Page 21 of Brutal

“Giulio told them to dye my hair orange,” I say, and that’s about as much of an explanation I’m going to give him.

I definitely don’t want to tell him that the reason I’m Mimosa is because my sister was going under the name Champagne.

He hums, not seeming to buy the answer completely. “What’d you do to end up in that hellhole, anyway? Drugs? Debt?”

He seems willing to talk without fucking, and while I don’t want to give him the real answer, I know I have to give him something if I want to keep him in this decent mood.

“I pissed Giulio off,” I answer.

Yeah, sure. I’d mouthed off at him, but that wasn’t why he’d kidnapped me from my apartment and had forced me into sex work.

No, I owe all of that to my lovely sister. She’d decided she was done working for Giulio. Not “done” as in, getting out of the sex work business.

“Done” as in, going off to another club. Allowing herself to be poached.

Giulio Pavone hadn’t taken kindly to that.

So not only did I find out my sister was fucking men for money, I also got forced into the exact same bullshit on the same day.

If she’d just gotten a normal job like a normal person, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

“That’s pretty easy to do, I hear,” Brutal drawls. “He likes to come off as a nice guy, but he’s nasty as fuck in the end. I’ve heard some rumors…” He trails off, shaking his head. “Nah. He owed me a favor, not the other way around, thank fuck.”

What would the world think if they knew Drake Brutal, entrepreneurial finance darling, had connections to organized crime?

Maybe they would be more shocked if the people up top were squeaky clean. I’ve come to realize that the rose-tinted, ideal world I’d wanted to believe in is even more of a pipe dream than I’d originally thought.

“So he gave you a sex slave,” I answer, deadpan. “You could have gotten one for cheaper, I bet.”

“Probably,” he replies with a shrug. “But I wanted you.”

He doesn’t specify why, and I’m not sure I dare ask the reasons.

“Things didn’t work out with the sugar babies?” I can easily imagine the hundreds of women who would want to date him. Who cares if his personality is trash, because the lavish lifestyle he promises would more than make up for it for most people.

Brutal offers me a vulpine smile, tossing his tablet onto the bed and getting up. He approaches me, and when he gets close, he rests his hands on my shoulders, thumbs massaging lightly. “Got bored. I get bored a lot.”

That doesn’t surprise me.

“How long until you get bored of me?” I ask, looking him steadily in the eyes.

Eye contact got me into trouble a lot at Ntimacy, but I can’t break the habit. It was one of the ways I got people to actually listen to me when I was in class, surrounded by a bunch of men who thought their opinions mattered more just because they had penises.

He shrugs, his hands trailing down until he reaches the towel. He pushes that down until the fabric comes loose, pooling around my feet. “Depends on you, I guess.”

“You never told me what you wanted from me,” I point out. “You don’t want my obedience, but you get mad when I disobey.”

“That’s for you to figure out,” he says, his hands running down my front until he reaches my breasts, and he thumbs over my nipples.

In other words, I don’t think even he knows. Great.

“All right, Master,” I say, sickly sweet. “How should I service you this morning?”

Brutal snorts. He starts to say something, but as if on cue, his phone dings. “Oh, that might be Hunter. Could make this morning a lot more interesting if it is.” He saunters over to the nightstand, leaving me standing there shivering as he checks his phone. His smile widens. “Yep. You’re all good, somehow. Let’s see… I’m feeling generous this morning, and I have a little extra time. Do you want to eat first, or do you want to play a game first?”

I don’t even hesitate. “Eat.”

I’m sure we’ll be playing the game either way, but I need to keep my energy up in order to think straight. Part of the problem was how little I’d been fed, which meant thoughts of resisting were often subsumed by thoughts of food.

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