Matteo (Dark Erotic Mob Romance) (Rossi Family Book 1) (10 page)

Biting his lower lip, he trained the sharp tip of them up my inner thigh, over my panties and then down the opposite side. Apparently tired of scaring me, he carefully slipped them under one side then the other, cutting them from me. He pulled the front down, exposing my pussy.

He hummed, pleased, then started talking into the phone again. As he spoke, he teased the sharp point along my pussy lips.

I feared he was going to push them into me. They were sharp and would likely cut me inside. Sweat ran down the side of my face now as real fear sprouted in me.

Matteo laughed and set them to the side. Without any preamble, he shoved two fingers into me, spoke a few more words and set the phone to the side.

“My father. He was asking about you. I think he wishes he’d taken his opportunity to fuck you when he was here. Good thing he lives far away,” Matteo mused while watching his fingers slide in and out of me. “I’d hate to have to kill my father for trying to take you away from me.”

I had no idea where I was or even where “far away” would be. I wasn’t taught even what country I was in, so it wouldn’t matter even if he had told me.

“Now you may go back to your chores,” he said, withdrawing his fingers and bringing them to his mouth to lick them clean. “Do not put panties back on.”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded and walked as calmly as I could from his office. Once I was down the hall, I leaned against the wall to catch my breath and wipe the clammy sweat from my face and palms. I had no idea a pair of scissors could be so scary, and I’d rather not experience such an intimate moment with them again.

Later that day, Aida caught up to me while I was cleaning one of the many bathrooms in the house.

“Has your monthly friend come?” she asked with a hand on her hip.

“No,” I sighed. It was late, but the last test had been negative so I didn’t know what to think. We weren’t taught a lot about pregnancy or periods. It was simply that they came every month, and if they didn’t to let your master know because it was a sign of pregnancy.

“Come. We test again.” Aida clapped her hands briskly and spun on her heel, expecting me to follow without question.

I did.

In the kitchen, she handed me another little cup and told me to pee in it. When I returned with the cup, she popped the top off and stuck a strip into it.

It didn’t take her but a moment to tell me what it said.

“Pregnant. Thank God,” she said before disposing of the left over urine and walking from the kitchen as if it wasn’t me she was talking about.

I wanted to follow her. Where was she going? How would Matteo respond? Not wanting to find out if his reaction was negative, I returned to my cleaning and figured I would learn in due time.

Chapter Ten

As it turned out, it wasn’t brought up for days. I hadn’t seen Matteo since so I wasn’t surprised. Aida rarely spoke to me anyway, so I didn’t expect her to tell me much. The day Matteo sought me out, I was sitting in the kitchen finishing the piece of cheese that was my lunch. Absolutely nothing else in the well-stocked pantry or fridge appealed to me.

“You are pregnant. You should be eating better than that,” Matteo scolded me from the doorway.

I spun around in my seat toward him, but lowered my head. He hadn’t prepped me how to greet him outside of the bedroom. I debated getting to my knees, but before I could move, he was walking farther into the kitchen.

“I will have a doctor coming by to do an exam to determine exactly how far along you are. However, I hope you understand this changes nothing around here. I still expect you to do your chores and be waiting for me every night in case I want company,” he said before pulling a bottle of water from the fridge and drinking from it.

“Understood, sir.”

He nodded and left the room.

That was the last time I saw anyone in the house but Aida for nearly a month. After a few days, I was afraid I’d upset Matteo so he was punishing me. Then after a week and a half, I started to worry something had happened to him, but after asking Aida about him, she told me he was fine and to get back to work.

Every day passed slowly as I wondered when the doctor he’d said would be coming to check on me would be stopping by. I had questions I hoped I’d be allowed to ask, about how to care for myself and the baby growing within me. When I looked in the mirror, nothing looked any different about my appearance, so it was hard to wrap my head around the whole situation. Not to mention I had no one to talk to.

Finally, I walked into the kitchen one morning to get my list of chores and Aida was already there. It seemed like as each day passed it was harder and harder for me to get out of bed because I was so tired, but I had been still beating her to the kitchen to retrieve my chore list even though I mostly knew what they would be by that time.

“We will have guests tonight.” Aida spoke without looking up at me from her constant mixing of food. It seemed like all the woman did was cook and clean the kitchen, even when there wasn’t anyone around. I had no idea what she did with all the food, as she didn’t feed me.

“I’m sorry?” I asked. Lost in my own thoughts, I hadn’t heard what she said.

