Vicky’s eyes flickered then opened. At first all she could see was a whiteness, swirling like a fog.
Then a dark shape appeared, slowly forming into a head and shoulders.
All of a sudden she could see who it was, and gave a little gasp.
Anna Mioretti stared down at her, eyes black with fury.
“Yes, Vicky, it’s me.”
She came closer, face coming down to within inches of Vicky’s, who suddenly realized her hands were secured behind her.
It all came back then, the men seizing her, one calloused hand pressed over her mouth, others around her kicking feet as she was lifted bodily from the ground.
When she kept on struggling, a blow had come from out of the night, chopping into the side of her neck.
Everything had gone black.
Now, she could feel Anna’s hot breath on her face, felt the spittle as the woman snarled.
“You didn’t think I would just leave you to Carl did you? When I've finished with you, you will wish you’d never met him – never come here.”
Vicky tried to shrink away but her head hit the back of the iron head of the bed she was lying on.
“What are you going to do?”
Anna straightened up.
“Thrash you. I’ll teach you not to cross with a Sicilian woman.”
At the same time she nodded to the two men Vicky could suddenly see.
“Strip her.”
Vicky screamed, and tried to struggle but her legs were bound at the ankle.
Effortlessly they rolled her onto her stomach. With two massive tugs her dress was ripped from her. A hand reached down to her panties, her body jerking as they were plucked away.
The strap of her bra tightened, then her breasts fell free as a knife made short work of the strap and the remnant was lifted clear.
She was seized under the armpits, and turned onto her back like a piece of baggage.
Both men were leering and talking in Italian as they raised her arms, pulling them above her head and securing her wrists to a ring in the metal board. Vicky was conscious of her breasts lifting up, increasing her humiliation.
Helpless, their eyes roamed over her. She tried to bring the knee of one leg over the other to try and cover herself, but the tightness of the ankle binding prevented it.
Then the one dressed in a black leather jacket let his hand trail over her skin as he said in English –
“I can see why he liked her.”
Anna snapped.
“Get out, both of you. I’ll tell you when I’ve finished.”
They ambled to the door, the one in the leather jacket grinning. He made a kiss with his lips at Vicky, and then closed the door behind them.
Anna loomed over her, the triumphant smile on her face devoid of all humour. She bent lower, her face only inches again from Vicky’s as she searched all over it with her eyes.
Finally, she said –
“He’s right of course, you are so pretty.”
Vicky tried to turn her head away, but Anna seized a handful of her hair, roughly pulled on it so that her face came up, then whispered in her ear, her hot breath playing on her skin.
“But you were never Carl’s type – no fire, so eager always to please. Well, you shall please me.”
Suddenly Anna’s hand came from nowhere, and slapped her cheek so hard that if it hadn’t been for the iron grip on her hair holding her head in place, it would have jerked to one side.
It stung.
Through tears, Vicky felt the redness, realized it was spreading beyond her cheek, down her neck, to her breasts. Wide eyed she stared back at Anna. For a split second nothing happened, then the woman brought her mouth down onto hers, her tongue pushing inside, teeth hard against her lips.
Vicky tried to struggle, but Anna’s grip on her hair tightened.
With a last nip of her lip Anna stood back, and chuckled hoarsely.
“There is more to come Vicky – much more.”
When her hair was released, her head dropped forward.
Anna’s hand appeared again out of the corner of her eye. Vicky flinched, but instead of slapping her, Anna gently stroked her cheek.
“You have a lot to learn my pretty one, a lot to understand – and obey.”
Vicky heard footsteps, and the door open, and close.
She ran a tongue over her lips – swollen from Anna’s kisses and nips, and tasted blood. She began to cry with humiliation – and terror of what Anna would do next.
But there was something else.
Her stomach spasmed at the fleeting thought – fleeting because she suppressed it as soon as it surfaced.
But she had never been kissed by another woman before – not in that way.
And in some frightening, unexpected, awful way, she knew she had been aroused.
