Page 84 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Daniela

My head is floating on an ocean of blackness, but pain is like a rudder, steering me back toward my body despite how every part of me just wishes to die. It would be so damn easy to let go.

And maybe I could if the devil weren’t whispering in my ear. He calls to me—at least, I think it’s him. I swear I can even hear the guttural cadence of his voice, but when I finally regain consciousness, I recognize the fingers running through my hair with terrifying clarity.

“Welcome back , Mi Bella ,” Vinny tells me as he seizes a lock of my hair, tugging hard enough to make me wince.

The brief, searing agony joins the symphony of it playing through my entire body.

The lighter notes of pain from my previous injuries meld with the throbbing percussion of the blows Vinny landed.

I’m nothing more than a twisted, beautiful melody of pain when I peel my eyes open and face the man who claims to love me above everyone else.

“I’ve missed you.” He runs his fingers along my throbbing cheek, careless of the open wound that burns a fiery trail there. “Look at me.”

I blink so that he knows I’m aware. I see him...and no sight has ever terrified me more.

“This...this was not how our reunion was meant to happen,” he explains, freeing his hand from my hair and placing it on his knee.

The movement draws my gaze down. I’m naked.

He’s stripped me to nothing but bruised and bloodied skin against an ivory duvet I recognize as lining the bed of my old cage.

With a terrible certainty, I know what he plans to do, even while I struggle to keep my eyes open—one aches badly enough to warn me that, in a few hours, I’ll be lucky if I can open it at all.

“Look at me,” Vinny commands as he climbs off the bed and stands before me.

He starts to undo the latches to his pants, taking his time with every deliberate tug on the zipper.

“Apparently, you have no issues with being used as a whore.” He sighs at that assessment: twenty-three years of waiting for my “virtue” wasted.

“So you shouldn’t mind if I use you like one. ”

The words chill me to the core. Desperate for escape, I scan the edges of my room, searching for the familiar shape of my cello, but when I finally find it...the music doesn’t come to me like it used to. I can’t imagine the stage anymore. The notes of that old, soothing melody don’t take me away.

I’m rooted in place as Vinny frees his cock and starts on the buttons of his shirt. My mind spins, hunting for anything to latch onto. I’m a caged bird gnashing her beak against the bars of her cage. The cat is already tugging on the latch...and there is no escape.

Vinny starts to murmur to me, telling me how hard he plans to “fuck” me and which holes he’ll soil. I inhale, my heart quickening with fear as my gaze drifts to the ceiling. He’s already hard. I can hear him stroking himself, grunting with lust.

It’s only when pain flares through my chest that I realize that my fingers are prodding an aching wound there.

A burn. Vinny must not have been able to distinguish what it really is amid all of my other bruises and scrapes, but my fingertips tread the path of every single letter.

I mouth them all to myself in the end, whispering the devil’s name like a prayer.

“...until you scream, and then I’ll take my knife and... What did you say?” Vinny’s tone cuts me to the bone, awakening an old fear, but with my fingers still prodding my brand, it’s easier to ignore him.

It’s easier to sink into the cadence of my own heartbeat and replay a song performed on a more archaic set of instruments than a simple cello—bone, sinew, heat, groans. Lucifer taught me how to play him well. I can taste him. I hear him in my head, overpowering even Vinny’s shouts.

A stinging slap tilts my face onto my left cheek, and I blink as my vision blurs.

“Daniela.” Something sharp sounds near my ear. His snapping fingers. “Look at me.”

I do, still tracing the name of the man who owns me in ways this monster can only dream of.

“What did you say?” His eyes rove over to my collarbone and home in on the burn.

He observes it more closely, attempting to puzzle out the meaning of the shapes that he first thought were meaningless.

His eyes flash; someone new has tainted his toy, and his cock deflates beneath the strength of that rage.

That fear . “What the hell is that? What does it say?”

I should cringe and keep silent. A part of me merely wants to escape on the cloud my memories of the devil represent. They encase me more strongly than any Bach suite. I could drown in his taste alone. But stroking the part of me he’s tainted makes me bolder. Reckless. Stronger.

“Dante.”

Vinny draws back—I see him from the corner of my eye, though I’m already staring far beyond him. I don’t dream of a stage this time, just a man. One with piercing, blue eyes and rich, black hair and the scorch marks of Hell on his soul.

