She’d beg. I’d make her beg. I’d hurt, and then I’d make her body yield, make it surrender even as she fought its release, its yielding to me, to a man she would come to hate. I’d watch that betrayal work itself into her brain. I’d fuck with her. And I wouldn’t stop. That’s what this was. Training. She needed to learn, and pain taught. So did pleasure. It taught you who your master was.

I slumped forward, heart pounding, my cock still throbbing in my fist. I opened my eyes.

What I should have done, though, was come all over her instead of in the shower.

Degradation was a good teacher too.

I had time, though. Not much—two weeks until the auction. It’d have to do.

I washed my hair and scoured my body. I did that a lot now, scrub at my skin to the point it hurt. For the last seven years, it was as though I was trying to claw my way out from inside it. I hated myself. I guess I always had, but now I had a reason. Now I knew the stock I came from. The scum I was.

I climbed out of the shower and grabbed a towel, scratching the rough cloth against my skin as I made my way into the bedroom.

Had I intended to become what I was? A mercenary for hire? Taking the highest paying jobs, no matter the cost to my victims? Not consciously, no. Over the last few years, though, I had done everything I could to live up to my heritage. I was a mercenary. I went where the money was.

I didn’t like training women, readying them for something like this. But I was good at it. And I wasn’t sure there was another job on earth that would make me feel any lesser trash than this. Taking women and knowingly delivering them into the hands of other monsters like me. Worse than me.

I was well and truly a sick fuck.

I’d started taking these types of jobs two months after the night I’d learned the truth. After that night at Salvatore’s house when my world had exploded around me, and left me holding the smoking gun. When I’d stood over my brother’s—half-brother’s—dying body.

He didn’t die.

But that didn’t matter. I’d felt Franco’s hate. His revulsion. Had he always felt that way about me?

I sat down on the edge of the bed, as if needing the support.

Had I just always been too fucking stupid to see it? Too cocky? I’d been my mother’s favorite. Her little prince. I knew why now. She’d loved my father more than she’d loved Franco Benedetti. And I was the living, breathing result of that love.