Vicious Revenge (Vicious City Book 4) Read online

  How hard can behaving myself actually be? I was a normal person once. I didn’t constantly break the law and get myself into trouble. Okay, I mean, maybe I broke the law, but I did it in a quiet way where I didn’t get caught most of the time. I just need to go back to being that way.

  SMACK!

  A slap to my butt wakes me up from my light nap. It’s Mark.

  “Phone for you,” he says, handing me a chunk of plastic which might have qualified as a new phone sometime in the late nineties. I don’t know how it still works, but apparently it does

  “Vicious?”

  “Hello, Kitty,” he purrs down the line. “Are you being a good girl?”

  “I’m trying,” I answer honestly.

  “Good. This is going to take some time. You wouldn’t believe this, but a federal investigation has been opened into one of my associates attempting to access radioactive materials.”

  Why didn’t I listen to Chad when he told me I was going too far? Because I was having too much fun, that’s why. Because I thought I could do anything, that I’d become untouchable. I was so damn wrong.

  “Fuck, I am sorry.”

  “I know you are,” he says. “I’m sure your current accommodations are only serving to make you even sorrier. It’s going to take some time to sort this out, and in that time, I want you off the radar. If there’s one thing Angelo can do, it’s avoid federal interest. So please, no matter what happens, don’t leave. I know you can escape if you really put your mind to it. I’m asking you not to.”

  I take a breath. “I know you’re coming back for me. And I know, when you do, it’s gonna hurt way worse than anything Angelo does to me. So yeah, I’m going to stay, and I’m going to be as good as I can be and maybe you’ll show me mercy.”

  There’s a dark chuckle at the other end of the line, and then it goes dead.

  Well, I had to try.

  14

  Kitty

  I’d like to say I do my best to behave myself at Angelo Vitali’s house, but the truth is, I don’t. I can’t. I miss Vicious. I’m worried about what I’ve done to him, the full consequences of my stupid actions, and I’m unsettled in this place where Mr Vitali reigns supreme.

  I do avoid Bobby, but Angelo is a harder proposition. He has eyes everywhere, and every infraction sees me called before him.

  “You were several minutes past curfew,” he says. “I told you to report to your bedroom no later than nine in the evening.”

  “You also told me to make sure the kitchen was spotless. That took until eleven.”

  “Then you were working too slowly.”

  I bite my tongue, or at least try to. “I’m not a kitchen maid. I’m not a gardener. I’m a courier. Maybe you could try using me for what I’m good at.”

  “Alas, I lack the interest to use you for what you’re good at,” Angelo smirks with that dark, deviant gaze which makes me wonder if that’s actually the case. I’m fairly certain Angelo fucks whatever and whoever he wants to fuck.

  “Your punishment for being late last night is confinement for the rest of the day. Go to your room.”

  I bite my lower lip and do as I’m told. That seems to be the safest route by a very long way. Once again, I find myself alone in that room which is nicely furnished but completely devoid of anything that feels like home. Not that I have a home anymore. I used to have an apartment of my own, but Vicious ripped me out of that. Being with him was starting to feel like having a home, but I ripped myself out of that. It’s hard to reconcile that my life choices got me to this point - and the fact that Vicious is exactly the man I deserve, need, and crave.

  I miss being touched, period. I feel so alone here, so completely unwanted and out of place. For a second, I even think it wouldn’t be so bad to be beaten again by Angelo. At least then someone would touch me.

  No. I force myself to stay on the bed. I can win this game with Angelo by just being compliant. I’ll just do as he says, wait this out, and hope that nothing fucked up happens before Vicious comes back.

  God I hope he comes for me soon.

  It has been three weeks since I saw Vicious.

  I don’t think I can take it anymore.

  I’ve basically become a maid for Vitali and his guys. The work isn’t actually that bad, and I sort of blend in with the other staff, most of the time. There are a small number of people Angelo trusts to cook for him, launder his clothes, and all the rest of the tedious little jobs which he and his boys are too good to do for themselves.

