Savage Little Games: Chapter 3

“Where are we going?” I ask Salvato’s friend, or maybe assistant, Eli. He pushes the button on the elevator and has to scan a card, then scan his finger. He doesn’t answer but I can draw enough information from the B to figure it out. “The basement? Why are we going to the basement?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he says while staring straight ahead as the floors tick down. He doesn’t look concerned. In fact, he looks…downright giddy as he rocks back and forth on his heels, humming a tune.

Again, the elevator takes forever. When the door finally opens, we step off into the grungy basement so at odds to the luxurious penthouse. I don’t wait for Eli as I head for the group of men standing around. At first, I don’t even recognize the one sitting hunched over in the chair. His face is too swollen and bloody.

“Mitch!” I exclaim, slapping a hand over my mouth. “Oh my god. Why?” I demand from Salvato who is staring at me expectantly from where he stands beside his chair.

“We were talking business,” he says as he pulls something silver out of his pocket and opens it. A knife. A very big knife. “His face should at least look like yours, don’t you think?”

“No!” I exclaim. To Mitch, I tell him, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea he would do this to you.”

“It’s fine,” he replies, lifting the front collar of his white faded rock tee to dab at his bleeding lip.

“Fine?” He’s no longer blaming me?

When Salvato goes around behind the chair, I already know what he’s going to do before he does it. Still, I gasp when he grabs a handful of Mitch’s hair in one hand, bending his head backward, and pressing the blade to his throat with his other hand.

“Please…please don’t…” I beg without a clue as to what to say to stop Salvato from moving that knife.

“So sweet that she’s worried about you after you just agreed to sell her to me,” the arrogant mafia king says.

“What?”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Mitch whispers.

“Mitchell here owes a bad man named Kozlov a lot of money, as you already know.”

“The Russians? You owe money to the Russians? Oh my god, Mitch!” I exclaim. “I told you to stay away from them!”

“I’m sorry,” he says, but it’s too late now.

Last night, I wasn’t sure who the guys worked for but knew it was bad. This isn’t bad; it’s a fucking disaster. Salvato is a saint compared to those monsters.

“How much does he owe?” I ask Salvato since Mitch never gave me an amount last night and probably won’t now even with a knife to his throat.

“Seventy-six grand.”

“Seventy-six…” I slap my palm over my gaping mouth. “How? How could you?” I ask Mitch, slightly less concerned about the knife threatening his life. We don’t have that kind of money! Hell, I’m lucky if I have seventy dollars in my bank account when payday rolls around.

“I’m going to pay it off tonight,” he says.

“Tonight? How? By selling both of your kidneys?”

“No, he’s selling you,” Salvato responds gleefully.

“Me? Selling me to who? The Russians?” God, my head is aching. This cannot be happening.

“He’s not selling you to the Russians,” Salvato says. “He’s selling you to me.”

“You?”

Suddenly, this whole clusterfuck begins to make sense. It’s one big set up to screw me over thanks to a stupid piece of shit and a conniving megalomanic.

“At a grand for each day, that’s only seventy-six little days,” Salvato explains as if he’s an info-commercial host offering me an incredible bargain.

“What is seventy-six days?” I ask in confusion.

“In exchange for me paying off Mitchell’s debt to the Russians and letting him live after he let you get hurt, then sold you to me like a whore, you’re mine for the next seventy-six days. And nights of course.”

What. The. Hell.

Salvato thinks I’m going to be ? As in his property? Day and night?

“No. Hell, no. God, Mitch. You are unbelievable! And you,” I say pointing a finger at Salvato. “You are one insane, persistent prick!”

The four men standing around, the mafia king’s guards, go completely still as they turn to watch Salvato’s face waiting for his response to my insult.

“So, I should just kill him and be done with it?” the asshole asks. “I can’t say I really blame you.”

He presses the sharp side of the blade to Mitch’s neck so hard blood drips down his throat, causing the asshole to start sobbing and begging. The sight of blood makes me queasy. I don’t want to be responsible for ending another man’s life. I don’t want more blood on my hands. And even if Mitch is dead, the Russians will demand I pay up his debt and probably kill me, too, when I can’t.

“Wait!” I exclaim.

“See, is loyalty,” Salvato says to Mitch as he pulls the knife away, leaving the wound he made to continue dripping blood onto his shirt collar. “But I think we should be completely honest with Vanessa, don’t you, Mitchell? Make sure she still thinks you’re worth saving after she finds out you’ve been fucking around behind her back.”

The psycho mafia king wipes the knife blade on Mitch’s shoulder, leaving a crimson stain behind, then stares at me smugly. The blood is so distracting I nearly miss the bomb he just casually dropped at my feet.

“Fucking around? How do you know he’s cheated on me?” I ask.

“I have the photos and videos from various strip clubs and brothels on my phone. There are four or five different women. Hard to tell since they look so much alike. He really does have a thing for blondes. Would you like to see them?”

“No,” I snap, swallowing around the growing knot in my throat. I believe him. Dante Salvato doesn’t have to bluff. Mitch doesn’t bother disputing the disgusting allegations either.

“I’m so sorry, babe,” he whispers. “You work every night, and I get lonely. It won’t happen again, I swear.”

I can’t help but scoff at his worthless promise. “Asshole! Now I’m glad he busted up your face.”

“It was my pleasure,” Salvato says triumphantly.