“What did you say?” When Vinny grabs me by the chin, forcing me to meet his gaze, I don’t hesitate to repeat it.

“It says...Dante.”

He slaps me so hard that I see double, and I’m left clinging to the side of the mattress. When I right myself, I leave a stream of blood against the white comforter, but I barely feel the pain with my mouth humming beneath the lasting vibrations of the devil’s name.

“Dante.”

Vinny strikes me again—this time with his fist, I think. The blow knocks me sideways, disrupting the neatly made bed under me. The room is spinning. My lungs ache with every breath I take.

“That’s his name? That motherfucker,” Vinny asks, and I assume he’s referring to the man in the video.

“Dante. I will find him, Lynn. I will kill him slowly. I’ll have you play something nice while I do it.

And then...” He cradles my jaw in his hand, digging his nails in so deeply that I groan.

“Then I’ll fuck you senseless in a puddle of his blood. ”

He shoves me down and strolls for the door, wrenching his pants back up as he moves. “Dinner is at seven,” he tosses over his shoulder, his voice smooth and suave once again. “I expect you to be dressed and presentable. Don’t you fucking dare be late.”

There is no maid in my cage to help me dress this time.

I have to force myself to crawl from the bed to the wall and climb upright, clinging to a windowsill for balance.

My old wardrobe is a forest of unfamiliar silks and satins, but I settle on a black dress that seems “nice” enough for the occasion.

Dinner. In Vinny’s world, meals are a formal affair.

Struggling to remember the old routine, I stagger into the bathroom, and I bathe myself without glancing in the mirror.

My left arm won’t bend the way it should, and I have to wrangle my hair the best I can with only one hand.

I brush it flat and settle it against one shoulder—the closest to tying it back as I can manage.

Then, clinging to the countertop, I douse my skin in his favorite perfume. I clean the dirt from my nails. I pinch color into my swelling cheeks and neatly arrange the dress around my broken frame.

The whole while, I imagine the million different ways I could kill Vinny.

A steak knife through his chest. A bottle of wine against his skull.

The soup dish. The silver cheese platter.

A wine goblet. Each fantasy is more gruesome and grisly than the last, but none of them contain the violence someone like Vincent Stacatto deserves.

“Miss?”

I flinch at the sound of knocking on the bathroom door. Gino’s accent plays a terrifying melody as it echoes off the marble flooring and elegant cream walls.

“Yes?” I force myself to croak out in response.

“Mr. Stacatto requests that I remind you that dinner will be ready within ten minutes.”

I frown. Vinny doesn’t send reminders. If I’m late to this meal, it would only serve to give him more incentive to devise the cruelest torture imaginable to punish me. Regardless, I shut the faucet off and tuck a wayward strand of hair behind my ear.

“I’m coming.” I stand and limp over to the door on bare feet.

When I open it, Gino’s stoic expression is what greets me from the other end. But something isn’t right... Maybe it’s in the hand he’s extending toward me, the palm held toward the floor with his thumb tucked against it. I stare at the appendage for I don’t know how long.

Gino knows the rules—unless they have changed so drastically within the course of the few days I’ve been gone. No one touches me except Vinny. No one.

“Miss,” he prods when I don’t move. “Mr. Stacatto is waiting.”

I consider walking past him—a little over a week ago, I would have. Now, I think it’s the thrill of subverting Vinny’s wishes that makes me reach for his trusted thug’s hand, but before I can touch him, he slides his palm above mine, and I feel something against it that’s tougher than skin.

“The toast,” Gino says, lowering his voice. “Make sure you offer to pour the glass.”

He turns away before I can fully process his words.

When I blink, he’s already heading across the bedroom and out into the hall.

When I follow him, I realize for the first time that we aren’t in the hotel suite.

The furniture is the same—the layout of this room is nearly identical to my old one—but the hallway curves around a row of closed doors and opens at the mouth of a grand staircase rather than a living area.

A house?

“Mr. Stacatto regrets that he didn’t have the time to give you a tour of his wedding gift,” Gino explains as we descend the staircase that deposits us into a spacious entryway.

My gaze longingly drifts over to the door, but I’m not stupid enough to move toward it, and Gino doesn’t even seem to entertain the thought of me running.