On The Ropes: Tapped Out Book 3 Read online

  Your family maybe, I wanted to say.

  The Andrettis weren’t his, no matter how he deluded himself. He wasn’t a man of honor, just a foot soldier. A bloodthirsty one at that. He even had the tiny tear tattoo under his eye that indicated being imprisoned for murder. Men in the family usually weren’t so stupid to wear their crimes on their face, but there were always exceptions.

  “That it is,” Marco agreed gravely before giving me a grim smile. “We hope you agree, Giovanni.”

  “I do.” The lie came to hand readily. I’d been saying versions of it for months.

  “Good. Then tonight, you will prove it. We look forward to you being one of us. The benefits, as you know, are substantial.”

  Women. Money. Drugs. Three things I had no use for. And if I did, I sure as fuck wouldn’t turn to these assholes to get them.

  But I only smiled. “I do. It’s an honor to get the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of your labor.”

  A soft sound came from the back, one I couldn’t quite identify. A gasp or a moan, startled. Pained.

  That pit in my stomach turned into a chasm and I fisted my hands at my sides.

  Marco gestured toward the circular booth. “Speaking of enjoying, let’s get to it, shall we?”

  Before I could respond to his sly question, he and Z flanked me, with Bas bringing up the rear. With effort, I made my feet move forward. I tucked my fists in my pockets, keeping them at the ready. If I had to fight my way free—or fight for the way of another—I would, without hesitation.

  Even if it meant I wouldn’t see Emilia’s death avenged. Even if I lost my own in the bargain.

  Some costs were simply too high to pay.

  At the end of the booth, our caravan of four stopped. Two men sat at either side of a brunette with her head tipped down. She wasn’t crying, wasn’t revealing any fear at all. Her only minute tell was the quiver of her chin before a deep, inward breath quelled even that.

  She was dressed like one of the dancers—white shirt over a bright red bra, tied over her perfect midriff, indecently short schoolgirl skirt. Big gold hoops dangled at her ears. While I watched, one of the men cupped her cheek and ran his thumb over her pale pink lower lip. Instead of flirting with him or cowering in terror, she bit him hard enough to have him releasing a slew of curses before grabbing a fistful of her short dark hair. She yelped and I stepped forward, going still when the faint light flitted over her gorgeous features.

  Features I could sketch from memory, because they appeared in my mind every night before I went to sleep.

  Another tug and the short dark wig came off in his hand. He grunted in disgust and heaved it across the table, where it skidded off and onto the tips of my boots.

  Heart pounding like fists on wood in my ears, I stared at the lump of hair, unwilling to look up again and make this nightmare real.

  She couldn’t be here. I’d done everything I could to keep her safe. I’d driven her away, denied myself, and gotten Brenda killed in the process. But it hadn’t been enough. Brenda had died in vain, and she was still here.

  Still surrounded by two men with murder in their eyes and their mouths curled in tight, leering smiles as they tagteamed staring down her revealing blouse.

  “Gio,” she whispered, and I had no choice but to look at her. To meet those gentle blue eyes that weren’t only my undoing, but the visible proof of the unraveling of my life.

  Carly Anderson was the price I refused to pay.

  Three

  I’d been afraid before Giovanni gazed at me. Terrified. But seeing the fury and absolute purpose in his expression centered me.

  I had to do this. Whatever they required of me, I would do without a fight. Because with one glimpse, I could see he would fight his way through hell for both of us, and he would lose.

  Even the hottest MMA fighter on the underground scene was no match for five men with guns in their waistbands.

  “Gio,” I said again, making him look at me. When our gazes connected again, I tried to tell him with only my expression that it was okay. I was okay. Whatever happened, we would get through it if he only played the game.

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly, his jaw going tight. Then he glanced at Marco.

  Marco, who had been so sweet to me all the nights leading up to this one. He’d taken me for a fool, and I’d done the role justice.

  “What is this?” Giovanni asked, voice low. I could see his massive hands coiling like snakes ready to spring in his pockets. He said something in Italian, and the men on either side of me chuckled and took another couple glances down my shirt.