* * * *
Carl was beside himself, punching one fist into the palm of his hand as he strode restlessly around the room.
“It must be Anna Mioretti. If she harms as much as one hair of her head I’ll kill her.”
His father, looking worried and pale, pleaded with him.
“Carl, let the Carabinieri handle this. They’ll soon find her – she must have had help.”
But his son wouldn’t listen.
“Where could they have taken her – she’s certainly not at her house?”
He turned- “Mother, you know Anna better than anyone. Who does she know, who would she have turned to?”
Frowning with worry he ran a hand through his hair.
The Contessa looked pale, and shook her head.
“I’m sorry I don’t know Carl. Anna was a very private person, always kept herself to herself. I only know she has a brother, that’s all.”
“Brother?” Carl stopped. “I never knew that. Where does he live?”
His mother thought for a moment, and then said, “he has an estate, somewhere up in the mountains, near to the lake.”
His father grunted. “Mafia country.”
Carl’s expression changed. He looked suddenly excited.
“Wait a minute – the restaurant was on a road that led that way – it goes up to the lake.”
It was his father’s turn to frown.
“Yes – but that doesn’t mean anything surely?”
Carl whirled around.
“Of course it does. She didn’t have much time for planning it did she? So it had to be easy – all they had to do was take Vicky straight up the road – where else would they go? Anyway, its a start.”
He made for the door. His mother called out anxiously –
“Carl, what are you going to do?”
“Find her. Anna’s brother’s a Mioretti – I’ll ask around when I get up there. Somebody will know where his house is.”
John McKinley tried to stop him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Son, it’s dangerous. Leave it to the Carabinieri. That’s a bad area.”
Carl shook himself free.
“Can’t wait – you tell them, I’m going up there now.”
He was on his way to his car when he stopped, then changed direction, and made along a passage that led to the back of the house.
From his pocket he took a bunch of keys, and unlocked a solid door and entered a windowless room full of equipment for the swimming pool and garden. With another key he unlocked a metal wall cabinet. From it he pulled out a large pistol and filled the magazine with bullets. It was registered to his father, and was a souvenir from the war.
He tucked it into his trouser belt at the back, and let his coat fall back into place.
Satisfied, he closed and locked the cabinet, then did the same as he left the room.
Behind the wheel of the car he gunned the engine. Tyres squealing, gravel flying, he drove out onto the road.
There would be no doubt in his mind that Anna was deranged, that Vicky was in grave danger. God knew what that woman would do. He’d had a taste of it before – only he hadn’t realized at the time it could have been Anna. A young girl from the village had started work as a trainee maid a couple of years back, when he’d first got to know Anna. He’d liked her very much and had smiled at her several times when she had been serving drinks at a reception. Several days later she went missing for a couple of days before she had been found, brutally beaten and left in an alley near her home.
She told the police she’d been mugged – but there were signs of prolonged physical abuse, and she could not, or would not, explain where she had been for the forty-eight hours she had been missing.
The strange thing was, she would not come back to work when she was better – she seemed terrified. At the time he had been upset, and thought it strange when Anna seemed totally indifferent, almost light-hearted about it.
Now, with hindsight, he had a sudden feeling, like a cold hand clutching his heart.
Anna had had something to do with it.
And this time she might – would – go even further.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
As he drove, foot pressed hard on the accelerator, tyres screaming as he rounded bend after bend, climbing further into the mountains, he knew he had to get to Vicky fast.
And if it meant fighting the Mafia the only way they knew how, so be it. But fear gripped his chest like a vice.
If he couldn’t get to her in time ---
* * *
The lock turned, and Anna entered. Vicky, her arms hurting, was cruelly conscious of her nakedness, her utter helplessness before this demented woman bent on revenge. She was going to plead with her, beg her to come to her senses, lie, say she would leave the country immediately if she would let her go. But one look at the woman’s eyes, and she knew it would be useless.
