Page 23 of De Luca: The Sinister Game

This entire situation is beyond confusing. I should be angry with them both. There’s no way I should be turned on with his hands around me like this, threatening me. Yet I cannot control the throbbing in my core.

“You don’t own me,” I say through several gasps. Drake tightens his grip while Dante’s cock presses against my back.

Drake smirks slightly. “I own every part of you, baby. That tight little pussy. Those perfect lips. All those sexy moans. And your breath. They are all mine. Ours.”

He releases his hand from my burning throat, and I cough while trying to control my raspy breathing.

“My heart is mine. It will never be yours.”

I turn and race out of the shower to get the hell out of here when I hear Drake chuckle, “You can have that. I don’t fucking want it.”

Asshole. Of course, it doesn’t matter whether he wants my heart. I’d never give it to either of them. They can force me to have sex with them, but they can’t make me have feelings I don’t and never will. So why did it bother me when he said those words to me? I don’t know. There’s only one thing I’m certain of. I’m going to buy another razor blade today. Guaranteed after I see Nicole, I’ll need it. Drake and Dante may think they control my actions, but they don’t. I learned a long time ago to take care of myself. Trust me, if you don’t give yourself what you need, no one else will. There’s only one person I can count on in this world. Myself.

CHAPTER 19

NATALIA

Sitting in my sister's favorite cafe on nineteenth street, she stares at me with disgust as I take a bite of my blueberry muffin. Instantly, I push it away when I notice her arched eyebrow. She sits drinking a black coffee, not because she likes it that way but because she doesn’t consume sugar. None. When we were twelve, she eliminated sugar from her diet. I’ve never understood how she did it. Everything seems to have some kind of sweetener in it. Nicole, mostly, eats chicken and vegetables for dinner and one egg for breakfast. I’ve never wondered why she’s so much thinner than I am. It’s always been clear as day.

“You are what you eat, Natalia. If you eat like a pig, you look like one.”

“This pig saved your life. Are you aware of that?”

She takes a sip of her bitter coffee and sets it on the table, eyeing me suspiciously as if she has no clue what I’m talking about. “What?”

Rolling my eyes at her, I say, “Did you think the brothers let you go for no reason? You stole from them. What were you thinking?”

Nicole doesn’t respond. She simply stares into her coffee like it’s going to answer all her life's problems. Of course, it won’t.

“When did you begin using drugs?”

She shrugs like it’s not a big deal when it very much is. Clearly, my sister has never been a good person, but a drug addict? It completely blindsided me. I'm not sure if she's addicted to anything, but she must be, right? Unless you were completely addicted and in desperate need, I can't fathom risking your life by stealing from the De Luca brothers. I personally wouldn’t take that decision lightly.

“After you were attacked. Remember the pills they gave you that you were too good to take?”

I sigh heavily because I wasn’t too good at taking them. In fact, I took two of them but stopped because I didn’t like the way they made me feel. Groggy, lightheaded, and completely out of it. I noticed the bottle had disappeared from the nightstand, but I said nothing because I assumed my mom probably disposed of them after realizing I wasn’t taking them. Obviously, I was wrong.

“You’ve been taking pills for that long?”

She shakes her head, “No. You don’t just stay on painkillers. It escalates.”

Her words confuse me even more than I already was. If she didn’t steal pills from them, then what was it?

“What did you steal from them?”

Nicole sits across from me in blue jeans and a white blouse, looking like a model, not a junkie. This isn’t what I picture a drug user looking like. Her blonde hair hangs past her shoulders, straightened perfectly, her makeup flawless as always. That’s how I’ve always seen her. Flawless. Perfect. Everything I’ll never be.

“Meth and heroin,” she answers, as I instantly gasp. She continues, “I didn’t steal from the brothers. It was some low-level dealer.”

I shake my head in disgust as I sip my sweet coffee. “He couldn’t have been that low level if he works for the De Luca family.”

She doesn’t argue for once. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know that. Obviously. Anyway, how exactly did you save my life?”

When I tell her how I’ve had to give myself to the two brothers until they are done using me like I’m a literal sex doll, her expression is filled with disbelief.

“That can’t be. It makes no sense whatsoever. They could’ve had me,” she says as she flips her hair behind her shoulder like she’s as perfect as I almost believe her to be. Then she laughs like someone told the funniest joke she’s ever heard.

“Seriously. What do they really want?”

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