Chapter 23

**| M A R C O | **

“What was so important that you have to see me in person?” I asked Viktor, coming down the stairs as I sauntered over the living area where he helped himself with a bottle of scotch. My bottle of very rare and very expensive scotch.

His eyes shot up as he slowly sized me up. Of all the condescending look Viktor could pull off, this was the worst and made me wish if I could crack his skull.

“Actually, I am here for Aurora.” He took a sip of the scotch and commented, “Smooth. You do have an acquired taste in everything.”

I tried to ignore his insinuation and moved on. “Aurora is occupied at the moment. You can tell me.”

One of his brows shot up as gave me the look. “So, this is how it’s going to be from now on? You are going to decide on her behalf?”

My jaw clenched so hard that with a bit more pressure, I would have broken one of my molars. “This is how it has always been. In case you need a reminder, you are the one who gave Aurora to me.”

“I didn’t give you. I only wanted you to train Aurora for me.”

It was miracle that I was still holding onto the last thread of my patience at his gall. “Viktor,” I seethed low. “There are some lines I draw so that no one would dare to cross them. And it includes you too.”

He angrily swallowed down the amber liquid to the last drop and slammed it down. Hard. “Then I suggest you call down Aurora. Like I said, I am here to see her.”

Our eyes locked – *grey against blue* – and by the daggers from it, I was more than sure that both of us contemplated the outcome. It would be nothing but bloody and dirty.

He reached for his gun, and I pulled out a knife. We were a fraction of a section away from spilling blood before a voice stopped us.

“Stop!” It was more a squeak than order as our head whipped around. She was dressed in her jeans and my t-shirt that appeared more of an off-shoulder top. I barely managed to suppress the groan as I watched her shuffling over; her nipples more prominent than ever, even under the oversized clothing.

Fuck! I told this girl to stay in the room for a damn reason. If Viktor was insinuating before, he threw me a dirty look now before tucking back the gun.

“I...I heard the commotion,” she tried to justify as I shot her a scathing look with a promise of future retribution.

“It was merely a disagreement,” Viktor fibbed, faking a smile. “But, please, join us.” He guided her towards the couch with a hand pressed to her lower back, and for all the fucking reasons in the world, I wanted to chop off his arm. As Aurora sat down, her nervous gaze often flickered over mine.

“I believe I owe you a belated birthday gift,” Viktor began, confusing the hell out of me. Viktor Romano came all the way to give her a birthday gift?

Aurora bewilderedly looked between us and was baffled for all the same reasons as mine.

“Unfortunately, the gift I had planned somehow vanished into thin air.” He shook his head pretentiously and gave me a glance before pulling out a small box with a red ribbon on it. “So, I had to settle for something else for your eighteenth birthday. Here.” He pushed the box to her side, urging, “Go on, and open it.”

I could feel the apprehension churning my stomach as Aurora gingerly picked up the box and lifted the lid.

Inside the box, there was a white cushion pillowing a lovely pair of diamond earrings.

“Oh, wow!” Aurora looked more puzzled than surprised. “It’s beautiful. Thank you, Viktor. But you didn’t have to come all the way for this.”

I interrupted before he could reply her. “Why didn’t you give her the gift when she was at your place today morning?”

The bastard shrugged, leaning back like a king on a high throne. “I was hoping if I could give her the gift I had planned earlier.” He looked her way with a smile. “You would have been elated, Aurora. And it would have made your eighteenth birthday all the more special.”

I had no clue what he was talking about, but I knew one thing: he was fucking baiting her. And like the stupid girl she was, she fell right into it. “What did you plan?” she asked as I sighed.

Viktor grinned like the cat that ate the canary while I felt the insane need to drag her to my room and lock her up. “It is not a question of what but who.” Shit. “Do you remember that I had promised you of someone before I sent you here? I told you that if you pledge me your loyalty, then I’d let you savor your vengeance.”

Savor your vengeance? What was he, Shakes-fucking-peare?

Aurora thought for a moment before it finally hit her. Her mouth parted to form an O, fumbling with the words in her brain. “I... Oh, my God. Do you mean the asshole who...” The word ’rape’ never made it past her lips for the memory flooded her mind and was about to drown her in it.

