Page 11 of Venice

I grin and cross the basement to the massive chest where we keep the accoutrements needed to make sure we’re secure in the basement during our changing. Heaving it open, I rifle around and lift the ball and chain.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” says Diva. “We just had a fooling-around threesome, and I can honestly guarantee that no girl in her right mind would run away after experiencing your skills.”

I’m overjoyed to hear this, and Emilio grins even wider, but Marcello doesn’t take the bait. I guess that’s why he really is our alpha.

Marcello removes a key from his pocket and unlatches the chains from her feet that are attached to the wall. Then he moves to the foot of the bed and sits down to remove the chains from her shackles. Emilio reaches for them, and Marcello helps Diva climb from the bed. Emilio and I climb the stairs first, and Marcello holds Diva’s arm, following.

* * *

As soon as she is properly shackled in our dining room, I boil some water and make hot bowls of oatmeal topped with blueberries and maple syrup. We eat in silence, but Diva keeps looking at us over her bowl.

Finally, she sets her spoon down with a clank. “What do you want from my parents, and have you contacted them with your demands yet?”

We all look up, startled. “No,” I say. “We haven’t contacted them. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet.”

“So, you’re just planning on holding me as a prisoner indefinitely?”

Emilio puts his spoon down in his bowl. “We were hoping that you would talk to them.”

“Me?” She pushes her chair back. “And tell them what, that I’m being held captive as some sort of bargaining chip by three filthy werewolves?”

Emilio looks as if she just slapped him in the face. “Diva,” his voice is quiet. “How can you say that after we spent the night in your arms? After I proclaimed my love for you.”

She lifts her legs. “This is how. Let me go and maybe I’ll put in a good word.”

I spread my hands out on the table next to my bowl. “Tell me, Diva, do you agree with their registry and the plan to force werewolves to be chipped? Where will it end? When all Signum are chipped and categorically filed into some database so we can be hunted and killed?”

She looks down at her half-empty bowl. “No.” Her voice is quiet. “I don’t know what to believe. When you say it that way, it sounds horrific, but what else can we do to protect ourselves?”

“We’re not pedophiles,” I say. “We’re all so sorry about what happened to your brother, and the werewolf that killed him should be jailed or worse . . .”

“He was.” She doesn’t meet my eye.

“Good,” says Marcello. “He deserves that.”

“But we don’t,” says Emilio. “Why should an entire species suffer because of one evil person?”

She looks up at him with wet eyes and nods slowly. “You’re right.” She looks around the table and meets each of our gazes. “You’re all right. Will one of you return my phone so I can call them?”

We exchange looks. While Diva is eyeing Emilio, I shake my head and Marcello nods, agreeing with me. But Emilio leaps up from his chair and goes to the built-in cabinet where we’ve stashed her phone and retrieves it.

I stand up and put a hand out for the phone. Emilio hands it to me. I sit down next to Diva. “Diva,” I say softly. “If you play this correctly and earn our trust, we’ll let you spend more time up here instead of being down in the basement.”

She sets her jaw. “If I do this, you’ll let me spend all my time up here. Unshackled.”

I chuckle. “You don’t fuck around.” I look at my mates. “Gentlemen?”

“We have to keep you here until your parent’s close their business and sign an official contract we’ve had our lawyer draw up saying they won’t pursue this in the future and put out a press release saying they’ve dropped the idea and won’t let anyone else move forward with it, otherwise that party will be sued,” says Marcello.

“That’s a big ask,” she says, “and if I demand all that, they’ll know something’s wrong. Is that what you all want? To get caught and go to prison?”

I hand her the phone instead of responding. She’s still shackled, so she can’t run, but she could call and scream for help. I doubt she knows the number for the police in Italy, but maybe she does. We’re taking a big risk, but she was nestled in our arms last night. Doesn’t that mean something? The magic I felt cannot be faked, and I have to believe that she felt it too.

Chapter Ten

Diva

I turn the phone over in my hand. If they didn’t trust me a little, they would never have given it to me. And since each person in the troupe gets a new sim card when we arrive in a new country, thanks to Iphi, I can use it.

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