Chasing His Brother's Bride

**** Trigger Warning ****

This chapter is violent with scenes of abuse 18+

Six Years Earlier

It hurt. Every muscle, tendon and bone in her body ached with the fire of a thousand suns and there was nothing she could do to stop it. This was her life now. The constant beatings. The torture when she dared protest when he wanted her. The water torture was the worst, she contemplated as she lay on her side on the cold tile floor of the bathroom yet somehow, tonight felt very much it was her end. She hugged the cool floor.

Marble. The marble tiles were what he’d bounced her head off repeatedly this time. She likely had another concussion. She probably needed specialized medical attention but the last time she’d asked to see a doctor he had given her a damn good reason to see one and then he’d brought one in who had patched her up as best he could. Then when the doctor had lingered too long studying the bruises on her ribs, Valentin had shot him in the head right in front of her. He had said he’d looked too long at what belonged to Val.

Val. Her husband, her partner, her lover. All names he called himself. He wasn’t really. She would never have willingly been with such a beast of a man. No, he’d taken her from her father’s house as a payment for her father skimming the books and forced her to do too many unthinkable things.

She’d never known during her entire twenty-one years her father had been a bookie for the Cacciola family. He took the bets for them. Processed them. Laundered money for them. He had always kept his nose clean and his role as an accountant for a casino had been the perfect cover to do the dirty work for the mob. Then her mother had gotten sick. Breast cancer. The bills had been astronomical. Knowing the kind of collateral the mob took for loans, Cosimo Segreto used the trust he had built over twenty years of working for the Cacciola’s and skimmed their books.

Once his wife had passed away and the bills for useless medical procedures were paid in full, he stopped. It wasn’t the stealing which had gotten him caught. It was when he’d stopped. Elio Cacciola had been tipped off and he’d sent his son Valentin to collect the debt, too angry with his long-time friend to confront him himself, according to Val.

Cosimo had no money but when his pretty daughter stumbled into the house from a party, a little tipsy and a lot belligerent, while he had been delivering a smackdown on the old man, Valentin had immediately taken an interest. He wiped the bills off the books, paid it off himself and said he was taking her as his own.

Cosimo had begged him not to take her but Valentin had threatened to shoot both the man and his daughter right then and there if they didn’t agree. He warned Cosimo if he spoke to anyone of their arrangement, she would be killed as would he. Terrified over the potential loss of her dad and her only living relative, she had agreed to go. She hadn’t seen her father since.

He had been referring to her as his wife since the night he’d collected her from her father’s house. She was the bride of Satan. Scratch that. She’d rather be with Satan.

Before they had even made it to his condo near the hub of the city lights of Vegas, Valentin had forced her to give him oral sex in the back of his limo. He’d been rough and she’d left the car with a split lip and bruised eyes from gagging so hard. He had told her nothing was more beautiful than her skin blemished by his hands.