Old Flame: Dante’s Story by Sam Mariano

8

Dante

All morningI looked forward to going home to Colette for lunch. First time in years I got to do such a simple fucking thing, and she had to ruin it.

Colette used to love when I made trips home to see her. I always worked a lot, even more back then than I do now. Now Luca handles a lot of the workload, but back then, that stolen hour made all the difference. When she knew I was coming, she usually dolled herself up and made our lunch herself instead of letting Sonja handle it.

Now she acts like a fucking brat and forces me to avoid her.

I have to eat somewhere, though, so I shoot Luca a text and let him know I’m stopping over and I’m hungry. By the time I get there, he has one of his girls preparing us lunch.

“I thought you were eating at home with your woman today,” my friend and associate, Luca Delmonico, remarks from his seat at the table.

“That was the plan,” I admit. “Unfortunately, my woman is being a pain in the ass today and I didn’t feel like dealing with it.”

Luca shakes his head in disapproval. “Sounds to me like you’re being too nice to her.”

He doesn’t know the finer details of my relationship with Colette, but he was behind the wheel of the car that drove her fiancé off the road, so he knows the gist of our situation. Leave it to Luca to suggest that murdering Colette’s fiancé and kidnapping her was me being too fucking nice.

“I’m not being too nice to her,” I mutter, dropping onto a chair at his kitchen table.

“Yes, you are,” Luca disagrees. “She doesn’t fear you. Doesn’t respect you.” I don’t know if he’s looking to demonstrate what he thinks my relationship should look like or it’s a coincidence, but he suddenly leans forward and grabs a fistful of brunette hair, yanking the girl kneeling on the floor by his legs up closer to his face. “Did I say you could look at me, whore? Did I give you permission to do that?”

Shaking her head desperately, fear in her eyes, she says, “No! No. I’m sorry.”

He yanks her hair harder, lifting her several inches off the ground. As she whimpers, his voice drops low and he demands, “You’re sorry, what? How do you address me?”

“Master,” she says breathlessly, tears welling in her eyes. “No, Master, you didn’t say I could look at you. I’m so sorry.”

He slaps her across the face and releases her hair abruptly so she hits the ground hard. I glance at the girl, note her labored breathing as she hunches over and rubs her scalp, but she knows better than to abandon her position, so she quickly pushes herself back into the kneeling pose Luca likes.

Flicking a glance in my direction as he leans back in his chair, Luca says, “This one can’t listen for shit. Good thing she’s pretty, because she’s a fucking moron.” Looking down at the girl, he says, “Look at me. You’re a moron, aren’t you?”

Her cheeks heat with embarrassment, but she nods her head. “Yes, Master.”

I shrug and tell him, “She’s still pretty new.”

“She’s stupid.” Looking back at the slave girl at his feet, he tells her, “I don’t want to look at you anymore. Go wait for me in my bed, naked. I’ll be in shortly.” She starts to stand, but he puts a hand on her shoulder to stop her and gives his head a firm shake. “Crawl.”

I watch the girl clad only in underwear crawl across the floor and down the hall, then I glance back at Luca. “That is not what I want my relationship with Colette to look like.”

“Doesn’t have to be so cold. You’re warmer than I am. You have feelings for her, that’s fine. But she should know what you’re capable of. She should know how lucky she is that you love her, ‘cause it sounds like she forgot.” His lips curve up faintly and he suggests, “Send her to me for a week, I’ll make sure she’s grateful to have you when I return her.”

I know he’s not serious, because he knows what I did to the last guy who touched Colette. Luca doesn’t have feelings though, doesn’t understand possessiveness. To him, if it would mean training Colette to act right, it would be worth letting another man work on her for a week and saving myself the hassle. He is 100% not relationship material—a fact my younger sister learned the hard way.

“I’ll pass, but thanks for the offer,” I tell him dryly.

He’s not invested either way, so Luca merely shrugs. “The longer you let her act out, the less she’ll respect you. You’ve gotta let her know the way things are going to be, let her know she has no choice so she better get on board.”

“You’re the last man I’d ever ask for relationship advice, Luca.”

“Good,” Luca says. “Relationship advice sounds like something women talk about, not men.”

“Speaking of women, how are things going with the brunette with the big teeth?”

Shifting to business mode, Luca sits forward. “I was about to give up on her, mark her for prostitution since she’s not good for much else.”

“But you’re not now?”

Sighing, he says, “She’s pregnant. Hopefully the kid gets my teeth or it’ll be born looking like a beaver. I don’t know what they were thinking when they acquired that one. Low quality shit like that is for scrappers, not us. Don’t know what we’ll do with her after she pops the kid out, but just keeping her alive that long is gonna be a job. She’s mouthy, got a real bad attitude. Real pain in the ass all the way around. Might have to send her to Ivan’s house for a few months; if she stays here, I’m liable to kill her before she delivers.”

For all his internal flaws, Luca is a very well-made man on the outside. Strong features, a good physique, good teeth, very healthy. In all the time I’ve known the man, I don’t think he’s ever been sick. Women tend to find him attractive, especially the ones who mistake how uncomfortable he makes them for attraction instead of what it really is—when you encounter a dangerous psychopath and every instinct you have screams at you to get the hell away from them.

“The pretty, stupid one will be good though,” he tells me, looking more optimistic. “She cries a lot, can’t say I enjoy fucking her, but she may toughen up over time. Like you said, she’s still new.”

“Well, try not to get that one pregnant,” I offer, a bit dryly. “She’s got the right look and she seems trainable. We can get a good price off her.”

Luca nods his head. “That’s the plan. I use condoms with her, don’t want to risk it.” He glances up as the underwear-clad girl who was cooking comes over, keeping her eyes down as she puts two plates of food down in front of us. Luca grabs her chin and forces her gaze to him, uttering some three syllable s-word in a language I don’t know. The girl promptly drops to her knees to take the place of the one he sent away.

Casually as can be, Luca grabs his fork and starts eating. “You should bring your girl over for dinner one night. Maybe once she sees what her life could look like, she’ll be a little more grateful.”

I’d never let Colette’s life look like this, and she knows it. She might be pissed at me for ordering the hit on the lawyer, but I don’t think I could ever be mad enough at her to make her live in the kind of hell Luca’s girls live in. These aren’t relationships, they’re trainees, and despite Colette’s ignorant claim that she’s as much my slave as these girls are Delmonico’s, she’s dead fucking wrong. Delmonico’s girls would never dream of saying the shit Colette says to me. They know if they did, he’d throw them across the fucking room.

Colette just doesn’t know how good she has it, that’s all. Luca’s right. Maybe I should bring her over here one night, let her get a look at how much worse it can be since she seems to think she has it as bad as anyone. Curled up in fucking luxury in my giant-ass house while Delmonico’s charges sleep two to a mattress used by loads of girls who came before them.

I treat her like a fucking queen, and maybe she needs to take notice.