Hanging in the Stars: A Mafia Romance (Dark Romeo Book 3) Read online

  “Did you have anything to do with what happened to Winston?” I demand.

  Jacob stops crossing the living room of his luxury apartment towards me and stares at me coldly. “Is that any way to greet the love of your life?”

  The ice in his voice coats my skin and makes me want to shiver. All I think is that he didn’t deny it. I know that he was involved, if not the physical cause of Winston’s injuries.

  “I can’t believe that you would do that to another living person.”

  Jacob shrugs his shoulders, looking like he’s trying to relax his body, but I can see his jaw twitching. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  Jacob looks up at Snake and Garfield and another one of his goons, all of whom I’m vaguely aware are standing about the room in an awkward silence.

  “Get out,” he commands them. Jacob glares at me when he continues, “I want to speak to my woman, alone.”

  I try to keep my breath steady as I watch the three men slip out of the room. This is Jacob, I remind myself. My Jacob. I shouldn’t be scared of him.

  So why is my heart hammering like a crazed beast against the cage of my ribs? Why is every muscle in my body screaming for me to run?

  Jacob’s eyes are black pits as he stares at me. He makes no move to comfort me. “That fucker needed to learn who you belong to.”

  My next inhale gets stuck in my throat, choking me. Jacob had Winston hurt. Because of me.

  “Oh my God,” I hear myself gasp. I wait to wake up. This has to be some sort of messed up dream.

  “I did it for you.”

  This isn’t a dream. I shake my head and I start to back away from him as he approaches, stalking me like I’m prey.

  “No. No, you didn’t do it for me. I would have never, ever asked you to do something as horrible as to beat the living shit out of someone for me. I saw him, Jacob. I saw what you did.”

  Jacob lunges for me. My instincts take over and I turn to run. He grabs me before I can reach the door. “Nobody touches you except for me. No-fucking-body, you hear me?”

  “You’re crazy,” I say, and my voice is breaking along with my heart and my faith in our love. “You’re fucking crazy.”

  The slap across my cheek burns like fire. I curl away, holding my cheek. The man I love has just hit me.

  “Take that back,” he demands.

  “Take it back? I’ll take it back. I can’t be with you anymore.” I know that these were the wrong words to say as soon as I’ve said them. I can almost hear his heart crackling like ice as it freezes over.

  “No.” His fingers snake into my hair and pull my head back so I am forced to face him. “You are mine. You’ll always be mine.”

  He shoves me towards the center of the living room. I trip on the rug and almost fall. He opens the door a slip and says something to the guys outside. When I turn Jacob is standing at the door like he’s guarding it. His face is stone and I don’t recognize this man who is staring back at me with a scowl marking his face. I realize with a shudder that he doesn’t plan on letting me leave.

  I could beg. Every instinct inside me urges me to beg him.

  I don’t. It’s useless to beg, but even worse, begging will make me seem weak in Jacob’s eyes. The last thing I want to do is appear weak. Jacob will chew “weak” up and spit it out. I have to find some other way out of here.

  Behind him the door opens and Snake and Garfield come back in. The third goon I know as Salt appears holding a wooden box in his hands and wearing rubber gloves. Oh fuck. My eyes dart around the room. There’s the balcony, but the only way out of here that way is down. Maybe I could bluff them?

  I run for the glass door that separates the living room from the balcony. Jacob doesn’t even move when I start to run. I just hear him sigh, an impatient sigh of someone who is waiting for me to learn my lesson. I understand when I reach the door and grab at the handle. It’s locked. The goddamn thing is locked. I have no way out.

  I turn and press against the glass. Jacob glares at me with disapproval marking his face. Snake looks amused and I can see him licking his thin lips as if he is tasting my fear. Salt places the wooden box on the table and opens it. The lid is blocking my view of whatever is inside. Only Garfield looks distressed.

  “Sorry, princess. It looks like you need to learn to.”

  “Jacob, whatever you are going to do, you don’t need to do it. I’m yours. I know that. You know that.”

  He shakes his head. “You just tried to run away from me, little lamb. It has to be done. Hold her,” he commands Snake. Snake grins as he lunges for me. I dart aside and slam into Garfield’s large body. His hands close gently around my shoulders.

