Broken Promise by M. James
Sofia
By the time we all crash in one of the guest rooms, in a giant king-size bed that more than fits the three of us, we’re buzzed on daiquiris and wine, full of cupcakes, and thoroughly exhausted. After a little while, the conversation had strayed away from my fraught relationship with Luca and turned back to Caterina’s wedding—and more often, her upcoming wedding night. Ana had plenty of tips to share, and by the time we’d finished off two bottles of wine, we were all laughing more and more with every outlandish story she shared about her exploits with the men she’d dated.
It was nice to see Caterina laugh. The night had accomplished exactly what I’d hoped for—to take her mind off of her grief and give her a chance to cut loose and enjoy something about the wedding that had been so dramatically moved up. It also allowed us to take her mind off what Franco was probably doing at his own bachelor party. Luca hadn’t told me where they were going, exactly, only that it was out of the country and that they were taking the private jet.
She’d mentioned it just once before we’d quickly changed the subject, but I’d seen the look in her eyes. She might say that she didn’t love him, that she’d accepted the way he and all of these other men are, I could tell that the idea of Franco partying with a bunch of other women, probably fucking them and doing god knows what in some other country bothered her.
Luca’s probably doing the same thing.I’d managed to avoid thinking about it for most of the night, but now lying in a wine-and-frosting induced stupor on the far left side of the bed, suddenly images of Luca in some faraway place with gorgeous women hanging off of him fills my head. I try to push them away, but all I can think about once the first image enters my head is Luca feeling up some supermodel, Luca bending her over a bed, Luca naked and tangled up in sheets with three or four women at once. I remember the way he’d taunted me with that exact image a few weeks ago—what feels like a million years ago now—and the thought gives me a sick feeling deep in my stomach.
I can’t expect him to be celibate if I don’t want him. If I keep refusing to sleep with him. But—the idea of him teasing some other woman the way he did me, of him kissing someone else with the same passion, makes me want to burst into tears. It’s not even just jealousy anymore; it’s a deep, aching feeling of sadness, almost as if—
Almost as if I’m starting to fall for him.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to think about it. If I think about something else, I’ll manage to fall asleep. I try to focus on the sound of the city outside, faintly coming through the window, or Gio and Raoul’s footsteps down the hall as they make their rounds in the penthouse. True to what Caterina had said, they’d done a remarkable job of blending in all night. I’d hardly even noticed they were there after a while, but I do feel safer.
Luca has gone to such lengths to keep me safe. Is it really just because he’s trying to keep a promise that was made for him? Simply because of his own ego and need to protect what’s “his?” Or is there something deeper to it, the way Ana and Caterina seem to think that there might be?
Part of me wants to believe that. But what if I’m wrong? What if I let myself start to fall—and he breaks my heart?
He’s still in my thoughts when I fall asleep. And I can’t shake him, even in my dreams.
I’m in his bed again, naked under the black sheets, and I can feel the warmth of his body behind mine as he slides towards me, his fingers trailing over my throat as he pushes my hair out of my face. His lips run over my jaw, down the back of my neck, and the brush of them against my nape makes me shiver. He slides his hand over my hip, down between my legs so that his fingers brush over the crease of my pussy, and I shudder, arching up into his hand.
“Have you been a good girl?” he whispers. “Have you been touching my pussy without my permission?”
“No,” I whimper, arching my back so that my ass is pressing against him, and I can feel that he’s naked too, his thick cock hard and pulsing against me as the head brushes against the small of my back.
“You must need to come so badly then,” he whispers into my ear. His fingers slip between my folds as he murmurs the words. I shiver at the groan that he makes when he feels how hot and wet I am, already drenched from the feeling of his muscular body against mine. “Do you need it, Sofia? Do you need me to make you come?”
“Please,” I whisper it in a small voice as I squirm against him, and I feel him reach between us, guiding his cock so that the swollen head presses against my entrance. I’m so tight that even as wet as I am, it’s an effort for him to push it inside, but it feels so good when he does. My skin feels electric with sensation as he thrusts into me an inch at a time, his fingers toying with my clit as he pushes deeper.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” he groans, his hips thrusting up against me as the last inches of his cock slide into me. I can already feel the orgasm building as he starts to move, grinding against my ass and matching the rhythm with his fingers as he rubs my clit. “I’m going to come too if your pussy keeps squeezing me like that.”
