Devious Vow: Chapter 2

Rough, masculine grunts fill the room, mingling with wet, sloppy sounds. Massimo’s head lolls back in pleasure, his jaw clenched and his fists gripping tightly as he pumps harder, pushing deeper.

“Yes, puttana,” my husband groans as he picks up the pace of his manic, irregular throat-fucking. “Such a good little slut.”

I roll my eyes, turning away from the scene in front of me to stare out the window at Central Park. I lift the flute of champagne to my lips, sipping deeply as I try to ignore the disgusting sounds of Massimo getting off not ten feet away from me.

Mercifully, not involving me.

“Eloise.”

I ignore him and continue to stare out the window of the high-rise penthouse. Present gross scenario and the generally craptastic nature of my life notwithstanding, the view from here of the park and the entire East Side of Manhattan is truly stunning. Not to mention a total change after spending most of the last year staring out at the Pacific Ocean.

And yet I know the splendor of this view, just like the one of the stunning ocean in LA, will eventually fade and tarnish.

A “nice view” only sustains you for so long when the rest of your existence is shit and ash.

“Look at me!”

Part of my delay is me purposely ignoring Massimo. The other part is that after three glasses of bubbly on an empty stomach, my response time is slightly slowed.

That’s another tactic, alongside “nice views”, to block out my day-to-day life: alcohol.

“Look. At. Me. You. Bitch!” he snarls.

I jerk, choking on my champagne as the shoe he’s just thrown at me narrowly misses my head. Turning, I glare daggers at Massimo as he leers at me, his hips pumping his frankly revolting dick in and out of the other woman’s mouth.

His lips curl into a malicious smile. “Yesss. Watch, my worthless wife. Watch how a real woman pleases a real man.”

I only refrain from rolling my eyes because I’d like to finish my current glass of bubbles without getting another shoe thrown at me.

A REAL man.

Says the guy still wearing socks, with his pants around his ankles.

How terrifyingly alpha.

The woman kneeling between his knees sputters a little. But she’s a pro—literally—and keeps bobbing her head on his dick as his hand tightens in her hair.

There are few upsides to being married to Massimo Carveli. But the biggest one by a landslide is that he doesn’t touch me.

Not once.

Not ever.

Massimo’s “thing” ever since I was forced to marry him a little over a year ago—his kink, I guess—doesn’t involve touching me at all. In fact, I think it specifically involves not touching me.

Humiliation. That’s his thing. A sort of reverse cuckold kink where he belittles and demeans me by fucking other women in front of me, usually while calling me worthless, stupid, a bad wife, or sexually frigid.

It’s not that I’m in any conceivable way jealous of the man I hate screwing other girls in front of me. It’s not that I care what names he calls me or give a rat’s ass what he thinks about me. But I hate being an unwilling participant in his game. I hate being forced to sit here and watch him abuse some poor girl, even if she’s being paid handsomely for what she does.

Massimo’s no idiot. He doesn’t actually think that his little kink makes me jealous, because he knows full well I despise him. But he does know I hate the forced participation. And that’s where his satisfaction comes from.

I allow him to lock his gaze on mine, and I swallow back the sickly feeling that washes over me again when he groans in pleasure.

Fucking gross.

I only pull my eyes away to drain the last of my glass and reach for the bottle, topping my flute right back up again.

Massimo laughs coldly. “Ahh yes, my lovely wife the drunk,” he sneers. “Planning on floating to bed later, dear?”

I don’t respond. I’ve learned not to communicate with him when he tries to goad me into banter during one of these sessions. He wants me to talk back. He wants me to vocalize how much I hate this.

So I don’t.

It might be a pathetically small act of disobedience. But I consider it a win nonetheless.

Massimo grunts, his ass lifting from his chair as he continues fucking the girl’s mouth.

“Try not to get too fucked up, wife,” he snarls. “We have an early morning tomorrow.”

Mild curiosity ripples through me. But not enough that I’ll break my silence and ask him what that means, or what the hell we’re doing. Mostly because it doesn’t matter, and I don’t care.

