Page 96 of The Enslaved Duet

He fell onto the couch with a groan.

“Don’t be difficult,” Rocco called out from the doorway. I tried to keep my eyes on the approaching man, but then the tinkle of bells tickled my ears and pulled my gaze over.

Rocco let the string of tiny bells dance in from his fingers, and he laughed at my look of horror. “I brought these for your Mama and sister, Cosima. Do you remember my promise to you if you fucked up that deal for us? I’m going to tie them up with bells stringed to their ankle so that they look like ornaments dangling from the cypress outside.”

A sob ballooned in my throat and turned my voice to helium as the other man grabbed me, and I screamed as a hand caught my dress and pulled me into his arms.

“That is,” Salvatore drawled, as if we were discussing the weather and his ex-paramour wasn’t crying across the room while their bastard daughter was being assaulted, “unless you come with us now.”

“Salvatore, no,” Mama sobbed as she moved forward across the room to grip him by the shirt and mumble pleas in a string of rapid Neapolitan.

Rocco ripped her off and threw her savagely to the ground.

Elena and I made twin sounds of distress in our throats, and my sister immediately went to her.

I stopped struggling, hanging in my captor’s arms.

“Fine,” I said with my chin raised high. “I’ll go with you. Just leave the house and my family alone.”

Salvatore was already turning to leave when he said, “Bring her and make sure she does it screaming so the neighborhood knows what happens to those who go against the Camorra.”

The man holding me wrapped a fist in my hair and half dropped me to the ground so that he could pull me, kicking and yelling in pain, out the front door and down the steps to a waiting black sedan.

Mama and Elena hugged each other in the door, watching as I was thrown into the back of the car and the door was slammed shut in my face. I placed my fingers against my trembling lips and then against the hot, dirty glass in a distant kiss I hoped would bring them some minute degree of comfort.

The car started with a rumble and began to roll away from the house, but still I pressed my fingers to the glass until we were well out of sight.

“What a touching sight,” a familiar voice said from beside me. I snapped around to see the long, broad length of Edward Dante Davenport lounging in the seat beside me. “Now, Cosima, are you ready to have that discussion I told you about?”

Dante lit a cigarette and placed it at the corner of his mouth as he waited for me to respond to his arcane question.

“At least open a window,” I snapped at him, unable to move beyond the image of his insolence, lounging there without a care in the world while my life had once again turned topsy-turvy.

He grinned unapologetically and clicked the button to roll down the window.

“What the hell was all that back there?” I asked, realizing that perhaps the entire bizarre scenario had been staged. “Salvatore has never raised a voice or hand to me in all my life. Why did he order me dragged out of my home by my hair?”

“Fear is a powerful tool, Cosima,” he told me, a curl of white smoke rolling sensuously between his full lips.

His mouth was redder than Alexander’s, but the shape was the same.

The impulse to kiss him was shocking and disgusting, but I could feel it in my limbs like a drug.

Dante’s smile was just as slow and curling as the cigarette smoke. “You of all people should know that. Living in the underworld, you learn to take every opportunity to strike fear into the hearts of your would-be enemies.”

“I doubt ancient Signora Moretti or the Bianchi sisters are eager to start a gang to oppose your own,” I said with an eye roll.

There was something about this man, something enough like Alexander to make my spirit buzz and something enough likemeto put me at ease that made me feel reckless and brave.

He chuckled and took another drag. “No, I doubt it. Sometimes you have to look closer to home for your true enemies, though.”

I caught the edge of his piercing look and deflected it by pulling through my tangled hair as if it fascinated me.

He was speaking of Pearl Hall, of his ex-brother and ex-father, of things he shouldn’t know because he didn’t live there.

“Rocco has been trying to outmaneuver Salvatore for years now. If he knew about your real relationship, it would not signal good things for Tore, or for you and Seb,” he continued. “Personally, I thought the hair pulling was a nice theatrical addition.”

“You’re crazy.”