I clench around him just at the words, my head thrown back against his shoulder, my body moving with his as I lose myself in the pleasure of it. I can’t remember why I ever said I didn’t want this, why I ever tried to fight him. He feels so good, like he was made for me, his cock filling me as he teases me to the edge of an orgasm, and I don’t know how I ever pretended that this wasn’t something I—
A noise at the foot of the bed makes my eyes fly open, and to my horror, I see a gorgeous blonde woman in an evening gown standing there. She has on sparkling diamond earrings that glitter in the light as she watches us, and she smiles at me as if she knows a secret she’s not telling.
“Doesn’t it feel good?” she coos. “His cock is still the best one I’ve ever had. I still dream about it sometimes.”
“I loved sucking it,” the brunette who appears next to her out of nowhere says. “Have you sucked his cock yet? You’ll have to if you don’t want him to cheat on you.”
“He loves girls who swallow.”
“He fucked us both at once.”
“Will you let him do it in the ass? If you don’t, he’ll find someone who will.”
“He ate my pussy all night long.”
Woman after woman appears around the bed, surrounding us, their voices joining together in a chorus as they describe the dirty things that they did to Luca, that he did with them. They’re so loud that I want to clamp my hands over my ears, my orgasm was long gone, but Luca keeps thrusting as if he doesn’t see or hear them, groaning in my ear with each stroke.
“He’s so close. I can see him tensing up.”
“He never came in me. I think he knew I would’ve tried to get pregnant.”
“He always came on my face.”
“I loved the taste of it.”
There are so many of them. They’re everywhere. “I’m so close,” Luca groans, and the chant starts up again until I want to scream. I think I am screaming, but Luca doesn’t care. He rolls me over onto my stomach, thrusting hard into me from behind, and I scream into the pillow over and over because I can still hear them, I can still—
There’s a loud cracking sound, so loud that I sit bolt upright in bed, the dream shattering all around me. The scream wasn’t from me after all. It was either Caterina or Ana, both of whom are sitting up already. Ana’s hands are knotted in the blanket, and Caterina’s hand is over her mouth. She looks ghostly pale.
“What—”
“Shh!” Caterina slaps a hand over my mouth. And that’s when I see it—or rather, him.
There’s a black-clothed figure in the door, with the build of a man, looking directly at the bed. And he has a gun in his hand, pointed at us.
Pointed at me.
“You’re not getting away this time, you bitch,” he growls. “I’ll do the job right.”
He steps into the room, the gun perfectly steady, and I feel myself go cold with fear. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears, my heartbeat deafeningly loud, and I’m terribly, viscerally aware of the fact that if that gun goes off, those beats could be my last. That I might die here in this bed—that my friends might die.
“No!” Ana shrieks and the man glares at her. “Shut up, little Russian whore. I’ll deal with you next. And you,” he grins at Caterina through the hole in his mask, the gun still pointed at me. “Viktor has plans for you.”
Caterina gasps softly, and I feel myself wobbling, my vision going dark at the edges as if I’m going to pass out again. I was terrified in the hotel room after the Russians kidnapped me, but this is a new fear altogether. I can see down the barrel of the gun as the man advances towards the bed. I feel nauseated, my stomach flipping wildly as I try desperately to think of what I should do—if I should stay still, if I should run, if I should scream.
Luca saved me in the hotel room, but he won’t be able to save me this time. He’s too far away.
I hear footsteps on the stairs, and just as the man swings around, one of the bodyguards—I think it’s Gio—bursts into the room. The man fires at him, the gunshot painfully loud in the small room, and I clap my hands over my ears as all three of us scream with terror.
Gio recoils backward, and I shriek again, realizing that he’s been hit. “Oh my god!” Caterina screams, and the black-clothed man wheels to face us again, the gun less steady now.