We all do things we don’t want to do when we have to. It’s one of the reasons I can sympathize with the woman Massimo is using in front of me. I mean, sure, maybe this girl is doing exactly what she wants with her life. Maybe she woke up one morning and realized her superpower was not having a gag reflex or being bothered by blowing mafiosos with huge egos and tiny dicks, and decided she could make a living with that.

But I doubt it.

The far more likely scenario is that this girl is merely doing what she has to in order to survive. Like I am. Again, mercifully, the things I have to do to survive don’t involve touching Massimo.

But they do involve being married to him. They involve being a part of his demented world and giving up whatever dreams I had left for my own life.

I take another heavy swig of champagne, trying to block out the sounds of Massimo’s approaching…ugh…climax. Whatever the hell we’re doing tomorrow, I’ll get through it the same way I get through everything: by retreating inward, smiling bitterly, and numbing everything with a drink or five.

“That’s your last fucking glass,” Massimo snaps at me, ripping my attention back to him. “I don’t want you walking into the Crown and Black offices tomorrow looking like hungover trash.”

Something glitches inside of me. My entire body stiffens, and the sip of champagne rolling over my tongue gets caught in my throat.

“What?”

Massimo’s gaze is all on the girl between his knees as his pace quickens to a manic level. “I’m…” he grunts. “I’m interviewing new potential legal representation tomorrow. Crown and Black.” He grunts again before his eyes raise to mine. “You went to school with two of the partners, I think. Gabriel and Alistair Black.”

A knife twists inside me. A vicious wave of nostalgia, pain, ache, and anger surges through me, knocking the air from my lungs. My head feels droopy, like it’s suddenly too heavy for my neck.

My hand drops to clutch at my heaving stomach as I stare at Massimo.

Gabriel Black can be classified as “someone I went to school with.”

But Alistair?

That’s something completely different. Something elemental. Something ingrained into my very DNA. Something painful, like a wound being ripped back open just as it’s healing, over and over.

Something I’ll never be able to forget, or escape.

I don’t realize I’m still staring at Massimo until I realize he’s groaning and wildly thrusting his hips. His eyes lock with mine, and I see the sadistic glee in them as he starts to come before I rip my gaze angrily away.

My pulse thudding. My skin tingling.

My heart aching.

“Oh, fuck yeah. Take it. Take it all, bitch,” Massimo snarls. “Swallow it. Yeah, fuck yeah.”

Revulsion washes over me, sweeping away the confusion, the ache, and the vivid memories that come whenever Alistair Black enters my thoughts. But after Massimo’s grunts and groans die down, those thoughts come rushing back with a vengeance.

They always do, no matter how hard I try to keep them at bay.

It’s impossible to keep Alistair out of my head for very long, and it’s only gotten worse since Massimo moved us here to New York.

Where Alistair lives. Where he has his career at his firm. Where I’ll bet he spends zero seconds thinking about me the way I think about him.

Massimo sighs as Destiny pulls away from his pathetic, half-limp dick. She pulls the front of her dress back up over her tits and wipes off her mouth in a businesslike way as she stands. She glances over to me, and we exchange a look.

This isn’t Destiny’s—or whatever her real name is—first visit to our place here in New York. She’s seen this routine of Massimo’s before.

She knows I hate this. She probably hates it, too. But money is money, and we all do things we hate in order to survive. And besides, it’s not like I bear her any ill will because she just blew my husband.

If anything, I should thank her.

Massimo exhales as he pulls up his pants before tossing an envelope at Destiny’s feet.

“Get out.”

She counts the cash inside the envelope, which is smart, because my husband is exactly the type of shithead who would short her on purpose just to make her ask for the rest. But this time at least, it’s all there. She shoots me one last look before she grabs her clutch and heads across the penthouse and out the door.

“Why Crown and Black?”

The question pops out before I can stop it. Massimo smirks as he crosses the room to the bar cart and pours himself a scotch.