  It’s Garfield. Garfield will help me. I look up at him and plead with my eyes. Garfield won’t look at me. He won’t look at me, which means he’s already feeling guilty about what is going to happen to me.

  Jacob’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt.”

  My body goes cold. I feel almost like my limbs don’t belong to me anymore. They feel detached and they are moving of their own accord, struggling and pushing at the unmovable mountain of a man who is holding me. Jacob’s words are muffled in my ears when he orders Garfield to hold me down, face down over the arm of the couch.

  “No, Garfield, please.” I plead with the large man with my eyes and my tears. They are falling like rain down my cheeks and staining my dress. He still won’t look at me. I can see the conflict flashing in Garfield’s eyes. If I can just get through to him. If only…

  “Now, Garfield.” Jacob’s voice is a warning. At the sound, the softness in Garfield’s eyes falters.

  “I’m sorry,” Garfield whispers in my ear as he pulls at my arms and hoists me over to the couch.

  I pull back and my heels scratch across the wooden floor, but it doesn’t slow me down. I feel my body being tipped over and the sensation of losing firm ground is too much, it tips my mind over the edge along with my body. With my ass in the air I feel so exposed. The first scream tears from my lungs. Someone pushes my face into the couch to muffle the noise. The cushions smell freshly laundered and it makes me feel sick.

  I struggle to push myself up, but Garfield is too strong. “Just relax, miss, and it won’t have to hurt as much,” he says quietly, almost kindly, in my ear. His pity makes my already twisted stomach tighten.

  I feel the air swirl around my thighs as my skirt is pushed up to my waist. I scream out again but only manage to choke myself on the couch cushion. I bite down as my underwear is shoved aside to bare my ass. My cheeks heat as I feel all those eyes on my private places. I taste blood in my mouth and I realize I have bitten down on my tongue. No. No. This can’t be happening.

  How could Jacob do this to me? How? He loves me. He’s supposed to love me. This is wrong. So wrong. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to block out as much of myself as possible. I try to hide within myself. I brace and my muscles lock as if it could keep everything out.

  I sense someone behind me. Hands on my ass send a burning flush across my skin, holding me, crushing my integrity, marking my flesh forever. He can’t just take it. It’s supposed to be mine to give. Mine. If he takes that too, I’ll have nothing left. Nothing.

  Just relax and it won’t have to hurt as much.

  I can’t relax. I can’t. If I relax it means that I have accepted what is about to happen. I won’t accept it. Never. No fucking way.

  One last surge of energy rushes through me and I scream and thrash and buck against the hands that hold me down. For a second my body feels the hands relenting against my movements. I get the splinter of hope that I might have gotten myself free. Until the hands regain their grip on me. All hope is dashed as I’m buried back into these pillows as soft and suffocating as sand.

  “Stop moving.” I recognize Salt’s voice. “Or the tat will look like shit.”

  Tat?

  There is a cold feeling of som
ething being swabbed on my skin and I smell alcohol. I flinch as something pointed begins to draw on me.

  I’m not about to be raped. I’m going to be tattooed. Jacob is having me tattooed. I already know what the tattoo is. It’s the crest that Jacob has tattooed on his shoulder blade. His crest, which I have seen on his stationary and the napkins on his nightclub and the sign above the doors of the businesses he owns. Because he owns me too.

  I hear a buzzing noise and the feel of gloved fingers against my ass. Then it begins. It stings, but it’s nothing like the squeezing pain in my chest. Jacob is marking me. Branding me. Like cattle. My chest squeezes with pain. How can someone who loves me do this? How can I love someone who could do this to me? How? What is wrong with me?

  I don’t know how long I lie there, but the sting turns to a numbness after a while. I can smell the thick cloy of cigar smoke. I know it’s Jacob and his stupid smelly cigars. He’s sitting there smoking, no doubt paired with an expensive cognac, while his goons are branding my naked ass like a fucking animal. I’m out of tears now. The hot anger that swirls in my belly has dried them up.