I would never forgive Viktor for this. It took me months to ease her into normalcy, but he had to do this. We were beginning to build something beautiful, just when he decided to drag her back to hell.

“Yes. That asshole,” Viktor confirmed. “I had my men trailing him for almost a year, and just before a month from your birthday, he disappeared. No one has heard from him ever since.”

*Well, no one would.*

I watched Aurora, turning both angry and disappointed as she disinterestedly shut the lid of the box in her hand and set it aside. “How can he disappear like that? Did he saw it coming?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.” Viktor shook his head. “My men are not sloppy.” Then his eyes fixed on me as he spoke with a crooked smile, “It seems that someone wanted him more than you did, Aurora. The only question is, who?”

My first instinct was to wrap an arm around his neck and twist it. Instead, I took a deep breath because I had a different, more important battle to win, rather than kill him now. I could do that later, dragging out his death as long as I needed to.

Aurora didn’t say a word, but her silence spoke volumes. She was hurt...betrayed. That moment, I wished she would have screamed, fought, and rebelled because that was her nature. Instead, she rose and left. Her shocked acceptance was a deathly storm I would have to deal with later.

“Why?” I gritted under my breath with a rage that almost blinded my vision.

I always knew that Viktor was a self-serving son of a bitch, but the fact that he would go to the length of making an enemy out of me was completely unfathomable.

He pinched the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. “I know you are not going to believe me if I say this—“

“You are damn right I am not going believe you!” I barked, erupting like a volcano.

“It was supposed to be Aurora killing him and you, asshole,” he yelled back, then took a deep breath and exhaled, calming himself down. “She was sixteen when he wanted to rape her. I am not a saint by any standard, but they are some things I detest. And that’s a rape of a child.”

“So, you must know my reasons as well.”

“Whatever you did was wrong!” he shouted again. “It was supposed to be her. If you had really cared for her, you would have let her do it, instead of riding high on your male ego and decided to teach him a lesson. Do you really think you can handle Aurora with your control-freak habits and kinks?”

He knew nothing of my kinks or Aurora’s. So, fuck him. “You are the last person I want to talk to about her,” I told him clearly. “And this is the final warning, Viktor. I don’t interfere in your life, and I would appreciate if you would do the same with me. And since you are completely incapable to grasp, or maybe an idiot to ignore it, Aurora is my personal life.”

I expected him to come up with a snarky comeback, but he all did was soften up. “Marco, I am saying this to you as a brother—this relationship is going to cost you both. You may be strong enough to recover, but she is not. Aurora is one of the toughest girls I have ever seen, except she has a wild heart. So, be very careful.” Viktor finished his high-and-mighty speech and left without sparing the last glance.

Where the fucking Christ did he gets this from? But I didn’t dwell on it much longer because right now, I have to clean up the mess he made.

“Open the door, Aurora!” I yelled from outside of her room, where she currently locked herself in to give me a hard time.

“Fuck off, and leave me the hell alone!” came the reply after I had almost broken my wrist by banging.

“Open the mother-fucking-door now, Aurora!” I hurled back because this would be the last warning she was getting from me.

No answer. Fine, I decided, my way then.

Pulling out the master-key that I had already pocketed, knowing very well she wouldn’t open the door on her own, I unlocked and stormed in. However, Aurora seemed unfazed. She merely looked up from where she perched on the bed, hugging her knees to the chest and resting her chin upon it.

“Congratulations,” she mocked drily. “You know how to open a door. Now get your sorry ass out of it the same way you got in.”

Perhaps, I gave her a wrong impression of me in the past twenty-four hours. So, if she was going to flout at me, she better be ready for the consequences that would follow.

Sauntering closer, I warned her calmly, “If you ever talk to me like that again, I will show exactly how sorry your ass can be.”

Her eyes fixed on me, but the anger behind them was palpable. By now, I could read Aurora like an open book even before she could absorb her own actions or emotions. Her defiance would only stoke up when she knew she couldn’t win.

“Do you really think that things are going to be different, now that I have knelt by your feet and called you a master?” She huffed up a short laugh before snickering. “I will fight you tooth and nail if need be, Marco because I am not anyone’s bitch.”

I reached her in three long strides, and before she could see it coming, I twisted her arm to the back and pinned her down on the bed. Aurora tried to back-kick her legs until I trapped them with mine.