  My skin had never crawled when I was in my cage, but it was now. I was beginning to think there wouldn’t ever be enough hot water to get me clean again.

  “Come now, she’s pretty, Gio. And don’t pretend as if you don’t know each other.” The jerk on my right—the one I’d used as a chew toy—ran his red, abraded thumb over my cleavage and Gio growled, deep in his throat. “See, that’s better. What we expected from you, after these.”

  He nodded at the asshole on my other side and he produced an attaché case, from which he drew out a folder. He laid it on the table before us and spread it open, revealing black and white pictures of the night that had started all of this.

  The night I’d followed Giovanni to The Pyramid Club after one of his fights, and he’d decided to demonstrate to me in vivid Technicolor just how much he didn’t want me.

  But that was after. Before he’d pushed me away for good, we’d had a moment, one captured in those grainy photos. Gio shoving me against the wall, leaning against me with his arm above my head and his mouth a whisper away. His hard cock had pressed against the triangle between my thighs, making me wetter than I’d ever been in my life, before or since.

  Then he’d gotten a blowjob from another girl while I stood outside the room and wished he would die.

  “What is that?” He looked at the pictures and dismissed them with little more than a glance, while I still hadn’t managed to stop hyperventilating that someone had seen us. Many someones, judging from the amount of men in this room. “So what? She’s a hot piece. She wanted it, but I didn’t. She’s not my fucking type.”

  “Aw, Gio, that’s no way to talk about a lovely lady sitting just a few feet away.” Marco tsk tsked under his breath. “We thought we’d give you a chance to give her what the lady so clearly wanted, but if you’re not interested…” His hand dropped to his belt and the cry that left me was entirely involuntary and filled with revulsion.

  I’d rubbed against him tonight. Teased him, taunted him with my body and what I wouldn’t give him. Now he would take it, no matter how I pleaded for the mercy he clearly didn’t possess.

  The momentary enjoyment I’d taken from his interest would haunt me for the rest of my life.

  “No.” Gio’s voice was a whip, lethally sharp. “You aren’t to touch her.”

  Almost as if a switch had been flipped, Marco’s hand fell away from his belt. “I understand. You want her for yourself. As she wants you.”

  “No. She doesn’t want any part of this. She’s going to leave.” He looked at me, his jaw so tense I wondered how he could speak. “Let her out of the booth. Now.”

  To my utter shock, the guy on my left obediently slid out of the booth. I hesitated, sure it was a trick. Then I scrambled across the smooth leather, the clammy backs of my thighs sticking to the material. I ripped them free and stood unsteadily, unsure what to do next. No way was I walking out of there if Gio wasn’t at my side.

  Even if I’d heard him say something that horrified me down deep.

  “It’s an honor to get the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of your labor.”

  From what I’d overheard, he was one of them—or about to be. It wasn’t too much of a leap to guess they were with the mob. I’d pretty much decided it before tonight, and while that possibility skeeved me out, it wasn’t my business. I was just a dumb little culinary student who shook her tits for tuitio
n and attention.

  Not anymore.

  Before I could try to catch Gio’s eye again, I was shoved hard from behind and sent sprawling across the table. It surprised me more than hurt, though I bumped my lower lip against the edge. My skirt was flipped up, and hands sculpted my flesh. Greedy hands.

  “Goddammit, no. Get your filthy hands off her.”

  Giovanni’s harsh command made me whip my head around in time to see him take a swing at the groper, who I surmised to be the guy who’d let me out of the booth. In an instant, Gio’s arms were pinned behind his back, and he struggled against the men who kept him caged. His muscles bulged, on the verge of ripping the sleeves of his shirt. I hated that I noticed that even while I was sprawled on my belly in front of six men.

  You’re used to being looked at next to naked. You like it. Stop pretending you don’t.

  But not like this. Never like this.

  “Gio,” I said quietly, and he stilled, his blue-black eyes wild. I’d seen tigers at the zoo with less leashed power simmering under their skin. “Do it.”

