Sold to the Capo-Chapter 48: QUESTIONS AND A PLEA
ADRIANA’S POV
He poked the insides of his mouth with his tongue, looking at me with dark eyes.
"Done?" He asked cooly, his gaze holding no form of anger.
I raised my hand again, expecting him to stop it but he didn’t. With quivering lips, I dropped my hand, clenching my fists instead.
Salvatore and Val, who were still there, were watching silently.
Salvatore cleared his throat, the sound coming out as a choked-back laugh earning him a jab to the ribs from Val.
He shrugged and Val spoke up. "We have things to do right now... we’ll be back later," She spoke loud enough, sending me a worried glance, which I ignored.
"Yeah sure thing. Good luck." Salvatore sounded genuinely amused like he didn’t care that I just smacked Vincenzo in his presence.
If it was another member of the family, I had a feeling I would have been on the ground bleeding already for touching the head of the family’s business, but here I was, standing in Salvatore’s presence, and the man didn’t give a shit.
Val and Salvatore left, leaving Vincenzo and me alone in the living room, standing there and staring at each other.
"Didn’t think you had it in you" He tucked his hands in his pockets as he looked me over.
Without thinking, I smacked him again, the sound echoing in the space.
This time, he let out a groan and looked at me, nodding his head, anger flashing in his eyes. "Don’t do that again" he warned.
"Son of a bitch!" I cursed, raising my hand but he caught it in time, his grip tight but not bruising.
"Calm down. If you wanna hit me, feel free to, but let me know what I did," He muttered, taking a step closer, his hand still tight around my wrist.
I wanted to say everything I had heard, but I knew it would lead to questions, and I didn’t want to implicate Henry, so I just wrenched my hand free from his, sweat beading down my forehead as I went to sit down heavily on the couch.
He was still standing there but he turned around and looked at me. "Well?" He asked expectantly.
"Why did you marry me, Vincenzo? Why marry me when you could just own me?" My body was shaking visibly and tears filled my eyes as I looked up at him.
It was freezing out there but I was sweating in the house, my mind was a total mess right now and he... he looked confused, dumbfounded even.
"Are you gonna answer me or what?" I cleaned my eyes, refusing to let the tears drop again.
"Why do you wanna know that?" He took a step closer, seating himself on the opposite chair, his body language tensed.
He was nervous. Vincenzo LaRosa was nervous about something and it only solidified the doubts I had about him.
"It’s the least you can fucking do, Vincenzo!" I yelled at him, cursing silently when I realized I was letting my anger get the better of me.
"If I answer your questions, you get to answer mine. Does that sound fair?" He avoided my gaze while talking.
"Another stupid deal? All your deals are shit, you know that?" I hissed under my breath.
"Do we have a deal or not, Tesoro? You ask a question and I do too. No lies. Just the truth for 5 minutes of your life. Is that so hard? 5 minutes" he pulled out his phone and set a timer. "Time starts now"
I gazed at the phone and back at him, annoyance in my expression. "Why did you marry me"
"I would have some sort of claim over you. If I had simply taken you as a mistress as my father planned, everyone in the family would be bound to use you, and I wouldn’t be able to do shit about it because Mistresses are not considered important in this family..." He paused, his hand around the armrest tightening slightly. "Taking you as my wife instead... they can’t touch you"
I didn’t even know what to believe at this point so I just kept silent, glaring at him.
"Why are you hell-bent on finding your father?" He leaned forward in his seat, watching me.
"He’s the only one I’ve got in this shitty world"
He scoffed at that and leaned back in his seat. "Brave and a very stupid reason, Tesoro"
I wanted to ask about the Bratva, but that would lead to more questions, so I decided to go for another one. "Why one year? You’re supposed to own me. Why one year?"
"Do you want to be owned?" He raised a brow.
That comment disgusted me and I scoffed. "No, ew"
"And I’m not the type to keep toys. I found out you were coming to Italy last minute so I got to you before any of my cousins would lay claim to you... if they had found you first, trust me... you wouldn’t be just a wife. Anyway, I just genuinely wanted to help. I will let you go after a year as promised, but I wanted you to use the year to look for your father. Consider this an apology for everything I did"
"You think this... fixes it?!" I ran a hand through my hair agitated.
"My turn..." he said cooly, leaning back against his chair. "What happened to you?"
That made me freeze and I looked at him, stunned for a second. "What?"
"What happened to you? You don’t like people touching you. Why?" He looked me over again.
I sank further into my seat, wondering how to answer that. I didn’t want to tell anyone what happened. People always make it seem so easy to just tell someone but I couldn’t. It was never that easy, it was better to wallow about in misery alone. I never felt safe with anyone enough to tell them anything about what happened and I definitely did not feel safe with Vincenzo.
The sound of his voice snapped me out of my daze. "You also have this thing... you’re a control freak. You like to be in control so I’m guessing whatever happened to you had to do with physical touch and you not being able to defend yourself..." He paused and I hoped my face had not paled already.
"That’s none of your business" I spelled out, my voice hard with teeth grinding.
"We had a deal, Tesoro. We still have two minutes left"
"I’m not answering that. My turn. Is my father alive?"
Something akin to guilt flashed in his eyes and he sighed. "I don’t know, Tesoro. I don’t know. How should I know anyway?" He played it off cool but his voice sounded strained.
He definitely knew something about it, I was sure of that. So maybe Henry was right after all, maybe Vincenzo did know something about my father’s disappearance.
"When you came in here slapping me, do you want to know why I didn’t retaliate?" He questioned.
To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about it but now that I did, I realized he didn’t even seem mad that I had not only hit him but embarrassed him in front of others.
Taking my silence as a go-ahead, he continued speaking. "That’s how it should be. You speaking up for yourself. You wanting to do something instead of cowering in fear all the time. You getting over that fear. Do you see how easy it was for you to get over that fear of standing up to me? You just needed a little push, and you got it," He explained, a small time tugging at his lips. Was he proud?
It had felt really good to do that, really.
"I don’t know what warranted it but I’m happy we’re one step further now. You don’t have to be scared of everything in your life. You’ve overcome one fear, do you want to overcome the other?" He asked and I looked down at his phone, noting we had about 30 seconds left.
"What other fear in?" This time around, I had become more calm relatively and I was staring at him.
"I’ve taken everything into consideration, you also didn’t like when Val drugged you, you were scared when you thought I had changed your clothes the first day we met, you’re having nightmares and you keep muttering you tried to stop them in your sleep... I’ll ask again... were you taken advantage of?" His gaze was hard searching for answers I couldn’t give.
The air around suddenly felt suffocating and I looked away, tears filling my eyes as I heard the voices of those two again in my head, haunting me, their filthy hands touching me while I lay there helplessly.
The sound of Vincenzo’s voice cut through the haze again, his tone strong, worried, and angry. Furious.
"Give me a name" He demanded.
I scoffed at that and rolled my eyes at him. "Do yㅡ"
"Give me a fucking name, Adriana" He growled, fingers digging into the leather chair he sat on.
"No" I muttered under my breath. It was his fault anyway. What did he plan to do? It had been 6 years already.
"Then let me help you..." His tone turned into one of a plea and my heart skipped a beat. "Let me help you overcome that trauma..."
I didn’t answer, I just stared at him blankly.
"Please, Adriana" he whispered. "I can help"
