It was a full three days before Leo saw Faith again. He’d been careful to avoid her as he was sure she’d been careful to avoid him. But it was inevitable they’d run into each other eventually. As it happened, they both went to the kitchen one afternoon at the same time for a late lunch.
She jumped when she saw him, and he had to bite back a curse. He found himself angry with her. He’d uprooted his routine to stay out of her way. He was letting her live. He wasn’t molesting her. He was taking care of her needs and keeping her comfortable. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Except keeping her locked away against her will.
He’d seen her naked. Once. And touched her breast. Once. And spanked her. Once. None of that should be cause for this much anxiety or jumpiness, no matter who his family was. He glanced down, noticing his erection and knew she must have noticed it, too.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. But the gruff way he said it didn’t sound believable to his own ears. For the past three nights he’d fantasized about her, jerking off to the thought of her bound and helpless. Of whipping her. Of making her cry and beg and call him Master while crumpled at his feet. Even her fear turned him on in the fantasies.
He wanted to take her. She should be grateful and happy to serve him. He’d saved her life. If not for Angelo’s odd early Christmas present and Leo’s willingness to take her home with him, she’d be at the bottom of the harbor right now. And they both knew it.
She turned and scurried off back to her end of the house. She must be hungry so he made them both a sandwich. He ate his in the kitchen, then went to her room. He didn’t have to, but he knocked.
“W-who is it?” She knew very well who it was.
Your lord and master. The man who owns you. The man you owe your life and your body to.
“It’s Leo. I brought you something to eat.” He didn’t wait for her to invite him in or open the door. It was his fucking house.
Once inside, he placed a tray on a small card table. He’d brought her chips, tea, and a sandwich.
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
He noticed that she didn’t address him. But who was he kidding? If he couldn’t bring himself to break and train her, he couldn’t be upset if she changed the way she spoke to him. He found that he missed hearing that word fall from her sweet mouth.
He thought back to a few days ago when she’d been so scared he’d hurt her, when she’d dropped to her knees in front of him. He left her alone with her food before his hard-on could return.
When he got back downstairs, his butler, Demetri, held out a cordless phone. “It’s your mother, Sir.”
Leo took the phone. What fresh hell was this? “Hey, Ma.”
He’d barely gotten the phrase out when she started blabbering in a nonstop string of excited sentences, some of them running on top of each other.
“Angelo tells me you’ve got a girl, now. Says you’re getting married. When were you going to tell your poor old mother? When we all got there?
The whole family is dying to meet her now. What’s her name? Faith? Is she
Catholic? Is she a good girl, Leo? What’s her family like?”
“Ma…” Leo said, trying to calm her. This wasn’t good. His family would all be here for a week for Christmas. He hadn’t known exactly what he was going to do with Faith. As horrible as it would be for her, he’d considered locking her downstairs in the dungeon for the duration and having Demitri take her meals down. At least he wouldn’t risk questions that way. Maybe by next year he could trust her enough to let her be with the family under one pretense or another, maybe as a new household servant or nurse for his practice.
But he’d already known sending her to the dungeon would terrify her and make him feel like a monster. He was almost glad hiding her wasn’t an option now. Surely Angelo hadn’t implied Leo had known Faith long enough to propose marriage? That had to be something that had gotten into her head from somewhere else.
The women in his family were a bunch of gossips. You could start out with the simplest story and end up with illicit affairs, murders, and a funeral with a missing body by the end of it.
“I mean it, Leo. I’m very unhappy you didn’t tell me about this. And if she’s living at your house like Angelo said, you better be marrying her! You know I don’t like my boys living in sin.”
He knew she was thinking of Angelo and Davide. He could practically hear her crossing herself over the phone. The shock of his brother coming out had about killed her and she still wasn’t over it. Of course. That was why Angelo had told her Leo was getting married-to take the heat and attention off him this year.
He suppressed a growl. “Yes, Ma. We’re getting married. I already proposed.” If they knew about Faith, he may as well have a sham marriage.
He’d never get his mother off his back if she thought they were living in sin. He wondered what she’d think if she knew Faith was being held here against her will? Nothing good.
“Without us meeting her!?! We raised you better than that! I can’t believe you’d get engaged without so much as calling your poor mother! Is she Catholic? Please tell me she’s at least Catholic.”
He had no idea one way or the other, but what was another lie on top of the rest of it? “Yes, Ma. Of course she’s a good Catholic girl.”
“What about her family? Are they a good family?”
“She doesn’t have any family,” he said, injecting a drop of honesty into the conversation.
“Oh, that poor girl. Well she’ll have a big family, now.” It was all it had taken for his mother to switch gears. “Is she Irish? I know you’ve dated your redheads, but Sal won’t like Irish blood in the family. Please tell me she’s not Irish.”
“Yes, she’s a redhead.”
“Benedica la vergine Maria,” she whispered. Blessing the virgin mother was Gina’s response to anything scandalous. If his mother knew the full weight of the scandal, she’d be praying the rosary nonstop until the New Year.
“Ma, I’ve got to run, but I’ll see you next weekend.”
They exchanged the normal end-of-conversation pleasantries and he disconnected the call. Demetri rose an eyebrow.