“You, asshole,” she gritted out as I applied additional pressure on her nape.

Leaning over, I put the entire body weight on her back so that she couldn’t even wriggle as I whispered in her ear. “You have knelt by the feet of a man who was a Dominant—one who operates on consent and a Safeword. But right now, I am not that man because I am the boss of you. And I don’t operate on consent or Safeword. You can very well kick and scream and cry, but I wouldn’t afford you one shred of mercy, should you ever act up again. Are we clear now?”

The way she grunted, I knew it was far from over.

“I said – Are. We. Clear?” I raised my voice, squeezing her wrist painfully.

“Yes, yes, I heard you,” she grumbled. “Now get off me!”

I did what she asked and got off only to pull her up and shove a scarf into her mouth. “As I said, I don’t operate on consent,” I repeated, this time, with considerable ire behind my words. “Now, I am going to tell you my side of the story, and you are going to listen quietly. Afterward, yell as much as you want.”

I ignored the way her eyes glared daggers. “I didn’t kill the bastard but only locked him up in a secluded house and under a guard. And yes, I did torture him. When you had told me about the bits and pieces of the incident, I dug around on suspicion. It turns out that you were not the first victim. Now, I wasn’t trying to play the hero, but I was utterly disgusted. I plucked him off the streets, which was easy because Viktor hired a dumbass, and gave him a taste of—what we call in BDSM—cock-and-ball-torture.”

The term widened her eyes, and I suppressed the need to chuckle. Naive, naive girl—this one.

“So that is all I did and nothing else. I didn’t deny you your revenge by a long shot, Aurora. In fact, I was planning to watch it when you would have your fun with him.”

The storm in her eyes began to recede as she softened and gave me a brief nod. But this was Aurora - I reminded myself. She was wild and erratic in every sense of the words. “I am going to release you now. So, if you are planning on doing anything stupid, I suggest you wipe out the thought right now.”

I freed her arms first, then took out the scarf, and stepped back. “Why didn’t you tell me about him before?” she asked, rather softly, massaging her wrists where the skin turned red under my pressure.

“I am not obligated to tell you everything.” I shrugged.

Her nose flared up. “See, this is the problem. You would give me the kid-glove treatment, and expect me to be sweet and nice with you. Why do you always have to keep me in the dark, Marco?”

“There were already a lot of things on my plate. I would have told you eventually, but I had to take care of things in New York. By the time I came back, it was your birthday, and I—sure as hell—wasn’t going to ruin your day with the news of a rapist.”

I watched her face turning sullen even at the mention of him, and God knew how I wanted to rip the skin off the bastard—layer by layer.

“Then again, I had my hands full with you.” Her brows creased as I went on. “You saw me at the BDSM club and blew off like a nuclear bomb, and I had to remedy the situation. However, you are right, Aurora,” I admitted, hoping it might help her see things clearly. “I should have told you about the whole thing. But it seems like the entire Romano clan is dying to spill my secrets to you.”

I watched her running the fingers through her glossy, messed up hair. Aurora has always displayed a false maturity whenever she felt powerless to do anything in her life and acted out. Her oppressed pain always exploded like pent-up anger. Also, a lot of her mood-swings were contributed by her youth, despite her strong character and tenacity.

“I thought...” she began absently, “that you wouldn’t tell me—”

“Let me tell you something before you jump into another conclusion about me because you clearly, after all this time, you don’t know me very well: I have nothing but your best interest in my mind in everything I do. So, if I have to go behind your back, make your world upside-down to protect you—even from yourself—I would do it all over again. And in that process, if you want to think of me as a tyrant, so be it.”

“I am sorry that I blew it, but what do I do? You told me to stay in the room, and I thought you didn’t want me to know!”

I fished out my phone and tapped away on the screen as Aurora waited for me to get back to her. “Done,” I declared, glancing up and pointed to her phone on the bedside table. “I have texted you the address where I have him locked up. The code to unlock the door is 031925.”

I turned my back, ready to leave the room when she cried out. “Wait! You would let me do this alone?” I couldn’t tell if she was surprised or disappointed. Either way, I wasn’t waiting around to find it.

“I thought you said you didn’t want the kid-glove treatment,” I said from the doorway and left.

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