Then Vicky saw what Anna had in her hand – a riding crop.
She couldn’t take her eyes off it. Anna saw that she was transfixed by it, and gently slapped it into the palm of her other hand.
“Yes, bitch, time for your first lesson.”
Vicky felt a split second of excitement before a surge of fear made the bile rise into her throat.
“Anna, don’t be silly, don’t - - ”
The tip of the riding crop gently touched the hard tip of her left breast.
Vicky found it difficult to breathe, her chest rising and falling, moving the leather against her nipple.
Anna leaned forward.
Vicky flinched, thinking she was going to kiss her again – or slap her.
Instead, Anna gripped one of her arms, and with surprising strength, started to turn Vicky over onto her face, the ring in the metal swivelling to facilitate the movement. When she realized what was happening, Vicky struggled to stop her, but Anna was too strong. She was now stretched out face down on the bed.
Immediately Vicky felt the tip of the riding crop touch the back of her neck. It remained for seconds, neither woman speaking – the only sound, Vicky’s heavy breathing.
Then slowly it began to move down her spine, on down the slope of her back and up again to the top of her buttocks, hesitated, then moved down the crease of her cheeks to a point just above her thighs. It lay there for so long that Vicky, eyes tight shut, teeth clenched, started to relax. Anna was only playing mind games – torturing her. She began to say –
“Had your fun......” when the riding crop lifted. For a split second there was nothing, then a swish, and pain sliced through her quivering flesh like a knife.
Vicky yelped, and tugged wildly at her restraints.
Anna watched, and waited till she had quietened.
“That’s just the beginning – bitch.”
The crop rose and swished down six more times in a slow steady rhythm. Vicky writhed and screamed with each contact onto her already burning skin.
Anna would have done more, gone on adding to the red welts criss-crossing Vicky’s bottom, if that had been her sole intent - her sole punishment for this fair-skinned, alabaster-smooth creature who had stolen what had been hers. But she knew the psychological value of the waiting between sessions on the victim, and in any case this was going to be more prolonged than anything she had done before.
Anna dropped the crop, and slipped her hands beneath Vicky.
The physical evidence of the latter’s arousal was evident.
Anna smiled, and smoothed Vicky’s hair aside and gently kissed her neck.
“That will do for now. Besides, I’m hungry, I need my breakfast.”
Vicky heard the door open and close. Fighting back the tears, she let out a big sob.
Outside, Anna, head lent back against the wood, mouth pulling up in a sneer.
She had been a Dom since schooldays, taking her cue from some of the more severe nuns who patrolled the dormitories at night.
It was like old times, picking up submissives and bringing them back to her room.
* * *
Vicky’s senses were in turmoil. She had just been through the most humiliating and painful experience in her life.
Her derriere still throbbed, and she hated, and feared, her tormentor.
And yet - - -
And yet had some part of her actually liked the experience?
No, not liked, that was too strong. But there was no doubt she felt somehow serene; peaceful even now that it had stopped.
Then she remembered Carl – taking her over his knees.
That had been better. That had been with the man she loved, and respected.
Still - -
At the thought of Carl she wondered what he was doing. He must have gone to the police, was probably out now searching for her.
Just as she was taking heart at the thought, it was replaced by another, awful one.
Perhaps he’d thought that she had run out on him?
* * * *
Carl parked the car in the square of the little hill village, with its church, several shops and a small café.
He made his way over to it and found a seat at an outside table. When the waiter came, dressed in a long white apron he ordered an espresso coffee – deliberately in stumbling Italian. When the man returned he smiled, gave a hopeless shrug of the shoulders, and asked “Do you speak English?”
The man nodded.
“Yes, I spent some time in London.”
Desperately impatient to get on, Carl struggled to contain himself as they spoke of Chelsea, where he said he lived. He had thought about it on the way up to the valley. People were notorious in these hill areas for being wary of strangers. If he spoke in fluent Italian they might take him to be somebody with an ulterior motive – a taxman, an undercover cop, or even a hitman from a rival family.