  Finally the buzzing shuts off. My ass is cleaned off.

  “Good,” I hear Jacob say from behind me. A bandage is applied and my skirt pulled back down. “Now, get the fuck out. And stop looking at my girlfriend’s ass, all of you. Your job here is done.”

  All the hands leave me and I’m freed. I crawl over the arm of the couch and curl into a ball on the cushions. I hear the door click shut and I feel the room devoid of all other presence, except for Jacob. I feel the cushion near my head depress.

  “Sit up,” he commands. I almost stay in my ball just to spite him, but Jacob speaks again. “Don’t make me tell you again.”

  I shudder at the coldness of his voice. With lead arms I push myself to sitting and I back up as far as possible away from this stranger wearing Jacob’s skin. Who is this man? What has he done with the man that I love? Where is Jacob?

  This is Jacob. This is the real Jacob. I know it. I can sense the way this persona fits him better than the sexy, charming Jacob who seduced me. His eyes were always soulless black vortexes like they are now, they were just dressed up in charm and a wicked smile.

  Jacob lashes out faster than I can comprehend, grabbing my face before I can turn away. He leans in, his breath stinking of smoke, the scent mixing with the odor of alcohol and blood coming from my body like a sickly perfume. His fingers are hard claws digging into my jaw, but his voice… his voice is soft and tender.

  “You understand, don’t you, baby? Why I have to mark you. So that everybody knows. So that everybody knows that you’re mine and if they fuck with you then they fuck with me. It’s for your protection.” Soft and tender. It terrifies me. “Because I love you, you know that, don’t you?”

  My instincts are crying for me to run, but my heart is breaking because it wants to stay and be comforted by the man I love. How can I still want to be comforted by the man who just hurt me?

  “Tell me you know that I love you!” he screams, his body shaking visibly from the force with which he shouts. My teeth rattle as his hands shake me violently.

  “I know that you love me,” I whisper. Part of me so wants to believe this. It wants to so badly. He did this for me. Because he loves me.

  “And you love me, don’t you, baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it, then.”

  His face blurs behind my tears – it’s one small mercy.

  “I love you.” I almost choke on these words. They taste bitter like poison.

  I hate that I do. I still love Jacob.

  13

  The present

  I don’t stop running from Cha Cha’s until I get home and my deadbolts are on. I drop my bag, run to my bedside table and pull out my gun. The cold steel on my fingers is like a key that unlocks this dam. The numbness floods over me. I slide into a crumpled heap on the floor next to my bed. I’m shaking and my teeth are chattering. I start to cry and rock and I tuck my arm around my knees. Silent tears. I don’t dare make a noise. My ears are pricked, listening for someone at my door.

  I have never felt so weak and helpless in my life. Because all the training, the workouts, the boxing, and all my time spent at the gun range isn’t worth shit. Because just seeing Jacob’s photo still makes me crumble. All the strength that I’ve built is nothing but scaffolding – superficial, and it won’t hold me up when Jacob comes to tear it down. He’ll find me. Eventually. I know it.

  He won’t stop till he finds me.

  Because I belong to him. He doesn’t let anything that belongs to him get away.

  “Your body, your blood, your life…belong to me.”

  I had the tattoo removed as soon as I could. But now my ass burns where he marked me that day. Oh God. It has returned. It has come back. The mark carved forever under my skin has come back to the surface. Somehow the mark will give Jacob a way to find me.

  I yank my pants down and strain my neck to look back but I can’t see. I can’t see. I need to see. I push myself up to my feet, still clutching my gun to my chest. The steel is cold against my skin, but I leave it there because I feel like it anchors me. The steel anchors me. It lets me know what’s real. I bolt to the bathroom, my heart beating so hard, I swear the gun is bouncing up and down with it.

  “You understand, don’t you, baby? Why I have to mark you. So that everybody knows.”

  I stand in front of the full-length mirror behind my door. Who is this girl with round red-rimmed eyes staring back at me? It can’t be me. I buried her. I turn to the side and pull down one side of my pants. I see the black ink across my skin. No, it can’t have come back. I scream and a hand flies towards my mirror. My hand. It punches the glass and it cracks into a spider’s web. Pain flares across my knuckles.