“Don’t say it,” Leo said. “Go to Tiffany and get me an engagement ring. Something that looks convincing… like I bought it for someone I deeply love.” Of course, any ring from Tiffany sent that message.
“What if the girl won’t go along with it, Sir?”
With Faith being moved to the other end of the house, the staff knew he’d gone soft and left her alone.
Leo’s expression hardened. “If she won’t go along with it, she’ll spend
Christmas tied up in the dungeon.”
Demetri’s eyes widened a fraction, but he left to carry out the order.
***
Faith sat at a writing desk near the Christmas tree, doodling on a pad of paper while a sitcom played on the TV in the background. She’d finished her lunch several hours ago and was hungry again. The sun had set, but she was afraid to leave her room to go to the kitchen-afraid she’d run into Leo. She wanted to use the intercom and send a servant after her food, so she could stay safely hidden away in her room. But no matter what he’d said about them being there to take care of her needs, she was afraid of making them angry or that it would get back to Leo and he’d be angry. Surely he hadn’t meant for her to order room service with that thing.
She’d intended to offer to pay for her room and board, at least until the money ran out, hoping it might appease him. It wasn’t as if her money could do her any good otherwise. But when she’d seen him standing in the kitchen, the reality of him came rushing back. He was so large and strong. She’d felt the evidence of his strength as he’d held her down and spanked her that first night. His intense eyes and the constant grim line of his lips made her afraid. And that scar on his face…
Although he’d been kinder to her than his twin had, that scar made him darker and harder around the edges, less approachable.
She jumped when the door opened-no knock this time. He stood framed in the doorway, like death had come to claim her. Faith tried to calm her breathing, but he never looked at her calmly. It was always with an intensity that made her afraid to breathe, to exist. As if she needed to be very still and quiet to stay safe.
He strode across the room so fast she couldn’t stop herself from cringing. When he reached her, he placed a small box on the desk. It looked like a jewelry box.
“Open it,” he growled when she just stared at it.
What could be inside a jewelry box? Jewelry was the obvious answer, but Faith couldn’t think of a reason her captor would give her any kind of jewelry.
Her hand trembled as she reached out and opened the box. She couldn’t help the gasp. What a rock.
“W-what is this?”
“Haven’t you ever seen an engagement ring before?” “Y-yes, but…”
“My family will be here next weekend for the Christmas holidays. You’re going to pretend to be my fiancee during that time. Put the ring on.” It wasn’t a request.
“I-I… w-what will happen? W-what will you do?”
“Do you find me that repulsive?”
“N-no.” She shrank from the disappointed look on his face. Every time she ended a sentence now, he got that look.
“You’ll continue to sleep on this end of the house. My mother is pretty religious and wouldn’t be pleased with us sharing a room. You just have to pretend you’re in love with me when we’re all together. The most you’ll be subjected to is holding hands and a few kisses.”
“I…”
“Put the ring on. Now.”
His voice had taken on that edge again, and she scrambled to obey his request. She was surprised when it fit.
“T-this must have cost a fortune,” she breathed, almost caught up in the fantasy. For a brief moment, she could see the room and the tree and the ring and imagine this was some romantic proposal from a rich boyfriend right before Christmas. But only for a moment. Then she was brought back to the reality of her situation-this man she didn’t know and couldn’t trust, who might snap and do anything to her at any moment.
“It was quite expensive, yes. But my family would never buy the ruse if it wasn’t. They know me too well. Now will you do as I asked and pretend we’re engaged? I should warn you, if the true nature of your stay with me should come out, you will disappear. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Y-yes,” she whispered. The casual way he spoke of killing her was exactly why she was so afraid. His moral compass had a crooked arrow.
“Yes you understand or yes you’ll do it?”
“D-do I have a choice?”
“Of course, you have a choice. If you don’t want to pretend to be the love of my life, or if I feel you can’t do it convincingly, you’ll be kept in the dungeon until they leave.”
“Please, no!” The words flew out of her mouth with such force, it embarrassed her. But the idea of being locked in a… dungeon… was too much to cope with. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have such a thing, but now that he’d spoken the word, she had no doubt as to the truth of it. “I-I’ll do it. I’ll d-do whatever you want, just p-please don’t do that.”
“You’d better not screw up.” His cold words terrified her, but beneath them, she could see the fear that she might do something that would lead to him having to kill her. She wished she could reassure him there was no way she’d cross him.
“I-I won’t. I promise.”
“You understand the consequences if you do?” Desperation edged his words.
“Y-yes.”
Her life had hung in the balance since she’d first seen Angelo pull the trigger in that alley and the body hit the ground. And she was far from out of the woods-if there was a way out. She wasn’t sure that there was.
“I’m glad you’re being so agreeable.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out two stapled stacks of papers. “You will fill this out, and you will answer as honestly as you can. I’ll need to study your answers so we know each other well enough when my family gets here. The other packet contains my answers to the same questions. You will learn all my likes and dislikes and enough about my work to make it look like you belong here.”
He hovered over her, which made her more nervous. The simplest questions like her favorite food became hard to answer in light of the pressure that grew the longer he stood there.
“In the back of the other packet is the story I concocted of how we met and how I proposed. That will be one of the most important things to know since everyone will ask.”