  I don’t know what made me say those particular words, or how I could even speak when fear rode me hard enough to make my legs shake. They were spread open, putting me on display thanks to the insubstantial thong I wore and hairband-sized skirt that had been raised to bare my ass. And even as I trembled, some part of me reveled in being the center of focus for all these powerful men.

  For Gio.

  Something had twisted inside me, gone wrong at a point I couldn’t identify. Maybe it was when my sister was kidnapped on her way home from school that sunny September day, shortly after the new school year had begun, or maybe it was when I’d seen all the people looking for her and wondering when she would return home. If she would. I’d wondered too, and I’d cried so many tears that I could’ve drowned in them. But when she came back, and they printed the pictures of the beautiful, horrifying man who’d held her hostage, a sick, shameful part of me had yearned.

  For what, I hadn’t even known. I was only eleven. But now I had an inkling. I yearned to be coveted to the point of madness. Beyond it.

  Like the way Giovanni was looking at me right now.

  He was trying to hide his desire. I sensed his revulsion at it, and there was no denying his fury and rage at the whole situation. But from my prone position, it was easy enough to see the outline in his pants. He would never act on it. Never take advantage. Even if it meant our lives hung in the balance, he would stay firmly on the other side of the moral line.

  I both admired and hated him for that.

  It would be easier, simpler, if he took my choice away. Then I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the dark, humiliating side of myself I fed every week when I eagerly participated in something that all the other dancers I worked with hated. I was broken, and I was about to admit it.

  At least in that, I had no choice.

  “I want it to be you,” I whispered, and he swore ripely in Italian. His eyes pleaded with me to refuse to be part of this, to say no and doom both of us to a painful death.

  I wouldn’t do it.

  “Please.” Though it pained me, I kept my eyes on his as I rose up on my bare toes. Presenting myself like an offering, as if this was our choice. As if our first time being witnessed by five men who were already going slack-jawed and glazed-eyed at the prospect wouldn’t traumatize me in ways I couldn’t begin to enumerate now.

  Maybe I needed to slake this dark curiosity to finally kill it forever. Or maybe I would kill myself—not my body, but my soul. My spirit. I didn’t know.

  I had to find out who I would be on the other side. Who he would be, and if we would be anything together.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” The question seemed ripped from Gio’s chest. “You aren’t supposed to be here, and you shouldn’t be wearing—”

  “Are you going to tell him, Carlotta, or shall I?” Marco interrupted smoothly.

  Now I really did have to shut my eyes. Being spread out like this in front of these men hadn’t made my face heat with shame, but imagining the expression on Gio’s face as he found out about my deception did in an instant. “I work here.”

  “You what?” When I didn’t reply to Gio’s thunderous question, a hand came down hard on my ass. It took me a full thirty second to realize it was his.

  And then I began to heat with something else.

  “How could you?” he asked roughly, hauling me to the edge of the table. Against him. “I didn’t want this for you.”

  Blindly, I stared at the wall opposite me, and fought not to offer a million apologies. I didn’t owe him one—or anything else.

  But I wanted to give him what he was pressed against so tightly now, because something was wrong with me. I wanted to revel in the hedonistic desire beginning to spiral through me, tight and full in my lower belly. I didn’t care about those other men. They were there but not. There was only Gio and me.

  Finally.

  “Oh, she did, and she did it well.” Marco’s smooth voice interrupted the litany in my head as another set of photographs was smacked down on the table beside my shoulder.

  Even without shifting fully to look at them, I glimpsed my cage—and me inside of it, with my ass in a thong pressed to the thinner-than-normal bars. So someone could touch. Lots of someones, if it came to that.

  It usually didn’t, because I knew how to play the crowd. But it had a few times. And it could any night I didn’t dodge and weave fast enough.

  Like tonight.

  Gio grabbed the stack of photos and sifted through them silently, before slapping them back down again. He said nothing, and didn’t so much as breathe against the back of my neck as he loomed over me. “Why?” he whispered, sounding tortured. “Tell me why.”