“I said we will be having people over tonight. You are not invited, so please finish your chores and then return to your room. Under no circumstances are you to come downstairs before the morning, so be sure to take anything you need up with you,” she said, still acting like she was talking to the ingredients instead of me.

“Okay. I will be sure to do exactly that,” I promised. I didn’t want to be around a bunch of people if Matteo wasn’t there anyway. Well, I didn’t know that I’d even want to be around them even if he was.

The day passed slowly as I battled with constant nausea, and the cleaning fumes only made it worse, but eventually I managed to get everything done. I grabbed a bag of crackers and two bottles of water, then headed to my room for the evening.

After a long shower, I sat staring out the window at the lovely garden as I snacked on the stomach-soothing crackers. As the sun set and filled the sky with a beautiful splash of reds and oranges, I heard the muffled sound of the doorbell.

The lower the sun sank, the more sounds drifted up from downstairs. There had to be quite a few people at this party I wasn’t allowed to attend. Even though I didn’t particularly want to be there, it reminded me of my place within the house. I wasn’t a girlfriend or a lover. I was a slave.

Hours trickled by, and I finally stripped nude to lie in bed. The amount of noise had become loud enough I doubted I’d be able to sleep, but it was better than feeling left out of yet another side of Matteo’s life. I’d somehow managed to convince myself that he thought of me as more than his slave, but after such a long time without a word from him, followed by a get-together without me, it was clear he didn’t.

I was startled awake, surprised to find I had managed to nod off, by a loud banging noise. Sitting up, I spotted what had caused the noise. It was Matteo.

The bright light from the hallway outlined his body and shadowed his face, but I could see his normally immaculate suit was disheveled. In fact, it brought to mind that I hadn’t ever seen him in anything but a suit.

He started speaking in Italian to me as he slammed the door closed. When he paused, I realized he was expecting me to answer him.

“I... I... I don’t understand, Matteo,” I stuttered and winced as he flipped on the light in my room.

He started speaking again, still in Italian. Again, he paused and stared at me in expectation.

“M... M... Matteo, you are speaking Italian. I don’t speak Italian.” My voice wavered showing my nerves as he threw his hands up in the air in exasperation.

He stomped to my side and flung the sheet off my body before slapping me across the face.

My cheek instantly burned and my neck hurt from the jerk to the side. Before I could recover, he slapped my other cheek.

His hand snared my hair and he tugged me off the bed.

I fell to my knees and dropped my eyes, hoping it would appease him.

It didn’t.

He leaned close to my face while still spitting angry Italian words at me. Alcohol was strong on his breath.

That was one scent I knew well. Madam would often drink at night, and it usually ended with her getting angry and upset about one thing or another. She usually took it out on one of the girls, then forced me to clean up whatever destruction was left behind while breathing heavily in my ear about how she hated the little whores she dealt with.

Matteo surprised me by releasing my hair, and I fell back on one hand. He turned and walked away, but when he turned and saw that my hand was still on the ground, he glared, letting me know I had messed up.

Instead of returning to my side, he slipped his tie off before setting it on the table my crackers still sat on. He slapped them to the floor before stomping a foot on them, leaving only crumbs of my snack I hadn’t thought to clean up before bed. His jacket came off next. Draping it over the back of the chair, he seemed almost like a different man, but his fiery glare in my direction let me know he wasn’t done with me.

I’d pressed my palms together at my lower back and assumed my kneeling position when he’d walked away, but seeing him roll his sleeves up to his elbows, I lowered fully to the floor. My forehead to the carpet, my hand stretched in front of me, I tried to calm my breathing and stop the tremors that ran through me.

I could no longer see him in my new position, but it was the only way I could think of to try to show I was as submissive as I could be.

The heel of his shoe pressed down on my outstretched fingers.

My body tensed as I waited for the impact and crushing of bone, but he simply let out a diabolical laugh and moved his foot. I breathed out slowly, thankfully. Then the pain came.

He stomped repeatedly on my hands.

I cried out as pain exploded and my bones crunched, breaking under his shoe.

When he stopped, the only sound was his hard breathing and my uneven gasps. He again spoke in Italian as he walked around me a single time.

I didn’t know what he was saying, but it was littered with the few words I knew and none of them were good.

Once he got his breath, he stood at my side mumbling to himself.

I prayed he was done with this punishment so I could try to figure out what it was for.

He wasn’t.

His foot impacted my stomach, sending a new wave of sharp pain through me.