Once, about a month after Mitch and I first moved in together, I saw the texts between him and another woman. He blocked her number and swore then that he hadn’t cheated on me, that they were just talking. Talking, right. Sure. I wanted to believe him, to give him the benefit of the doubt. With Cole in college, I was also lonely and needed his help to pay rent. Not that he’s contributed lately since he got fired from his job working security at another casino.

“Well, butterfly, now that you have all the facts, what’s it going to be?” Salvato asks, the knife glinting under the lights when he places it back in front of Mitch’s throat.

Running my fingers through my hair, I tell him the truth. “I…I don’t know. I don’t really understand what you want from me.”

Salvato arches an eyebrow, and his heated blue eyes sweep up and down my body to make what he desires very clear.

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” I tell him.

Salvato makes a sound of disagreement. “We’ll see.”

“No, you crazy bastard, we won’t see! I’m telling you it’s going to happen, so that’s not going to be part of whatever deal this is you’re trying to make.”

Again, the guards all bristle as if I insulted them instead of their boss.

“Van, please!” Mitch huffs, brown eyes pleading with me. “Don’t make this worse.”

I glare at him, letting him know that he doesn’t get to have a say in this. I’m not fucking some asshole whenever he wants for seventy-six days and nights just to pay off his debt. Nobody is ever going to me, not even temporarily.

Although, if I absolutely had to, I would maybe sleep with Salvato one little time to keep Mitch’s sorry ass alive. I would hate it, but I would do it. Once. Wouldn’t mind doing it in front of the cheating bastard, actually…

I haven’t had an orgasm in a very, very long time. And while Salvato is an arrogant asshole, he has the swagger of a man who knows he can pleasure a woman in record-breaking time with the slightest twitch of his pinkie.

“Here are my terms,” Salvato says. “You live with me for the next seventy-six days and nights. If you leave this building without my permission, if you refuse any of my demands, I’ll consider our agreement null and void, and I’ll kill him.”

“Sex is off the table.”

“Sure. If it makes you feel better, then non-consensual sex is off the table. I won’t touch you…

until you ask me to, whenever that may be…”

“I think you meant .

I ask you to.”

“I said what I said, butterfly,” he replies with an arrogant smirk. “Breaking you is going to be so much fun.”

“I hate you both,” I tell the two bastards who have me backed into a corner with only two very shitty options to choose from.

“Mitchell here just informed me of your for me,” Salvato grits out through his clenched teeth. For a second, his eyes darken as if he’s actually hurt and offended that I don’t like him. A moment later, though, he seems perfectly fine again when he says, “The more hate the better since angry fucks are by far my favorite.”

“You said earlier that you loved it from the back,” I remind him.

“Why can’t it be both?”

Angry sex from the back. Right. I’m sorry I brought it up.

Scrubbing my palm down my makeup-less face, I wince when I touch the bruises then take a deep breath. “Will you please let him go now?”

“In a hurry to get started?” Salvato asks.

“No. I just don’t want to see his face anymore.”

“Fine. He can go, just as soon as you sign my contract so I can send the payment to Kozlov.”

At first, I think he’s joking. “You don’t actually have a typed-up agreement for this, do you?”

“I wanted to be prepared for when you agreed.”

When, not if, like he knew I wouldn’t let him kill the bastard.

“Just a moment,” he says.

Lifting the knife from Mitch’s throat, he doesn’t put it away. No, he pulls up the hair on the top of Mitch’s head and slices off a big chunk right down the middle, then tosses the fuzzy wad aside.

“Dammit!” Mitch hisses. He looks ridiculous but at least he’s not bleeding from anywhere else.

Finally folding up his knife, Salvato slips it into his pants pocket. Reaching into his suit jacket, he withdraws a tri-folded piece of paper and a gold pen, then holds the paper out toward me.

I remember Eli printing something in his office earlier. Guess this was it.

Once I have the paper, I unfold it to start reading. It says exactly what we discussed— verbatim—but I still re-read the words three more times to make sure I’m not overlooking anything.

He even added the consensual section, albeit it arrogantly:

Then there’s a place for me to sign and date it.

“You put a murder threat in writing?” I ask in disbelief.

“Yes. The document will only serve as a reminder for you of what’s at stake in case you become…obstinate. Any other questions?” Salvato asks. I shake my head, at a complete loss for how to avoid this situation I’ve found myself in with him. “Great. Lean forward, Mitchell, so she can sign it on your back.”

The bastard does as he’s told so I take the paper over, accept the pen, and sign the next seventy-six days of my life away with one signature.

“You owe me, you son of a bitch,” I say to Mitch as I hand the document and pen back to Salvato.

A moment later, Salvato types something on his phone. “Your debts with Kozlov have been paid. Now you can dump him in the parking lot,” Salvato instructs the guards as they haul Mitch up out of the chair. “Alive,” he adds, giving me a wink to make it clear he’s holding up his end of the now signed agreement.

I’m so emotionally spent that it didn’t even occur to me to ask.

Salvato’s gaze lowers to my dress, then my heels. His voice deepens when he says, “Let’s get you upstairs and into something more comfortable.”

“I need to go to my place to get my things if I’m going to be here awhile.”

“We’ll take care of that tomorrow. I’m sure we can find you something appropriate to wear until then.”

I have a feeling my version of appropriate and his are two completely different things. There’s no telling what he’ll make me wear or do before this is all over.

And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.