“They’re an excellent firm. And because of their reputation for working with…well…” He smiles. “Men like me.”

Gangsters. He means gangsters.

“They also work with the Drakos and Kildare families, though.”

I don’t know why I’m questioning this. Or maybe I do. Maybe I want to steer Massimo away from this, because my husband working with Alistair would have my two different worlds crashing together. And going to that office tomorrow and seeing him is almost literally too much to even think about.

Which is why I bring up the fact that Crown and Black works with the preeminent Greek and Irish mafia families of New York, both of which Massimo loathes.

But mentioning those families doesn’t elicit the angry reaction I was hoping for. Instead, Massimo just smirks again.

“Well, well. Look at you. Pretending to be a lawyer again, are we?”

Fuck you.

“I am a lawyer.”

“Lawyers practice law, Eloise,” Massimo sneers with a dismissive wave.

I’ve learned not to take his bait. But Jesus Christ, sometimes it’s really hard. He knows damn well that this is one of the biggest buttons of mine that he can push: the fact that I am, in fact, a lawyer, who passed the bar in Illinois and again after we moved here in New York, but I don’t practice.

Because he won’t fucking let me.

“Why do you need me to come with you tomorrow?”

He shrugs. “I want them distracted when we talk business. The two brothers, at least. Last I heard, Ms. Crown wasn’t a carpet muncher.”

God, he’s foul.

Massimo lights a cigarette, which is yet another habit of his I hate, especially when he does it inside, in spaces we share.

“I’ve had what I want you wearing tomorrow laid out in your room. Spoiler: it’s green and short.”

My brows knit.

“Green’s not my color.”

“Look at me, Eloise. Do you see any sign of me giving a single, solitary fuck?” He smirks at me. “You’ll wear the dress. You’ll fucking smile when I tell you to. Understand?”

“Whatever.”

I turn away and walk to the window, staring out at Central Park before suddenly Massimo strides over. The air leaves my lungs in a whoosh, and I gasp sharply when he roughly spins me, slams me against the floor-to-ceiling window, and grabs my chin in his hand.

“The next fucking time you decide you’d like to mouth off to me, wife, perhaps it won’t be Destiny’s throat that I come down. Am I clear?”

I swallow thickly, feeling my stomach turn to acid.

“Am. I. Clear,” he growls again.

“Yes,” I mutter.

Massimo’s hand drops from my chin. “Get out. I have business to attend to.”

When I’m back in my room, which I don’t share with Massimo, I lock the door and sink against it. I really should eat something, because I haven’t all day, and the champagne is making my head swim. But instead, I walk over to the credenza by the windows and pour myself a large vodka.

Swallowing the room-temperature shot with a grimace, I turn and let my gaze settle on my open closet door and the dress hanging pristinely on a hanger on it. As Massimo mentioned, it’s green, which really is not my color, and short. Like, stupidly, scandalously, short. It’d be skanky looking even at a club. For a business meeting at a world-class legal firm, it’s a fucking joke.

But the dress quickly goes into the “who cares” file in my head—the place I keep all those little things I know should bother me, but that I also know I have no control over. The file’s pretty thick these days, being married to the sadistic asshole that I am and all.

The scene I just witnessed with Massimo and Destiny gets pushed aside too, along with my crushed dreams, my alcohol-numbed existence, and the depressing thought that this will be my life until I die.

Because something else has taken root in the forefront of my head, occupying every single one of my thoughts.

More like someone.

Ten years ago, Alistair Black broke me.

Broke my heart. Broke my will.

Broke us.

Or maybe there was never any “us” to break at all.

I’ve seen Alistair once since moving to New York, at a gala event Massimo attended.

He didn’t see me. Or if he did, he ignored me, and made sure we never crossed paths the entire evening.

But tomorrow, ten years after he was my bully and I was his, I’ll be face-to-face again with the man who left me standing in the ashes after the spark between us went up in smoke.

And this time, there’ll be no escape, for either of us.