds a piece of my soul.

And it still isn’t enough to silence the horror taking place in the room.

“Who do you work for?”

“Go to hell.”

“Get my fucking knife.”

“No! No! ”

My fingers are numb. I don’t feel them anymore. I don’t even register commanding my body which note to play next. Everything just moves, muscle and sinew in perfect sync.

“Ma...MACKENZIE!”The anguished cry battles with my solo for supremacy. “Mackenzie sent me. Arno Mackenzie. Mackenz— ”

Everything goes silent but the steady stream of classical music filling every inch of the room.

“Enough.”

I keep playing. My left shoulder hurts. The right one is throbbing. My lungs can’t seem to hold any air, but I don’t stop manipulating the strings while I guide the bow. Faster. Faster. Faster...

“Damn it, that’s enough!” Someone yanks on my right hand.

My bow slips from my sweaty grip and goes flying across the room. Just like that, Bach’s prelude comes to a screeching halt and only my labored breaths fill the silence.

Blood taints the air I’m forced to pant, haunting and sweet.

I shouldn’t look over, but I do. A man’s body is lying on Vinny’s antique floor rug—they didn’t even bother to place anything under him to protect the woven threads.

His pants are down, bunched around his ankles.

There’s a bloody, gaping mess where his male anatomy should be.

Though I assume that it might be whatever one of Vinny’s men is now holding, flaccid and severed, on a silver platter probably fetched from the kitchen.

I coldly register the sight. I don’t feel anything when my gaze slowly roves back down to the dead man on the floor. His mouth is open, but there’s too much red pooling around his lips. They’re painted red with it. Between his teeth is just a gaping hole...

A childish part of me wonders where his tongue is. Oh , it perks up, spotting something lying on Vinny’s desk amid a puddle of even more blood. There it is!

My stomach churns. I only have enough time to bend over and shove Vinny’s hand away before my mouth opens and a stream of vomit coats the wooden floor at my feet .

“Jesus Christ,” Vinny snarls, backing away a few steps. “Get a fucking hold of yourself, Daniela.”

“Get a fucking hold of yourself.”

When I’m done retching, I try to wipe my mouth off with the back of my hand, only something hard bumps my lip and cuts it. It sparkles when I brace my fingers against the floor.

“I’m sorry,” I rasp while blood wells up, dribbling over my tongue. “I’m sorry...Vinny.”

He scoffs in disgust, but once again, the violence has fed his hunger, for now. There’s almost a gentleness when he glares down at my puddle of vomit and snaps, “Clean that up!”

I’m on my knees in a second, ready to mop up the mess—with my skirt my hands, anything to distract myself so I don’t have to look, don’t have to smell...

“Not you,” Vinny says, and I go still.

In silence, his goon crosses over to me and carefully wipes up my undigested pasta with a handkerchief pulled from nowhere.

He wads it up, crosses over to the body, and shoves it into the dead man’s mouth with a hiss of disgust. “I’ll find someone to help me with this, sir,” he promises before leaving the room.

Vinny nods. Then he mumbles curses under his breath, running a hand through his dark hair.

“Mackenzie...fucking Mackenzie.” This new foe only holds his attention for just over a minute, however.

After all, we still have unfinished business.

“So...what do you think?” Looking at me, he nods to my hand, and I glance down to find the mocking surface of my ring glinting back at me.

“Before we were so rudely interrupted, you were about to tell me. What do you think?”

I swallow hard, wishing that it were possible to choke on a lie. No such luck this time. The words tumble out without difficulty, and I’m still alive. “It’s b-beautiful... I...”

I love it, I should say.

“You what?” Vinny questions. He takes a step closer, and I jump, pressing both hands flat on the floor. “Tell me how happy you are. We’ve wanted this for so long.”

He’s feeding me all the right words to say. He’s making this way too easy. God, it’s like he can sense everything I keep locked behind the barriers he’s enacted in my own mind.

“I...”

“Lynn?” He takes another step, slow and measured.

“I...”

“ Daniela .”

“I just... I... Maybe it’s too soon.”

He says nothing, and the footsteps trail off.

My spine tenses. I can’t look up to gauge his expression. “Maybe...we should wait a little longer. Just a little—”

“Longer?”

I don’t expect the blow, and it lands without warning. I see a flash of white. When my vision clears, the right side of my jaw burns, but I nearly sigh with relief. Just a slap.

“I’ve waited twenty-three years for you,” he says, his voice dripping with a tumult of emotions he likes to define as love. “I’ve waited enough. This is what we’ve wanted our entire lives.”

“Yes, yes,” I promise the floor. “I know. I know...but—”

“But?”

The floorboards creak beneath his retreating footsteps. I’m stupid enough to think I’m safe. That he’ll walk away and leave me here without retribution. As if mocking me, the light flickers off the surface of my ring, disrupted by the heavy shadow that falls over me.

I quake, and my cowardly instincts try to stave off the inevitable. “Vinny, please—”

He grabs me by my collar and heads for the doorway.

He’s too fast. I can’t stand up, and I find myself being dragged down the hallway toward my room.

He kicks the door open, startling the poor woman on the other side of it, who seemed to be in the middle of packing away a new outfit packaged neatly in a black shopping bag.

It looks like a dress, slender and black: a cocktail dress.

My stomach churns with the knowledge that he’s planned the engagement party already.

She pales when she sees Vinny, but he shoves her out of the way and yanks me upright before shoving me onto my bed.

I stare up at the man above me. Violent splotches of red paint his cheeks. He’s angry. Furious. I school my face into a blank mask so that I don’t react when he raises the object he has clenched in his left fist. My bow.

“Turn over,” he grits out, his jaw clenched.

My body moves woodenly. I flop over onto my belly, burying my face into the duvet. My eyes shut. Like always, my teeth catch the tip of my tongue so that I won’t make a sound.

“Spread your hands out,” he commands.

My heart sinks, but I do it anyway, digging my fingers into the blanket, clutching fistfuls.

“Yeah...like that. Now, tell me you love me.”

The woman in the corner of the room whimpers, even before I feel a firm hand begin to tug at the back of my skirt and lift it over my hips. My panties are peeled down next, just far enough to reveal my ass. I flinch when he palms the left cheek.

“Say it,” he urges as his fingers curl, sending his nails into my flesh.

I inhale and exhale my soul, leaving the rest of my body limp in his grip. With my last ounce of will, I turn my head just enough to free my mouth so the words come out clear. “I love you.”

The air hisses. I hear the slap of wood against flesh first before I feel the sting. It’s not quite as sharp as it could have been. He hit me too far up, and the wooden spine of my bow struck me through the barrier of my skirt.

“Say it again.”

He’s toying with me, and dread makes it harder to speak.

“I...I love you. ”