  I’ve been doing my very best to tolerate this shift in circumstances, but finally I come to the end of my tether. I want Vicious back, and I don’t want to be an unpaid domestic servant anymore.

  “Kitty, clear up the breakfast dishes, and…”

  “No.”

  My refusal barely seems to compute at first. Angelo keeps talking to Mark for a full thirty seconds before he turns back to me.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. I’m done being your serving girl.”

  Those dark eyes start to swallow me. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah.”

  I get up and leave the table. I’m not arguing with him. I’m not getting into this on any level. Fuck this. I’ve done enough work to pay for the room I’m staying in, and even if haven’t, fuck it anyway. Three weeks is a long time to be compliant to a stranger, and an even longer time to be away from Vicious, and I’m done being good guest Kitty.

  I’m starting to wonder if Vicious has forgotten about me completely. Whenever I ask for updates or information, I get told that everything is fine, but it has been ages since he called. For all I know, he’s dead. The only reason I don’t think he is, is because if he was I am pretty sure Angelo would have me killed for the chip. He already said it was worth more than I am.

  “Kitty.”

  Angelo’s voice is deep, rich with that accent which could be so seductive under other circumstances, but just pisses me off. Maybe I’m looking for a reason to fight. Conflict is better than this never ending wait. I keep walking.

  “Kitty,” Mark joins in.

  I spin around on my heel and face them all.

  “God, are you a fucking chorus? Bobby, you’re late with your part. You’re supposed to say my name in deep and meaningful tones…”

  He smirks and says nothing. He’s been waiting for this, I think. At first he tried to make me break, but Angelo must have pulled him back. In the end, all he had to do was bide his time.

  “Kitty, go to your room,” Angelo snaps, displeased.

  “You don’t know what the fuck to do with me, do you? It’s just get me out of the way, make me clean up, send me to my room. Well, fuck you. I’m fucking done being your bitch. I…”

  That’s as much of my rant as Angelo will tolerate. It’s also as much as I can get out of my mouth before he is around the table and has hold of me.

  “I know exactly what to do with you, girl,” he says, his lip curling with contempt on that last word.

  He yanks at the skirt I’m wearing - something that looks like it is straight out of the 1940’s, and pulls it off completely. My wardrobe for the last few weeks has been dictated entirely by what they could be bothered scrounging up. That’s the least of my worries really, especially now, as Angelo slams me down across the table, sending toast and butter and cereal and bacon flying over Mark, Bobby, and whatever expensive rug was declared worthy to gather the crumbs.

  His belt flies through the air a moment later and makes hard contact not with my ass, but with the back of my thighs. This sadistic fucking asshole is making sure this just plain hurts.

  “What have you done to deserve anything besides the little jobs of cleaning up?” He growls down at me. “You’re a petulant little girl, with very little in the way of…”

  “Fuck you, Angelo!” I scream out. “I’ve survived bigger monsters than you!”

  It’s true, and we all know it.

  I can take pain. He can beat me all day long and, yeah,
it will hurt, but it won’t fucking change anything that matters. I don’t belong here, and they don’t want me here. I need to go back to Vicious.

  The belt snaps across my thighs five more times, harsh burning strokes which make involuntary tears rise to my eyes. It hurts like hell, but it’s not doing a thing to me on the inside, because Angelo doesn’t do a thing to me there.

  After the sixth stroke lands, he pulls me back up. I’m a mess. Various condiments have been smeared all over my shirt and belly, and there’s a bit of toast stuck over my crotch, temporarily glued by marmalade.

  Bobby takes one look at me, crumb filled, sore, defiant, and busts out laughing.

  I expect Angelo to berate him, but instead, a small smirk appears on the older man’s lips.

  “You’re right,” he admits. “We don’t have a clue what to do with you. But you’re stuck with us.”

  “And so is the toast,” Bobby smirks. “Stuck with her, I mean.”