As a tourist, a foreigner, he reasoned he might do better.
So it took a minute or two to get around to what he wanted.
“I’m staying on the coast but I’m up here searching for a family called Mioretti. We met in London and they said to look them up anytime I was in Italy – but I've left my address book at home in the UK. You wouldn’t happen to know where they live would you – or somebody I can get in touch with who will be able to help? They have a daughter, Anna.” He let her name hang in the air.
The waiter smiled knowingly, then looked guarded.
“No, I don’t know them, but I’ll go and ask the boss.”
Carl sipped at his coffee, pretended to look unconcernedly around, admiring the view, when all the time he was desperate to find Vicky before - -
He suppressed the thought. If he was to succeed he had to take it steadily.
Eventually, after what seemed an age, the man returned with the owner.
They shook hands, then Carl explained all over again, adding on impulse to make sure – “They have a very good looking daughter – Anna – we had dinner together.”
At that, the owner’s eyes changed from being hard and suspicious, to warm understanding.
It was the Italian thing – romance.
With a lot of waving of arms he was soon being directed to take the road leading from the square and running alongside the lake, then after 3 kilometres take a right – he would soon see the Villa Rosa set into the hillside, surrounded by a high wall. The proprietor nodded knowingly. Carl would need to speak to the man on the gate of course; they were rich powerful people the Mioretti’s. He didn’t actually say Mafia.
Carl thanked the man and shook his hand.
The proprietor gave a wink and gripped his upper arm.
“Good luck.”
He made the coffee last a little longer, then left a tip and walked as casually as possible to his car.
It took only twenty minutes to find the place, and it was as described. Set in the wall was a gated entrance, with two hard-looking men on the other side of large closed wrought iron gates.
Carl drove past, steadily, not slowing down, felt their eyes checking him, until he was out of sight around a bend.
A hundred metres further on he parked the car behind some bushes on the other side of the road from the wall.
When he got to it he found the old weathered stone easily crumbled in places.
He went back to the car, took the snow shovel from the boot and a heavy-duty coat that was always kept there for emergency winter use.
Back at the wall it took only a couple of minutes to smash a couple of large footholds in the surface, enough to enable him to haul himself up to the top.
He threw the coat across the strands of barbed wire, rolled over it, and dropped to the ground on the other side, behind the cover of thick bushes.
Crouching, he made his way carefully through them, pulled a leafy branch slowly aside and took in the view.
Sweeping lawns led up to a beautiful house in the classical renaissance style, with formal gardens with rose bushes and stone plinths with the busts of ancient Romans.
There was a large black American limousine waiting at the front portico, and a uniformed chauffeur waiting beside an already open rear door.
* * *
Anna Mioretti finished her breakfast in the ornate dining room, pressing a monogrammed linen napkin to her lips as she stood up from the huge long table strewn with used, fine china plates, gold cutlery and table ornaments.
Two maids were already beginning to clear the table. Her brother always liked to breakfast with his senior lieutenants before the start of the day, where they would discuss the more urgent items to do with running the family business, each man holding a separate portfolio – gambling, drugs, prostitution and protection being the main ones.
Just as she was about to leave the room her brother pulled her aside. His grip was enough to hurt her arm, his face was dark.
That woman you’ve got – don’t ever use my men again, without my permission – understood?
His grip was relentless, his anger palpable.
Anna nodded, and lowered her eyes.
“Yes – sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
In truth she was afraid of him and knew that he would not hesitate to react violently if she did anything that might endanger his position.
“Kidnapping is always risky, and needs to be carefully planned, especially if it involves a prominent family like the McKinley’s. On top of that there is a direct link to you – and therefore to us.”
Anna said submissively –
“It will not happen again – I swear.”
She couldn’t stop herself adding defiantly – “but she showed no respect to me, your sister, to the family name.”
Her brother’s face screwed up with a knowing sneer.
