The Devil's Vow - Bella J.
Prologue
The cold steel against my back relieved the burn of marred flesh. My body felt heavy, the weight of every bone pulling me down. Tears stained my face, and the dried-up sorrow of pain and torment clung to my cheeks like his vile lust stuck to my thighs.
I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, trying to remember her face, her voice. With every lash of his whip, every bite of his teeth, and every insult he spat at me, her face would be as clear as daylight. Beautiful blue eyes. Innocent smile. Pure heart. But it was moments like these, the moments where exhaustion dug its claws into my body, despair choking the fight from my soul, that her face would disappear. I couldn’t forget her. Not now. Not ever.
“Schiava.” The bars reverberated against my spine as he slammed his cane against the steel. “Don’t you dare pass out on me now. The night is only beginning.”
I opened my eyes, staring at the monster who leaned over the cage with his arms stretched out wide. Sweat covered his naked body, his cock hard, and his expression that of pure evil. Dark brows framed wild eyes that reflected hell’s shadows within them, and I feared it would engulf me.
The five o’clock shadow that covered his jaw wasn’t there when I first met him. Those familiar eyes weren’t so wicked and malevolent either, possessed with an unspeakable evil as he unleashed the devil in him. He used me to fulfill his wretched fantasies as he bathed in his sadistic tendencies that pierced my flesh over and over again. The only part of my body which remained unharmed by him was my face.
“Let’s not ruin the prettiest part of you,” he’d say while he stared at me as if I was a dream to him. A dream caught in the web of this nightmare he created.
I glanced at the woman on the bed, settled on her knees, arms stretched above her head. She moaned as she fought against the chains, mouth gagged and ankles tied to a spreader-bar. But she was only playing her part, doing what she was paid to do. To let him fuck her while I watched, her body bent and used in the most depraved ways. But unlike me, she had a choice. She chose to be here. She chose to give ownership of her body to the monster who relished our pain.
“Eyes here, schiava.” He slammed his cane against the bars, the sound vibrating all around the cage and crashing against my chest as he demanded my attention. He glanced down at the fresh cut on my inner thigh. “If you get blood all over your cage, I’ll make you lick it up like a fucking dog.”
I snarled, my hatred oozing like an open sore. If I weren’t so tired, I would have launched myself across the cage so I could claw his eyes out while I spat in his motherfucking face. Piece of shit.
He smiled as if he could read my every thought. “No matter how exhausted you are, the fight in your eyes remains.”
I pulled my dirty knees up to my chest, wincing as the cut on my thigh stretched with the movement.
“I’ll tell you what.” He pushed away from the cage and sauntered toward the bed, the gagged whore moaning as he approached her. “You seem like you need some rest, so I’ll grant you a little reprieve by letting you watch. But tomorrow I’ll be sure to fuck the filth out of you, prove what a masochistic slut Emilio Moretti’s daughter really is.”
Renewed strength surged through my veins at the mention of my father’s name. The man whose actions and decisions had brought me to this moment. He might as well have placed me in this cage himself, locking it with his threats and lies.
I watched as he tightened the belt around the whore’s neck, pulling her head back. Her back arched and spine bent with a sickening curve. The glint of a knife in his hand demanded my attention, and I gasped as terror stole my breath.
“Nothing is as pure as the color of blood, don’t you think, Daniela?” He placed the tip of his knife against the pulsing vein in her neck, and my mind was already a few seconds ahead, picturing her cut throat and bleeding corpse hanging from silver chains. “You know,” he brought the knife up to his lips, feigning a look of thought, “I think this was