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Excerpt

Chapter 1

Dominic

Fear has a distinct smell, something that belongs only to it. Pungent. Acidic. And at the same time, sweet. Alluring, even.

Or maybe only sweet and alluring to a sick fuck like me. Either way, the girl huddled in the corner had it coming off her in waves.

I pulled the skull mask down to cover my face. The room was dark, but I could tell she was awake. Even if she held her breath and didn’t move a single muscle, I’d know. It was the scent. That fear. It gave them away every single time.

And I liked it. It was like an adrenaline rush, the anticipation of what was to come.

I liked fucking with them.

I closed the door behind me, blocking off the little bit of light I’d allowed into the small, dark, and rank bedroom. She’d been brought here yesterday to this remote cabin in the woods. So fucking cliché. Cabin in the woods. But that’s what it was. That’s where I did my best work. The room contained a queen-size bed equipped with restraints, a bedside table, and a locked chest holding any equipment I needed. The attached bathroom had had its door removed before my arrival. Only the bare essentials were there: a toilet, sink, and a shower/bathtub. The bathtub was truly a luxury. Or it became one at some point during the training period.

The windows of both the bedroom and the bathroom had been boarded up long ago, and only slivers of light penetrated through the slats of wood. Both rooms were always cold. Not freezing. I wasn’t heartless. Well…I had as much heart as any monster could have. I just kept the rooms at about sixty degrees. Just cool enough that it wouldn’t do any damage but it wouldn’t be quite comfortable.

I walked over to the crouched form on the floor. She stank. I wondered how long they’d had her. If they’d washed her during that time.

I wondered what else they’d done to her, considering the rule of no fucking on this one. My various employers didn’t usually give that order. They didn’t give a crap who fucked the girls before auction. It’s what they were there for. But this time, Leo—the liaison between the buyer and me—had made certain I understood this particular restriction.

I shoved the thought of rape aside. I didn’t do that. Whatever else I did to them, I didn’t do that. Some tiny little piece of my fucked-up brain held on to that, as if I were somehow honorable for it.

Honor?

Fuck.

I had no delusions on that note. Honor was a thing that had never belonged to me. Not then, not when I was Dominic Benedetti, son of a mafia king. So close, so fucking goddamned close to having it all. And it certainly didn’t belong to me now. Not now that I knew who I was. Who I really was.

More thoughts to shove away, shove so far down they couldn’t choke me anymore. Instead they sat like cement, like fucking concrete bricks in my gut.

I stepped purposefully toward the girl, my boots heavy and loud on the old and decrepit wood.

“Wakey, wakey.”

She sat with her knees pulled up to her naked chest, her bound wrists wrapped around them, and made the smallest movement, tucking her face deeper into her knees. I noticed she still wore underwear, although it was filthy. That was new. By the time they got to me, they were so used to being buck naked they almost didn’t notice anymore.