“Shut the fuck up!” he shouts, and I see the gun waver in my direction, his finger tightening on the trigger.
This is it. This is how I’m going to die. Luca is going to come home and find my body. I’ll never know if—
The sound of a shot rings through the air as I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, and I jerk backward as if hit, my body reacting to the noise.
But there’s no pain, and the next thing I hear is the sound of something hitting the floor, the force of it shaking the bed. Next to me, Caterina is almost hyperventilating.
I open my eyes slowly to see Ana staring wide-eyed at the foot of the bed. Raoul is standing in the doorway next to Gio’s slumped body, gun in hand and the man who had found his way into the bedroom is bleeding out onto the carpet.
I leap out of bed, my frozen muscles suddenly working again as I rush towards the two bodyguards. “Is he dead?” I ask frantically, kneeling down next to Gio. His head is lolling sideways, and I can see that his shirt is almost soaked through with blood.
Raoul kneels down next to me. “No,” he says gruffly. “Not yet, at least. We need to get him to the hospital, though. I’ll call the driver. We’ll get him down to the garage and rush him over as fast as we can.” He glances over at the body. “I’ll need to deal with this.”
“I’ll go with him,” I say quickly. “Someone should, and—”
“Sofia, you can’t!” Caterina exclaims. “Luca will be furious if he finds out you’ve left. I can go if someone needs to—”
“That man was going to shoot me.” I grit my teeth. “Gio took a bullet for me—for all three of us. The least I can do is go with him.”
“Sofia—” Caterina starts to say, but Ana is already climbing out of bed.
“We’ll go with you then,” she says decisively. “We should all make sure he gets there safely. And you shouldn’t be alone.” She reaches for the pair of jeans she threw across the chair by the window, stepping into them carefully while avoiding the body on the carpet. Caterina is still motionless in the bed, and I’m a little bit amazed at how well Ana is handling this. I always knew she was fairly tough, but this is surprising even for her.
I can’t believe that I haven’t fallen apart either. The only reason I think I haven’t is that I’m focused on Gio, who is completely unconscious by this point and still bleeding. I can hear Raoul on the phone just outside the door, and a moment later, he steps in, a towel in hand.
“Put this on his shoulder and hold it there,” he says sternly. “A couple of guys will be up in a minute to help get him down to the car. I’ll deal with the body. You girls need to get out of the room. It’s no place for you right now.”
“We’re all going to the hospital,” Ana says firmly. “Come on, Caterina. Get dressed.”
I see Caterina start to get out of the bed, moving stiffly. “She’s in no condition,” Raoul says. “I’ll have a couple of the guys keep an eye on her. But neither of you are going anywhere.” He turns to face me. “Luca would have my head if he knew I let you out of this penthouse. Gio will be fine with the guys going with him, and if he’s not, there’s nothing else you could do.”
Ana visibly bristles, but says nothing as she strides past Raoul and the body, squatting down next to me. “It’ll be okay,” she says quietly, and I don’t know who she’s speaking to exactly—me, Gio, or herself. But it feels good to hear it out loud, even if I don’t quite believe it.
“I have to go—” I start to say, but the look on Raoul’s face silences me. I know he’s right—Luca would probably kill him, literally, if he let me leave. It’s going to be bad enough when he gets back and finds out that someone was able to break in at all.
Deep down, I’m terrified and trying to hold it back. If someone could get to me—to us—even with so much security and two bodyguards patrolling the apartment, then it means two things.
One, someone helped the man get inside.
And two, nowhere is safe for me anymore.
I choke back the fear as the men come upstairs to help carry Gio down. Ana and I watch, trying not to look at the overturned couch or broken glass or the other body on the living room floor. I don’t even know who that is—it could be one of the security team, or it could be the intruder’s accomplice.
It feels terrible that I don’t know. I feel shaky and nauseous, on the verge of going into shock probably, and Ana wraps a steadying arm around my waist. “It’s okay,” she repeats. “It’s okay.”
But it doesn’t matter how many times she says it. Deep down, I know that nothing is okay.
And I’m not sure if it ever will be again.