  “Ooh, ooh, I’ll take this one.” Z laughed and slouched into the booth, kicking out his long legs. “Because she’s a little cocktease. Isn’t that right, sweetness?”

  “Shut up,” Gio barked.

  “My apologies, amico mio, but he’s correct,” Marco said, and I closed my eyes. If only I could have blocked out his voice too, but that wasn’t possible. “And I have a club full of regulars who can vouch she shakes it twice a week every week, and loves what the men dish out. Just in case you have any plans of crying rape, gattina.” His voice dipped on the Italian phrase and bile rose in my throat. “We also have more pictures. So many pictures…”

  “Stripping doesn’t mean she deserves to be violated,” Gio grated out. “I’ve worked to become part of this family, but if you push me, you’ll force me to do something I might regret.”

  “Threats, Costas?” The man they called Bas shook his head. “A bit beneath you, don’t you think?” He glanced at his associates. “Especially since you’re outnumbered five-to-one.”

  Marco chuckled. “Bas, thank you, but I do believe our Giovanni just needs a bit more light shed on the issue.” He pivoted slightly on his expensive Italian leather loafers, ones I’d admired before. “She’s been flirting with me for weeks. She did it tonight too.” He cupped the back of my head and I fought not to shudder. “In fact, I do believe she’d let me take a turn, if you’re not interested.”

  Gio knocked Marco’s hand off my head. “You’re not to touch her. Understand me?” I sensed he was glancing around at the other men. “You brought her here to me. She’s mine.”

  There was no denying the jolt of excitement that went through me at his rough declaration, but I tamped it down. I still had a strong self-preservation instinct, and I didn’t know how I should react. Or even if I should.

  I wasn’t my sister. I couldn’t fight my way out of here with brute force and my wiles alone. She possessed a strength I never would. I had a kinky enough heart to get off on the exhibitionism aspect of this with Gio, and even his bursts of anger in my direction didn’t cause me to fear him. He was a gentle giant, and he would never truly hurt me. But these men were a different story.

  If I went along with the scenario they’d set
up, would Gio just be the opening course? Or would they all take their turns, whether he fought them or not?

  Don’t think about it. One minute at a time, that’s all. Breathe in, breathe out.

  “And only mine,” Gio added, “or I’ll walk out of this room and keep going.”

  Marco chuckled again. “Without your little gattina? Why now, that’s not nice, leaving such a fluffy sheep to a bunch of hungry wolves like us.”

  “I’ll walk,” he repeated.

  My skin prickled with goosebumps everywhere at once. I didn’t believe it—I couldn’t. Not only did we have heat and a kind of history, he was friends with Fox. He would never leave me to these men.

  He couldn’t.

  Z stretched his arm along the back of the booth, lazy as could be. “And you think we’ll let you?”

  “Oh, you’ll let me, because you want me more than you want me spreading your secrets.”

  Marco examined his nails. “I never realized you wanted to die so badly, gumba. Puts a whole new spin on why you fight the way you do.”

  Gio braced his hands on either side of my hips, caging me in, and leaned toward Marco while I shivered beneath him from fear or arousal, or some sick combination of both. “I fight to win. And we both know you want me on your side, rather than against you. I’m an asset.”

  “You are,” he agreed begrudgingly. Then he sighed, glancing down at me. “Such a pretty little thing. A pet like this costs a lot to keep.” He raised his gaze to Gio. “If we abide by your request not to touch her, we still need proof of your loyalty. Proof you won’t run out of this room and squawk to anyone who looks your way about what we forced you to do.”

  “No one’s forcing me to do anything.”

  “Play it that way then.” Marco lifted his manicured hands and let them fall. “It’s your choice, but you will make it. Now, Gio, before I run out of patience.” He waited a beat. “And she will pay the price for your hesitation.”

  He hauled in a deep breath, and his chest vibrated above my back. He was still draped over me, partially leaning over the table, protecting me as if I was bleeding out and he was saving me from being picked at by circling crows.