Merciless Union by Faith Summers

7

Aria

It feels like days have passed, and I’ve been moved around. Every now and again, I feel the stab of a needle in my arm, and I know I’m being drugged and lulled into a sleep-induced coma.

Sometimes I wander around in the fog in my mind and try to escape the darkness. At other times I’m stuck there, and I can’t move or think.

Time stands still, then it moves again, and as it moves, my mind becomes more alert.

The clinking of chains is what wakes me as I try to move.

The moment the sound fills my ears, I feel the cold metal around my wrists. My eyes open, and I look at my hands, confirming my thoughts.

There are chains around my wrists, and I’m lying on a cold, clammy floor.

When I lift my head, I realize the chains and the floor are the least of my worries.

I’m in a cage, and Pasha is inside here with me, sitting on a wooden stool watching me.

The sight of him makes me gasp, and I sit up, backing into the metal bars of the cage.

What is this now?

He’s fucking in here with me. What’s he going to do?

“Hello, sleeping beauty,” he states with a wide smile, and he looks just like the monster he was in my nightmares. “Welcome to your punishment. As you can see, you’re in chains just long enough for you to use the toilet to your left and accept food through the little hole on your right. You’ll mostly be on the floor, though.”

He laughs, and my heart speeds in my chest so fast I can’t calm myself.

“Haven’t you woken up properly yet?” he taunts. “You always were beautiful, even asleep. It’s been a pleasure to watch you and watch you wake up with that terrified look on your face.”

“Leave me alone,” I rasp.

His smile widens. “Not pretending anymore, are we?”

“Leave. Me. Alone.”

“I wish I could. But since you remember our previous encounters, you’re a loose end I need to deal with. The same as Lucca was.”

Learning Jon works for him, and not my father, makes sense. But there’s something I’m missing; something I don’t understand. I still can’t comprehend why Jon betrayed Lucca.

“What did you do to Jon?”

He laughs. “I didn’t do anything to Jon. Jon was always working for me. That’s how we set things up to keep ranks and loyalty secured. We have spies. Jon was one of mine.”

“He was his best friend.”

“Exactly, and therefore he was the very best man for the job. In the Bratva, loyalty is key. That’s what makes us so formidable. Emotions are secondary, and loyalty is everything. Jon’s allegiance was always to me. No one else. He was always supposed to watch Lucca and make sure he never discovered any of my secrets. When Lucca disturbed secrets he shouldn’t have dabbled with, it was inevitable that he’d meet his end. So, Jon was simply doing a job that happened to work to your father’s benefit to get you back. Luck was on your father’s side. That is all. Understand better now?”

I do, but what was the secret? What the hell did Lucca discover other than the fact that my father was responsible for his family’s deaths.”

“What did Lucca discover?”

“My dear, that’s the part you don’t get to hear. The problem was Lucca should have stayed in the shadows where he belonged. A man like him should never have been part of the elite, but my father favored him. Lucca would have been safer as a mere enforcer. No matter, problem solved. That boy dug his own grave. My guess is he died in a ditch somewhere trying to get help.”

So, they don’t know if he’s actually dead or not?

That’s different from what Dad said. But still bad.

And bad because look at me grasping for the hope that the man who set out to kill me still lives. Maybe it’s because I still remember the dream Lucca was to me.

All of that means nothing now. Not with the monster before me who ripped my childhood apart.

As I gaze at him, fear runs down my spine in long icy tendrils. He’s looking at me like he’s calculating a plan of when to strike and what to do to me.

“I knew you recognized me at my father’s party,” he states with a menacing smile. “At first, I wasn’t sure. Your actions were well played, and you almost had me fooled. At your wedding, though, you gave yourself away. I could see it in your eyes that you remembered me just fine.”

“You bastard.”

He chuckles. “Me, the bastard? Yes maybe. I’ve been called many things. So many the words just roll off my back.”

“I was a child. I couldn’t have been older than five. What kind of fucked up bastard are you?” I don’t know how I’m still speaking.

“You were five. I’m the kind of bastard who likes them young. There’s a pleasure in it I crave. It’s their vulnerability and weakness. Nothing tastes better. Nothing is better, and it’s something you can’t replicate in a woman.”

My stomach twists, and bile burns my insides. “You disgust me.”

“I don’t really care. Your words mean nothing. In the end, I have the power, and you don’t. I should give you credit, though, for not telling Lucca. Whatever instinct you had not to was completely correct. It wouldn’t have boded well for him. It’s not going to bode well for you now, Kukla.”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

“It’s so fitting. It means doll in Russian, and you have always looked like a doll to me, moya Kukla. You still look like my little dolly.”