  I blink. A hundred eyes blink back at me. My ass is bare. All of them. Bare and milky white. There’s nothing there. Nothing there. A small cry of relief escapes me. This resurfacing fear is making me hallucinate. I start to laugh. Hysterical laughter. Ha ha, I have finally gone mad, I know it.

  Or perhaps the madness has always been there, underneath, hiding, since the night I finally, finally left Jacob…

  14

  Five years ago

  It’s eight weeks after Jacob gives me my tattoo. It’s healed. But I can feel it; when I walk, when I sit, when he grabs my ass to pull me onto him. It burns my skin. Like a brand.

  When I am with Jacob I’m horrified at how my body still reacts to his, how he can make me come apart with his fingers and how much I still want him to kiss me and tell me that I’m beautiful. There is a small sick part of me that likes the fact that I have become his.

  Me.

  His.

  Out of all the women in the world, he picked me. That makes me feel loved. Special. He loves me so much that he goes insane with jealousy. He needs this tattoo on me to warn off all other men.

  But inside I know being with him is wrong.

  I feel unbalanced, like my gravity has shifted to the top of my head making me easily swayed. So side to side I totter. I love him. I hate him. I need him. I need out.

  Since the Winston incident, his jealousy is like the third person in our relationship. She drapes her long limbs across Jacob and I can feel them both staring at me when they think I’m not watching. She follows us, sometimes quietly like a shadow, then other times she can’t stop whispering in his ear. I’m coated in suspicion. Like a snow that continues to fall over me, it gets thicker and it doesn’t matter how hard I try, I can’t shake it all off and I can’t keep it from falling from the sky.

  Where have I been? Who spoke to me? Who looked at me?

  The sex becomes more violent.

  I yank against my wrists which are held together in chains, bleeding from the rough cold iron. The blackout curtains shut out the world, the only light coming from the dimmed wall lamps of Jacob’s bedroom. My face presses into the black sheets that smell like sweat and sex. M
y knees are bent, ass in the air, pussy exposed for him. My hips are bruised from Jacob’s fingers, my nipples bleeding from where his teeth have torn my flesh. My ass and thighs are raw and slippery from cum.

  At the moment Jacob is fucking me with the handle of the crop. At least he has stopped hitting me with it.

  “Jacob, please,” I beg. “I can’t come anymore.” I know he wants me to.

  His thrusting stops. The crop is yanked from me. I flinch as it slaps against the wall when he throws it. He wipes his forehead with the back of his arm. I can feel the anger rolling off him. I have hurt his ego, I know it. I can’t come and it’s my fault. I want so badly to please him. But I can’t.

  “Get up. Get the fuck up.”

  I can barely move; my body aches and the chains grow heavier which each movement. I push myself up and stand next to the bed. Thank God it’s over. Jacob stands before me.

  “On your knees.”

  My heart sinks. I feel one of his hands pushing me down. My knees hit the floor. I can barely see Jacob through my matted hair as he stands over me.

  “Jacob, please,” I croak. My mouth is dry. I need water. My stomach is tight from not having eaten. “I can’t take anymore.”

  “No.” I can hear the scowl in his voice. I try not to whimper as he wraps his fingers through my hair and pushes his cock past my lips. “I will tell you when you’ve had enough.”

  Strangely, the violence is not the thing that makes me to want to leave. It’s the weight of this suspicion that crushes me so that I can’t breathe. It’s the continuing exhaustion from being on my guard at all times. It’s the gradual wearing down of all my edges.

  I start to obsess about how I can escape. I dream about leaving town, about catching my first plane out of this country to… anywhere. Anywhere but here. Because this is the Tyrells’ country. Anywhere I go here, I’ll still be in his territory.

  At the university library I do an internet search on how to apply for a passport. I don’t dare do it on my laptop. The laptop he gave me. Just in case Jacob finds it in my browsing history. Or has some sort of key tracking device installed. I almost weep when I realize that I would have to apply in person because it would be my first passport. I know that Jacob is keeping track of me and I would never get away with applying for a passport without him knowing.