I fell to my side as I struggled to breathe.

He used the new position to release a volley of kicks against my abdomen.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, tears rolled down my cheeks. The pain was more than I could handle and I wanted to beg him to stop. It would be useless. I was useless to him. Maybe that was the point he was trying to make. It didn’t matter. I just wanted it to stop. I wanted everything to stop, especially the pain of seeing this man I had started to care for standing over me with nothing but anger on his face.

Instead of ending it, he shoved me to my back and straddled my waist. One hand fisted the hair on the top of my head, while the other struck my cheek.

Blood filled my mouth and I choked on it.

Two more blows from his knuckles and he spat in my face before pushing to his feet.

My entire face throbbed. I couldn’t feel anything but pain in my hands. My stomach felt like it’d been sliced open with a red-hot knife. None of that stopped me from noticing the bright red splashes against his formerly white shirt. My blood.

He had my blood all over his shirt.

I lay on the floor simply trying to keep breathing as he washed up in the bathroom and returned to grab his jacket and tie.

He left the door to my room open when he exited without another glimpse in my direction.

Once I knew he was gone, I let unconsciousness take over me. Let it take me into blessed blackness where I couldn’t feel the pain anymore.

Opening my eyes — make that
eye
as one was swollen shut — I noticed I was no longer in my bedroom milliseconds before the pain rushed back over me. I whimpered and hung my head.
Hung my head?
The thought made me lift it to find my arms were bound in chains over my body where I was suspended, barely able to touch the floor with my feet.

“Ah, she wakes,” an unfamiliar male voice said before laughing. The sound made a shiver run down my spine as an entirely new sense of fear filled me. The man stepped up to me and lifted my chin with a horrible-smelling, chubby finger. “How you feeling, beautiful?”

I shook my head, afraid of saying anything.

“Come on now. Matteo told me to look after you. I can’t do that if you don’t tell me anything,” the man said, dropping his hand from my chin to let it graze my bare breasts.

“I’m fine,” I croaked. My throat was dry and it was hard to force the two words out.

“Oh, I know you have to be in pain. Broken fingers, ribs, nose... among other injuries,” the man said, letting his eyes trail over my body as if he could see each injury. Instead of being disgusted by them, though, he seemed excited. Turned on.

“It hurts,” I admitted, and he laughed again.

“I know, beautiful. I offered you a sweet little elixir, but Matteo said I wasn’t allowed to give you a hit even if it made all your pain disappear. Such a shame. It would’ve made you that much more pliant for what I’d like to do. Although I’m not sick like Matteo with his thing for blood so I’d have to wait until you stopped bleeding to do anything anyway.” He turned away and walked to a chair I assumed he’d been in before I’d regained consciousness.

I was in the basement again, that much was clear. My entire body throbbed and my knees trembled, wanting to give out, but chained the way I was it wouldn’t have mattered. The cold chill forced me to shiver and my tired body gave way. Agony shot through my shoulders as the weight of my body hung.

Another whimper escaped as I was pushed past my pain threshold. I simply couldn’t hold it inside anymore. Tears fell as I tried to breathe through the pain that wasn’t getting better but worse, until finally I passed out again.

The next time I woke, I was still chained, but to the wall. It was a blessed reprieve as I could lean back against it to support my weary body. The surface was cold, but it was a momentary distraction from the throbbing, never-ending torture that filled every crevice of my body.

Lifting my head, I found I was blessedly alone. Anything to not be with the man with empty, evil eyes and matching laugh who drank in my body like he wanted only to cause me more pain, not alleviate it.

I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes, resting my sore neck. Time passed in immeasurable stretches, and when I opened my eyes nothing had changed. It could have been minutes or hours, but I at least hadn’t passed out, simply dozed.

Footsteps on the stairs let me know company was headed my way, so I dropped my head forward even though I lifted my eyes in the hopes I’d get a glimpse of who was joining me.

It was Matteo, and I wanted to sigh in relief, but I didn’t know what mood he was in from his stoic expression or what I could see of it.

“Ah,
bella
, you are awake,” he said, stepping closer to me. He lightly trailed his fingers over my swollen cheek while his oddly comforting scent enveloped me.

I didn’t want comfort from him, but I couldn’t help the way my body reacted to him. He was my owner, the man I was to please. If only I could figure out how. If only I could know what had happened to cause the scene that resulted in me being back in the basement.

His fingers dropped to trace my collarbone then circled my nipples, which were beaded from the cold in the room.