“Aren’t I a little too old for you?” I spit.

“Too old to fuck. But there are other things I can do.”

To my horror, he stands and unzips his pants.

I cower further into the rail when he steps closer, and the bile that burned my stomach pushes into my throat when he takes out his cock. I look away with disgust, but the monster comes right up to me and crouches down.

He grabs my face with one hand and positions me so I can watch him stroke himself with his free hand.

“Watch, Kukla. Watch me touch myself. You grew up to be a beautiful woman, but you were more beautiful as a child. I paid your father double what I normally offer to fuck you.”

Of everything I’ve heard so far, hearing those words breaks something inside me.

I don’t know what that something is or was. I just know it was there, and now it’s gone.

I’m looking at this bastard, this disgusting bastard, and even though I’m watching him stroke his cock, the shock of that revelation robs me from really seeing what he’s doing.

He paid my father so he could… fuck me?

He paid actual money to my father, which was accepted as payment—and double.

I remember Pasha saying he’d kill my parents if I ever told anyone. I suffered so much to keep them safe, only to hear this.

Dad knew.

I’m not weak. I keep telling myself that, so I believe it. I think deep down, maybe there was a time when I wasn’t weak, and losing my memories made me forget who I could be.

Telling myself that I’m not weak has always strengthened me in some small way. But I don’t know who could be strong after hearing that.

I swallow against the lump in my throat and stare at him. As the woman I am breaks, inside the child I once was screams and cries from learning the truth of what happened to her.

Pasha strokes himself until his vile, disgusting cum sprays onto my legs and my hands. Then he laughs in my face.

He releases me, and when I look at the filth on my hands and smell it, I vomit.

As I lift my head, who I see next makes my blood heat.

It’s Dad.

He’s standing outside of the cage, and he was watching this monster get off on me.

He’s watching now as Pasha stands and tucks his cock back into his pants.

I’m not sure how to describe the look on my father’s face.

At first glance, I’d say he looks like he didn’t want me to find out another dark, dirty secret. But then again, he doesn’t care. I won’t make the mistake of assumptions. Not with him. He’s more evil than this monster who abused me.

It’s his fault it happened. Any love I might have felt for this man left my being a long time ago. But right now, he’s no longer my father.

Pasha laughs when he looks at Dad and walks out of the cage, locking the door behind him.

Dad goes to get the box of tissue on the floor nearby, but Pasha kicks it away. He grabs Dad in his neck and brings him forward.

“Leave her in the filth, Governor De Marchi,” he sneers in Dad’s face. “I’ll be back later to jerk off again. No point cleaning it up. She will stay just like that for the next four days. When you pick her up, she will smell like my cum, and she will be a shell of what you left behind. That is the mercy I am granting you. I would have left Damien and Lucca to destroy you.”

“I thank you for stepping in, Pasha.”

“Don’t fucking thank me, Raphael. If you had kept your dick in your pants when it came to Gina Delatorre, none of this would have happened. If you had killed the bitch when I told you to, we wouldn’t be having this problem now.”

Gina Delatorre…

I know that name. I’ve heard it before.

Mom said it. I dreamed it.

Mom said Dad had an affair with her.

Pasha knows her?

“I have tried to find her for years.”

“Finding her is not the problem,” Pasha growls like a savage beast. “It’s the damage she left behind.”

I sit there listening and watching—observing.

“Try to remember it’s me who helped you move up in life.” Pasha goes right up in his face. “Not my father. My father would never allow you to get away with half of what you’ve done, nor form the alliances with the cartels that you have. He would have killed you just for your association with Tobias Riviera.”

“I know, Pasha.”

“You need the fucking reminder that it’s me who masked many things from my father’s eyes to enable you to get where you wanted to be. I scratched your back so you could scratch mine. You are only alive because you are useful to me. That’s why, Governor De Marchi. But you repay me by being the little shit you are.”

“I’m sorry.”

I’m so shocked to hear the meek tone in my father’s voice. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone speak to him in that way either.

“You will be. It’s been fifteen years, and we are still dealing with this problem. You will spend your days cleaning up that mess. Next on the list is your daughter. She has until her birthday to live. After that, make sure you dispose of her body so that no one knows she ever existed. Don’t do it, and I’ll make sure Tobias never initiates you in the Camorra.”

“I will do it, Pasha. That was already the plan,” Dad answers, and it sounds like a vow.