Page 10 of Vow of Darkness
“And you?” I ask, feeling breathless. “Do you want to corrupt me?”
His eyes rake over my body once more. “I would corrupt your body in ways I’m sure you’ve never experienced.”
His words send a heat through my stomach that I don’t understand. As a virgin, I’ve never experienced this before. None of the boys at my high school ever caught my attention and when I started working at the café, everyone left me alone due to my lack of money. I’ve never had a man as intimidating as Gabriel talk to me this way.
“Does that make you feel something?” he murmurs.
“Yes. Fear,” I spit out.
“I can see your eyes, Aurora. There’s a curiosity there. Why is it there, I wonder?”
I want to back away from him but I’m stuck against the wall. “There is no curiosity. You make me afraid.”
“And yet, you’re bold with me. I have killed people for less.”
I swallow hard. “You’ve killed people?”
“I’m the mafia, Aurora. Of course I’ve killed people. It’s our way of life.”
“I know a little about the mafia but not everything. How high are you in it?”
“I’m at the top,” he says with pride. A sense of horror settles within me. Gabriel isn’t just some low level mafia man trying to make a quick buck. He’s a mafia boss. It explains the money he has. The arrogance. The fact that he believes he can play God and decide who gets to be punished or not.
“And my father?”
“He’s at the bottom. He left the mafia but one can never truly leave the mafia behind.”
“He left for me,” I whisper, remembering what he told me in Gabriel’s dungeon.
“And yet, he tried to steal from me. He never really left.”
“He only tried stealing money to help me,” I snap. “Don’t make my father out to be a bad man.”
“I don’t like it when people try and steal from me. It tends to make me angry.”
“You don’t know anything.”
His smirk makes his handsome face look crueler. “I know enough. Your father tried to steal money from my club. So I stopped him. Your father needed to pay the price for his actions anyway. He stole money from Giovanni Greco years ago and never paid up. It was only fitting I finish the job.”
“Who is Giovanni Greco?”
A cold, hardness settles over Gabriel’s face, turning his expression more stoic. Even though I’m face to face with him, I can’t read his eyes. “You don’t need to know who Giovanni Greco is. He doesn’t concern you. You’re mine now, Aurora. No one else’s.”
“I can’t belong to another human being. And I especially can’t belong to athingthat refuses to treat me like I’m human.”
For just a second, Gabriel flinches. It happens so fast though that I wonder if I even saw it at all. “You are mine. My prisoner. I am allowing you some liberties because of your selfless act. It makes you a better person that most people I meet. But that doesn’t mean you have any power over me. Remember your place, Aurora.”
“Or what?”
“I might have to spank you to keep you in line.”
“Spank me? Like a child?”
“How old are you?”
His question startles me. “Twenty-one. How old are you?”
“Thirty-one.”