  I peel it off my panties and frisbee it at him. He lets out a very uncharacteristic girlish shriek as he dodges it, and it’s my turn to laugh, even though the backs of my thighs are fucking searing with heat. I give up my pride and reach down to rub them.

  “You’re stuck with me, you mean,” I gasp as my fingers run over what used to be perfectly functional flesh and is now nothing but molten lava in skin form.

  Angelo puts his hand on my shoulder. “You are welcome here, Kitty. Believe me, if I did not want you here, you wouldn’t be here at all. I am not in the habit of entertaining unwanted house guests out of a misguided sense of politeness. I am also not in the habit of letting spoiled young people do as they please, or giving free passes for gender. I’ve kept you busy and out of trouble because what will happen if you push me again is going to make both you and your master very angry.”

  My master. Yes, that’s what Vicious is, at least in the sense that I pine for him and eagerly await his return, even knowing that I have been a very bad girl, and will be punished for all of it.

  “Okay,” I nod. “I get it.”

  “Good.” He pats my shoulder. “Now, you and Bobby can clean up this mess.”

  “Why me!?” Bobby whines.

  “Why not you, boy?”

  The question shuts Bobby’s rebellion down. I think we all get the feeling that Angelo is looking for someone to punish. I’ve given him disciplinus interruptus, and Bobby is likely to take the rest of whatever deviant thing was bubbling in Angelo’s brain.

  Mark and Angelo leave. Bobby and I get to work.

  “Mark says you killed Ivan Petrov.”

  I’m surprised when Bobby talks to me. Even more so when it’s not something nasty that comes out of his mouth. I fully expect him to blame me for this. Everything in this house trickles down onto his shoulders, I’ve noticed. Now I’m here, I’m bottom of the food chain.

  “I didn’t. I just wounded him. Vicious killed him.”

  “Huh.” Bobby picks up a bit of cereal. “Mark says you were being hunted, and you set up a whole trap thing…”

  “Well yeah. Didn’t want to, you know, die.”

  “Yeah. Well. That’s kind of cool.”

  I try to get some jelly out of the rug .”Didn’t feel cool at the time. I thought I was going to die. But I figured I’d take some of them with me.”

  Bobby smirks. “Fuck yeah. That’s what I’d do.”

  I stay quiet. Nobody knows what they’d do in that situation. Even though Bobby is an asshole, I wouldn’t want him to have to find out.

  “I think, what I did, in the end, is I ran away from the only man who loves me, and I blew up his car, and fucked up his life and I tried to do something really fucking stupid,” I mumble, sitting down on the floor, tossing bits of cereal into a bowl.

  There’s silence. “I’ve done some stupid shit too,” Bobby confesses. “You might have blown up his shit. I tried to kill Angelo. More than once.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did that go?”

  Bobby rights a tipped over glass. “Not great.”

  “I bet,” I smirk to myself at the thought, then I remember that this isn’t over for me. My not great is yet to come. Vicious hasn’t dealt with me yet, and at this point I have to hope he does. I’ve overheard Mark and Angelo talking. Apparently, Vicious lost his apartment. Law enforcement is all over it. They’ve confiscated a lot of his assets. I think I might actually have achieved what I set out to do - and I feel like complete shit about it.

  I deserve what Angelo did to me. Both times. I deserve whatever Vicious does to me. And I deserve nothing at all. I should be grateful they let me stay here. I’ve fucked Vicious’ ability to protect me, and now Angelo is offering me his protection. I’ve ended up in the one place nobody will dare come for me, and I don’t even really appreciate that.

  “Why are we such dicks?”

  “You and me?” Bobby points at himself.

  “Yeah.”

  “I dunno. Maybe we weren’t hugged enough,” he says, giving me one of those rare smiles which makes him look almost cute.

  “Maybe.”

  We finish tidying up. It’s not a perfect effort, but it’s better than nothing, and for once, it seems to be good enough.

  15

  “Where is he?”

