Page 58 of Unbound

Tessa moved with confidence toward her brother. I was a little confused for a second and then it dawned. She was facing her rapist and she wanted to strut like he hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t beaten her down.

“What did he do to you?” Tommy folded his arms and looked at his sister.

She straightened her spine, standing beside Tommy, not three feet from Leo, and said, “He had me drugged and kidnapped, he mutilated my arm with an Xacto knife, he raped me, and then he sent me to an auction to be sold.”

“An eye for an eye sounds about right,” Tommy said. “You want to carve him?”

“No, but I’ll watch,” she said.

This was so calmly executed that I knew two things. One: he must have told her this would happen. He must have promised her that Leo Denarda would get what was coming to him. And two: she was definitely a Ferrano, made of the same tough stuff as her brothers. She was holding it together remarkably well.

Tommy, wearing a pair of black gloves, leaned over and used a knife to pierce Leo’s tuxedo jacket sleeve and then he ripped it away and took the knife and stabbed downwards. Leo screamed deep in his throat behind the tape over his mouth, his eyes wide, his face swollen and bloody.

Nino moved in and grabbed Leo’s wrist to steady it and Tommy curved the knife on his forearm. I felt bile rise in my throat. I heard another scream as Tommy kept carving. I couldn’t see anything but blood gushing but it seemed like he carved more than Tessa’s initials.

“How did he rape you?” Nino asked, lifting a long metal pipe up off the ground in his own gloved hands, and I heaved a little as puke rose in my throat. It was audible. I swallowed it back down and turned away and cradled myself.

“Will?” I heard Tommy’s voice, “Help my wife. Don’t let her fall.”

I felt an arm go around me. I looked at Will’s face. He looked a little green and unsteady, too. He was young, my age or so, and he was new to the team. What a way to get initiated.

“From behind,” Tessa said, and her voice cracked, “I was on a sofa on my stomach.”

“Untie him, Neen, bend the fucker over that table,” Tommy said.

I buried my face in Will’s shoulder so I wouldn’t have to look.

Oh God.

I sobbed.

“Athena!” Tommy called. I looked over my shoulder at him and saw as he was untying Leo.

“You can step outside the door for this. Tessa? Your choice.”

“I’ll stay,” Tess said.

Will helped me out and sat with me in the hall, our backs against the wall.

I heard voices. I heard my husband’s in an angry, accusing tone, but I didn’t know what he was saying. I heard Leo grunting out in pain behind the mouth tape. I heard Tess shout, “fucking animal” and then Nino, “How do you like that you little motherfucker?”

I pulled my knees up and buried my face in them, forgetting that I was in a little black dress.

The little fucking goof needed to hit the button for the third explosion, but my guys had nabbed him first. We’d gotten his chauffeur and bodyguards immobilized and then we’d drivenhim here where he’d been interrogated by his uncle’s right-hand man. That guy had also beat the shit out of Leo Denarda, but all I gave a shit about was the fact that the fucker was conscious when I got to him so that he’d feel my wrath.

Carve my sister’s arm with your initials? I carved her initials on his arm and then a giant F on his torso for Ferrano. And then Nino, who loved Tess like she was his sister, particularly because of Tess’s relationship with his wife Bianca, drove a rust-coated metal pipe up Denarda’s ass.

My sister stood there, cool as a cucumber, throughout the entire event. I’d watched Tessa her whole life and even though she’d say that I kept my distance, I knew her. I knew that despite her stone-cold face, she was wrecked on the inside.

I’d given her an out. She could spit in his face and walk away. She could carve her initials herself. She could simply leave the little fuck in my hands and know that he would pay for what he’d done to her. She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him dead. She told me herself that she wanted him raped up the ass dry and that she wanted to watch. And then she wanted the fucker to lose his dick and die.

I was more than happy to take the order from her.

She stood there while he got ass raped and after the fucker’s asshole was bleeding, she calmly kissed me on the cheek and then went out to join Will and Tia in the hallway. Nino used the blood and shit-coated pipe to beat that little shit between his legs until there probably wasn’t much left but a mangled mess of what used to be his dick and balls between his legs. I moved in and said a couple things into his ear, then moved to look right into his eyes while I slowly slid that boxcutter blade across his fucking throat.

I didn’t have to call JC, my usual clean-up guy, who did have help here in Vegas. Denarda’s uncle’s crew was happy to stay on hand and clean up the mess.

Tess had come into the hall and sat beside me. I lifted my head out of my knees and looked at her and she started to quietly cry. I hugged her and she clung to me until Nino and Tommy emerged from the room. Tommy’s face was bleeding. And there was blood on his tuxedo shirt. He held his hand out. I took it, got to my feet, and held it as we all walked out of there.

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