Chapter Fourteen
Nina's POV
I woke up feeling like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my skull.
The sunlight streaming through the curtains felt like knives stabbing directly into my brain. My mouth tasted like something had died in it. My body ached everywhere, especially my ass, which brought back humiliating memories I desperately wanted to forget.
The spanking. Enzo's hands. My own hands between my legs afterward.
Nikolai standing in my doorway.
The whiskey. So much whiskey.
I groaned and rolled over, immediately regretting the movement as my stomach lurched. What the hell had I said to him last night? The memories were foggy, fragmented. His voice.
The cigar smoke. The way he'd looked at me like he wanted to devour me whole.
I pushed myself up slowly, my head pounding with each movement. I needed water. Medicine. Something to make this nightmare go away.
I stumbled out of bed and made my way downstairs, one hand on the wall for balance. The house was too bright, too loud. Every sound echoed in my aching skull.
Nana was in the kitchen, humming softly as she prepared breakfast. When she saw me, her eyes went wide.
"Ay, mija," she said, rushing over. "You look terrible. Sit, sit."
I collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table, my head in my hands.
"My head is killing me. Do you have medicine? Anything?"
"Sí, sí. I get you something." She patted my shoulder gently. "And water. Lots of water. You stay here."
She hurried off toward the pantry where she kept the medical supplies.
I sat there, trying to breathe through the nausea, trying not to think about last night. Trying not to remember the way Nikolai had looked at me. The way his voice had sounded when he called me kitten.
Then I heard footsteps.
Heavy. Purposeful. Multiple sets.
I looked up and my stomach dropped.
Dante stood in the doorway, Enzo and Nikolai flanking him on either side. All three of them dressed in dark clothes, their expressions hard. Unreadable. Deadly.
Dante's eyes locked on mine.
"Follow me," he said. Not a request. A command.
My heart started racing. "What? Why? I was just…"
"Your punishment," he cut in, his voice cold as winter. "Now."
The word hung in the air like a death sentence.
I opened my mouth to argue, to beg, to ask where Nana was, but the look in Dante's eyes stopped me cold. This wasn't negotiable. This wasn't something I could charm or cry my way out of.
I stood on shaking legs, my headache forgotten in the face of something much worse.
Fear.
They didn't say another word. Just turned and walked, expecting me to follow.
I did. What choice did I have?
We walked through the house in silence. Down hallways I'd never seen before. Through a door that led to a wing I didn't know existed. Then down stairs. Stone stairs that descended into darkness, each step taking me further from safety.
Underground.
My breathing got faster with each step down. The air grew colder. Damper. The smell hit me before I saw anything.
Blood. Old blood mixed with something metallic and sharp. And something worse underneath. Something that made my stomach turn violently.
Death.
At the bottom of the stairs was a heavy metal door, rusted at the hinges. Dante pushed it open, and the smell intensified tenfold, making me gag and press my hand over my mouth.
Inside was a cave carved from rock and nightmare. No, not a cave. A dungeon. A torture chamber. Rocky walls glistened with moisture and God knew what else. Dim lighting cast shadows that seemed to move on their own. And everywhere, everywhere, there were chains.
Skeletons hung from some of them, still shackled at wrist and ankle, their bones yellowed with age and despair. Body parts in various states of decay lay scattered in corners like discarded trash. An arm here. Something that might have been a ribcage there. Dark stains covered the stone floor, so many layers of old blood that the ground looked black, almost polished with death.
I stopped walking. My legs simply wouldn't move anymore.
"No," I whispered, my voice barely audible. "No, please. I can't do this . We even have cleaners at home , please don't do this to me"
Dante turned to one of his men who'd been waiting inside, a thin man with dead eyes. "Get her an iron bucket and a mop. This place could use some cleaning."
The words didn't register at first. Then they did, and my blood turned to ice.
"No. No, I can't do this." My voice cracked, tears already streaming down my face. "Please. I'll do anything else. Anything. Just not this !"
"You cost us a half a million dollar deal yesterday," Dante said, his voice devoid of emotion. "When you tried your little escape stunt, you triggered an emergency lockdown. Forced us to pull men off an important exchange. Our buyers thought it was a setup and walked. And you nearly let a rival spy slip past our security to kidnap you as leverage against your father and this organization."
Half a million dollars. A spy sent to take me. The number was so big, the implications so terrifying, I couldn't even process it.
The attack. The breach. The man who'd gotten into the house while they were saving me from drowning.
This was my fault. All of it.
I looked at the skeletons hanging in their chains, at the blood staining every surface, at the scattered pieces of people who'd crossed these men and paid the ultimate price.
My hands started shaking so badly I had to clasp them together.
One of Dante's men appeared with a bucket of soapy water and a mop, both stained rust-colored from previous use. He dropped them at my feet with a heavy thunk that echoed in the stone chamber.