  It’s been a month since I last saw Vicious, and I am frantic. He sent word two days ago to expect him, but he’s yet to show up. Angelo says not to worry. Mark says not to worry. Bobby says…

  “He’s probably in jail.”

  “Fuck off, Bobby.”

  I’ve been glued to the front window with the best view of the drive for thirty-six hours. At any moment, Vicious is going to drive up and everything is going to be okay again. He’ll take me back to New York. Things will be like they were. It’s all going to be fine.

  It’s going to be fine.

  It’s. Going. To. Be…

  “Where the fuck is he?”

  “Covered in ants.”

  “Seriously. Fuck. Off Bobby!”

  Bobby lets out a chuckle and sucks on his vape pen. I hate that fucking thing. I hate him. I hate this place. If Vicious doesn’t get here in the next ten minutes, I’m going to steal Angelo’s damn car, and I’m going to find Vicious myself.

  Twenty minutes later, I make a noise about needing to go to the bathroom, and I go to the garage.

  “Yeah, you have to know this isn’t happening,” Mark says from behind me. He’s been following me, obviously. These guys seem to know my moves before I make them. Maybe that’s because I’m predictable, or maybe it’s because they know I’m desperate. Either way, it means I’m not going anywhere.

  I walk up to the car and pull on the driver’s door, just to see what will happen.

  It’s fairly predictable. Mark grabs me around the waist and pulls me away, kicking and screaming, and on the verge of crying, not because I really expected him to let me steal a car, but because I just have to get to Vicious.

  “Settle down, you’re fine.”

  “I’m not fine. I have to see him. You can take me.”

  “I’m not taking you anywhere. We’re going to have lunch. You haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.”

  I don’t care. I don’t need food. I just need him.

  Vicious

  “Is she ready?”

  “She’s beyond ready,” Angelo says. “She’s about to tear my house apart. Come and get her.”

  Fuck. Yes.

  The last month has been hell. I have paid off more agents, officials, judges, and officers in thirty days than I have in the previous thirty years. I’ve dealt with at least half a dozen wanna be criminals who think they can move in on my territory because I’m distracted. Not that fucking distracted, as it turns out.

  My accountant estimates Kitty has cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of nine million dollars in damage control.

  Every dollar was worth it.

  And now I’m coming to claim her.

  I
t’s a long drive to Angelo’s, but that’s a good thing. I have time to think about everything. The first moment we properly met, pulling her off the street and into the van. From the beginning, she was extraordinary. I expected wild panic, but she gave me pure attitude. Every moment since then, she’s proved that she’s stronger than I thought. She’s refused to take the pittance I agreed to give her. When I told her she was going to have to take my lies, she turned around and fucked me up as best she could.

  She’s not going to have my lies anymore. She’s going to get the truth. She can take it - and I sure as hell can’t take the hell she unleashes when she doesn’t get it.

  As I roll up the driveway, the front door flies open. Kitty comes bursting out of the house. I’m barely out of the car before she’s in my arms, holding onto me so tight. I sweep her up and carry her back in, past Angelo, up the stairs to the bedroom where she’s been staying.

  “I missed you!”

  “I missed you too, little kitty.”

  I missed her. And now I’m going to punish her.

  Kitty

  Vicious throws me over his knee and his palm meets my cheeks, the pain bursting through me like a flower of pure sensation. I gasp, not because I don’t remember what it’s like to be spanked, or because the pain takes me by surprise, but because the way he does it is so unique to him. Vicious is just that. He finds the softest parts of me and he strikes them just so, creating exquisite sensation which does more than hurt. It burns with a pleasure fire I can’t begin to describe. Already I am pressing myself against the hard ridge of his thigh, my clit brimming with excitement.

  But this isn’t for my excitement. This is punishment. His palm lands again, harder. I grunt and gasp, knowing better than to cry out or ask for mercy. There can’t be any mercy. Not now. He starts off slow, but soon the slaps come faster, and even harder, and I am caught up in the turbulence of the pain which makes my body writhe over his thighs.