Page 8 of The Enslaved Duet

“As I told you,” Seamus said, smugly.

The blond man shot him a withering look. “Excuse me if I do not trust the word of a man who would sell his daughter to repay his gambling debts.”

I choked back the slightly hysterical laughter that bubbled up my throat. Seamus scowled, but there was no rebuttal to such a statement of fact, so he remained quiet. I wondered how my owner knew the circumstances of our situation then decided that someone with enough money to pay a small fortune for a girl would have the means to find out anything they wanted.

“Now is the time to say your goodbyes. The doctor will need to take her to run some tests before we leave,” he told my dad.

I noticed somewhat warily that he hadn’t looked at me at all after his initial inspection. Why would an obviously gorgeous, wealthy man have to pay for sex?

Because it was obvious that was the reason I was being sold. What else would anyone want with a beautiful woman? And then it became obvious to me why someone like him would need to buy a woman… because his tastes were too deviant for a free one.

I swallowed thickly and edged closer to my father even though I had long ago learned not to go to him for protection.

Seamus surprised me by wrapping an arm around my shoulders and tugging me closer. He rose to his full height, somewhere just over six feet, but even then, he was woefully shorter than the Brit.

“I need your assurances that she will be well kept,” he surprised me again by saying.

The other man turned his head slowly toward us, his dark eyes pools of glossy ink before they’ve written words, totally blank.

“First, get your hands off her. I own her now, and no one but me will touch her,” he said coolly. “Secondly, Mr. Moore, I will make no such assurance. I will do with her what I will as she is no longer a person, butproperty. You might assume that given the money I am investing in her, I won’t do her too much harm, at least not enough to mar her beauty or kill her too quickly, but you neither deserve assurances nor warrant them through the contract so…” He took only one small step forward, but his powerful frame was coiled like a predator, taking the last step before devouring his prey. “Take your filthy hands off her and get out.”

I wasn’t sure if it was Seamus or me who shuddered, but after we had both recovered, he quickly dropped his arm from my shoulders and took a large step back.

Shame and anger burst over my tongue, bitter and thick like bile. What kind of father put his own safety before that of his child?

Seamus Moore.

He opened his mouth to say something, his eyes shifting from me like polar magnets, but I beat him to the punch.

“I won’t ever forgive you for this,” I whispered painfully in Italian, each word squeezed past the iron fist wrapped around my throat. “My only consolation, Papa, is knowing that you won’t stop the gambling or the drinking, and you’ll probably get yourself killed in the next few years. If for some inexplicable reason that doesn’t happen, if for some incredible reason, I survive this ordeal you’ve set for me and I see you again, I want you to know that I will kill you myself.”

Seamus took a staggering step back, his grey eyes wide in his bruised face. A different kind of pain, something worse than the physical, made those eyes blur then shine with tears.

I remained unmoved.

The bastard was selling me as a sex slave to save his own ass.

It amused me to think about how I’d been so afraid of Sebastian joining the Camorra, of my sisters falling to one of their men, when I was the one pledging to kill a man.

My own father.

It was disgusting, but my words were true.

If I survived, if I saw him again, I’d string him up from a tree with bells tied to his ankles so he sang in the wind, just as Rocco had promised to do to the rest of my family.

“Cosima,” Seamus started to say, stepping forward with his hands outstretched in benediction.

“Remember the promise you made to me. Now, get out.”

Stupidly, my father looked at my owner who only crossed his arms over his chest and dipped his chin so he could glare at my father from a better angle.

Tears spilled over as Seamus looked back at me, but he nodded slowly, his shoulders sunken as he followed the butler out the door.

I didn’t turn to watch him go.

Instead, I swivelled to fully face my new owner with my hands on my hips. “Now, you can tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing. I saved your goddamn life!”

He only blinked at me in a way that was much more elegant than a shrug.