"I don't want to see a single drop of blood when you're done," Dante said, looking me dead in the eye. "Understand?"
I couldn't speak. Could only nod while tears poured down my cheeks.
Nikolai grabbed my arm, not roughly but firmly. "Come on, kitten. Let's get you started."
He led me to an empty cell at the far end of the dungeon. It was smaller than the others, maybe eight feet square, the walls still stained but not as heavily covered in gore. A mercy, I realized dimly. This was them being kind.
The thought made me want to vomit.
Nikolai handed me the mop, his expression unreadable. He had his gun out now, held casually at his side. A reminder that I was being watched. That there was no escape.
"Get to work," he said quietly.
I looked at him, this man who'd kissed my forehead last night. Who'd given me whiskey and called me kitten. Who'd looked at me like I was something precious.
He stared back without a flicker of remorse.
I picked up the mop with shaking hands and plunged it into the bucket. The water turned red immediately.
Behind me, I heard Dante and Enzo walk to the opposite cell. Heard the scrape of chains being adjusted. A muffled groan of pain.
I tried to focus on the floor in front of me. Tried to block out the sounds. But I couldn't help it. I looked.
They'd removed a burlap sack from a man's head. He was chained to the wall by his wrists, feet barely touching the ground. His face was swollen and bloody, covered in bruises that looked days old. One eye was completely shut, purple and grotesque. His clothes were torn and filthy.
This was the spy. The one who'd come for me.
"Who sent you?" Dante asked, his voice conversational. Like they were discussing the weather.
The man spat blood at Dante's feet. "Over my dead body."
Enzo stepped forward, a hammer appearing in his hand from nowhere. "That can be arranged."
He swung without hesitation. The hammer connected with the man's right hand with a sickening crunch. Bones shattered. The man screamed, a sound so raw and animalistic it made my knees buckle.
I clutched the mop handle, forcing myself to stay upright. Forcing myself to keep moving, keep scrubbing, because if I stopped, if I showed them I couldn't do this, it would be worse.
Dante pulled out a taser, the crackling sound filling the space. "I'll ask again. Who. Sent. You?"
He pressed it to the man's ribs. Another scream, this one somehow worse. The smell of burning flesh joined the other horrible smells.
I scrubbed harder, tears streaming down my face, bile rising in my throat. My headache had transformed into something blinding, but I couldn't stop. Couldn't show weakness.
They were monsters. I'd known that intellectually. But seeing it, hearing it, smelling the blood and fear and death in this place.
I understood now what I was dealing with.
The torture continued. Each question followed by screams. Each refusal met with more pain. More broken bones. More burns. More blood pooling on the stone floor.
"Untie him," Dante finally ordered. "Give him the jungle treatment until he spills. Who sent him and their location."
"Just get me a location," Dante corrected. "We'll verify it ourselves."
Enzo nodded and moved to unchain the man, holstering his weapon to use both hands on the heavy locks.
I watched, frozen, as Enzo worked the chains. The man hung limp, defeated, barely conscious. His breathing was wet and ragged.
Then everything happened at once.
The man's hand shot out faster than should have been possible. A small pistol appeared from inside his torn jacket, something they'd missed in their search. His arm swung toward Dante.
Dante caught his wrist mid-motion, deflecting the aim.
The gun went off.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space, echoing off stone walls until it was all I could hear. My ears rang.
Then pain exploded in my left arm. Sharp. Burning. Immediate.
I looked down and saw red blooming across my sleeve. So much red.
The mop fell from my hands.
My knees gave out.
I tried to scream but no sound came. The room tilted sideways. Everything blurred at the edges, going soft and dark.
Strong arms caught me before I hit the ground.
"Nina!" Nikolai's voice, rough with panic. "Nina, stay with me. Look at me!"
I couldn't focus. Couldn't think past the pain radiating from my arm. Couldn't understand why the ceiling was spinning.
More gunshots. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Then silence.
Nikolai's face appeared above mine, his hand pressed hard against my arm. The pressure made the pain spike. Made everything worse.
"You're okay," he was saying, over and over. "You're okay. Stay awake. Look at me. You're okay."
But I wasn't okay.
Dante's face appeared next to Nikolai's. For just a second, something flickered in his eyes. Something that might have been a concern. "Get her upstairs. Now. Enzo, clean this up."
"The girl can't die!" Enzo barked.
"Is more important than a dead spy," Dante snapped. "Move!"
Nikolai lifted me like I weighed nothing. My arm screamed in protest. I tried to tell him to stop, to put me down, but my mouth wouldn't work right.
The world tilted and swayed as he ran. Up stairs. Through hallways. Shouting in Italian and Spanish. Nana's voice, high and frightened.
"Stay with me, kitten," Nikolai kept saying. "Don't you dare leave me. Stay awake. Nina. Nina!"
But the darkness was pulling at me, dragging me down.
Then everything went black.