Page 4 of The Enslaved Duet

“You are very beautiful, Cosima, a virgin and a good girl, despite your independent streak,” he tried to explain, his voice heavy and low as if the weight of his tone would subdue me. “You cannot be so surprised.”

“Sleep with me then.” I knew he would never, not like this. Not even the most beautiful girl in Italy was worth dying over. “I’ll run away.”

“You won’t.” Rocco emerged from the small house, wiping his scarlet-dipped fingers on a scrap of grey linen that I was almost sure he had ripped from one of Mama’s curtains.

I shot to my feet, but he froze me in place with those horrible eyes.

“You won’t, beautiful girl, because if you do, your father…” Seamus appeared in the room behind him, and even in the low light, I could see the blood dripping from his hands, streaming like tears across his face from an open gash in his forehead. “…and your mother, your brother, and your sisters, they will all die. I will string them up from that tree.” He pointed at a massive Cyprus tree, the only spot of pretty on the narrow block. “With bells tied to their ankles so that their bodies sing when the wind comes. Would you be so selfish, beautiful girl?”

My imagination prepared the image in less time than it took for me to blink, yet I was shaking my head before he had even finished. The sound of bells tickled my eardrums.

I sagged.

Rocco nodded and smiled almost kindly, but my gaze was sunk deep in the mire of his morally corrupt gaze. “You will be sold to a foreigner, a man who has agreed to pay a considerable amount for you. Before you ask, I do not know the details, and I do not want to. You will be whomever this man wants you to be if you want your family to live and prosper. Do you understand?”

When I didn’t move, he came closer, taking my chin in his hands and tilting it up until my throat was closed and I was perched on my toes to reduce the tension.

“Such golden eyes. Money eyes.” He breathed into my open mouth. “It is almost a shame to lose such beauty.”

He let me go, and I struggled not to stumble as I dragged in deep gulps of tepid air.

“What does Salvatore think of this plan?” I asked desperately.

Thecapohad a soft spot for me that I’d never understood because it started before I’d hit puberty and every man began to take note of me.

No, the great Salvatore had been watching for years, a benevolent guardian with more in common with a demon than an angel.

I couldn’t believe he would be happy to sell me off.

Rocco’s meaty paw wrapped around my wrist and tugged me closer. Strangely, there was no violence in his gesture. Instead, as I tipped my head back to look into his dark as tar eyes, all I saw was anxiety.

“Salvatore understands the currency of beauty and flesh. This is a man who just yesterday stabbed a Neapolitan official in the eye with a fork because he disrespected him over breakfast. It’s almost sweet that you thinkcapowould give a shit about a pretty, worthless little thing like you.”

I hissed in pain as he twisted my wrist and leaned closer to whisper, “In fact, I remember exactly what your Salvatore said to me. ‘She is a great beauty, and that is the worst luck any woman in our world can have. Too tempting to let roam free and too dangerous to keep in one place. Make sure you get a good price for her.’”

I squeezed my eyes shut because I could hear Salvatore’s smooth as crushed velvet voice say those words. He’d said similar things to me before on his rare, but impactful visits, his eyes sharp and sad like a weapon he didn’t want to use against me pressed tight to my throat.

Make sure you get a good price for her.

The words punctured themselves into my heart like a scar written in Braille.

“It’s a good thing that your pretty Elena will remain here under my protection, and Giselle when she visits on school holiday. Otherwise, there would be no telling what might happen to them,” he added casually.

My neck snapped as I shot my gaze back over to him, but Rocco ignored my desperate eyes to focus on a clump of dirt sticking to the side of his well-polished shoes.

“Don’t you dare touch them,” I said, part plea and part threat but totally ineffective.

Rocco grinned his pointy teeth at me. There was a rumor within the Camorra that he had sharpened them with a metal file when he worked as an enforcer in his youth. Looking at those sharp white teeth now, it was hard to believe otherwise.

“I have no desire to touch them, but many other men do. Your sisters have that pretty red hair like their father. Redheads are very rare in Napoli, a delicacy if you will.”

“You won’t,” I ground out. “If you want me to go willingly with thisstronzo, then you will promise me never to let any of your men near my sisters.”

Nico shifted uncomfortably, and I could tell that he wished I would keep quiet, accept my destiny, and be happy that Rocco was even speaking with me in a civilized manner. The situation might have seemed unjust to someone from the outside, but the reality was that I was skating on thin ice. The men putting the finishing touches on my father’s bruised and bloody body wouldn’t hesitate to brand me with a different kind of violence.

As if reading my thoughts, Rocco swung his stare my way, scraping over my curves like a serrated knife. I wasn’t wearing anything revealing—to do so would have been begging for it—but I still had the sense that he knew my body well, that he had fantasized about it enough to accurately guess at the swell of my breasts and the incline of my waist. I was used to the descriptiveness of desire written across men’s faces, but I hadn’t yet learned how to translate it into power.

So when Rocco took another menacing step toward me, I lowered my chin to stare at the ground, my shoulders rolling in and my hands clasping submissively before my groin. It was natural, this position, this submission, but I was still hot with shame when his chuckle wafted warmly across my forehead.