“Give it a rest Anna, you lost out to her with that guy. Now we’ve a situation on our hands – and I want it finished – fast.
Anna nodded obediently.
“What do you want me to do?”
Her brother released her arm, made for the door, and paused –
“Make the most of your revenge. Tonight, as soon as it’s dark. I’ll get Giovanni and a couple of the boys to take her up into the mountains.”
He made a pistol out of two fingers and put them to his head. It left no doubt as to what he intended.
After he’d left, Anna went to her room to clean her teeth again and generally freshen up. She took her time. Vicky was going nowhere. She’d sent two peasant women to the room in the stable block where Vicky was kept.
They had orders to help the foreign woman with her ablutions, but were under strict orders not to touch her for their own pleasure.
She knew these rough hill people, they had a brutal edge to them. She’d seen their delight at the physical bullying of new, younger housemaids.
Well, it was made clear that Vicky was her special prisoner.
Anna sat for a long time in front of her dressing table mirror, taking extra care with her make-up.
Pity that today was all the time she would have with Vicky. She liked beating the little bitch, not only for revenge, but because she was so beautiful.
And so responsive.
Anna smiled at that, and opened a cupboard. She often ‘entertained’ more willing girls, - subs – in this room and kept a store of implements. She selected a fine bamboo cane, one she had taken from one of the nuns at school who had been beating her. Anna gave it a few mock swings, delighting in the swishing sound it made in the air.
She knew from first-hand experience the exquisite pain it could bring.
Vicky had a terrible surprise in store.
Pleased with the thought and eager to commence, she left the room.
* * *
From his hiding place in the bushes Carl watched as several men, all in dark suits came down the main steps and got into several cars. Finally a last one appeared and climbed in through the door of the big limousine that the chauffeur was holding open.
With the driver in, the car started off and rolled down the drive away from him towards the gate, lost from view as the drive turned through bushes.
He turned his attention back to the house.
Two men were strolling along the side of the building, their jackets bulging ominously with something underneath: guns?
Vicky was a prisoner in there, he would bet his life on it.
The thought made him tense. If he was caught, it would be just that -
And Vicky’s.
When they were out of sight he moved forward. There was no cover, so he forced himself to walk as casually as possible, as if he had every right to be there.
The house loomed nearer.
* * *
For Vicky, the greatest humiliation to date had been the rough women who had come and released her, taken her to the bathroom, and physically bathed her, all against her will.
But they were too strong for her, and when they had finished, they took her back to the room and secured her as they had found her.
Despite Anna’s warnings to them, their rough hands had touched her crudely throughout, and as they left, cackling away in their native tongue, one of them couldn’t resist giving her a hard slap on the bum accompanied by a comment and a shriek of laughter.
Now she waited, and knew that it would not be long before her tormentor returned.
What then?
What else had she in store for her?
She wondered about Carl again, where was he?
* * *
Unknown to her he was less than four hundred feet away.
Carl saw Anna before she could see him, and sunk swiftly down out of sight behind a huge masonry bowl full of flowers.
He had to admit she looked stunning, dressed in tight white riding breeches with knee high shiny leather riding boots, a black silk blouse, and carrying a cane.
He watched as she made for the stables, presumably going for a ride.
She was taking her time, obviously quite confident that she was undiscovered, untouchable.
He looked back at the house. So in which room was Vicky being held a prisoner?
It was only as he turned his attention back to Anna that it hit him.
She was carrying a school cane – not the riding crop she should have been carrying.
As she flicked the bamboo against her boot in time to her steps, and turned into the building and out of sight, he suddenly realized she was not going riding.
Vicky was in the stable block – and Anna was on her way to her.
The cane was for her.
It took all of his willpower not to jump up after Anna, take her down, and force her to tell him where Vicky was.
But at that moment two of the men continually patrolling the grounds appeared, and he was forced to wait until they had passed.
When it was clear he moved towards the stables. As he got near he heard a scream, followed by another.
It was Vicky.
He began to run.