NERO'S LITTLE WITCH

Torture

CHAPTER FOUR

Nero had barely shrugged off his jacket when Greg appeared at the office door.

"She tried jumping the window in the east suite but I got there before she could get both legs over."

Nero set his jacket on the chair without looking at him and loosened the second button of his shirt.

"Bring her to the torture room in an hour and get me the whip."

Greg's expression didn't change. "The acid one, sir?"

"Did I say anything else."

"No sir," Greg replied and stepped back.

Fred walked in but Nero looked at him once and said, "Get out."

Fred raised both hands slowly before stepping back out through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

The office was quiet for two full minutes.

Then two knocks.

Nero let another minute pass before he said anything.

"Come in." He said and Fred entered properly this time.

"What exactly are you driving at," he began. "With the debtor's daughter. Why would you do that s**t with her."

"Do I need your permission to do anything I want in my own clan," Nero replied.

"She's a debtor's daughter sitting in a room in this estate because her father ran from what he owed us. Nobody in this building has the right to use her or ask her to suck their filthy c**k. Nobody. That's the rule and you know it."

Greg, who had not actually left, moved his hand to his holster and c****d his gun.

Fred looked at the gun. Then he looked Nero dead in the eyes.

"Are you going to tell this i***t to shoot me," he said.

Nero looked at Greg. "Return it."

Greg uncocked the weapon and stepped back against the wall.

"In as much as she's in this building as a debtor's daughter, she falls under his jurisdiction and you know that better than anyone in this room. Pa Antonio alone who decides what punishment befalls her."

Nero looked at him for a long moment, then leaned back in his chair and said, "Are you done."

Fred chuckled softly.

"When you're finished ranting," Nero said, eyes dropping to the document on his desk, "step out of my office."

Fred stood there one moment longer then turned and walked out, pulling the door shut behind him.

******

[One hour later]

They brought her in with her hands bound behind her. Hella's eyes went to the table and she saw the whip and she saw the color of what it had been soaked in and her breath caught for exactly one second before she pulled it back.

Nero was already in the room, sitting on the oakwood bench with one ankle crossed over his knee and his lighter turning over and over in his fingers.

The guards pushed her to the center of the room and stepped back and the door closed and it was just the two of them and the whip on the table.

Nero crossed to the table and picked up the whip "You tried to jump."

Hella said nothing.

"In my clan from my window. Without my permission."

"Your permission," Hella scoffed.

"Nobody dies in this building unless I say so," he replied. "Not even you."

He moved behind her and she heard the whip move through the air once, testing, and the sound of it made her stomach drop completely.

"You will count," he said from behind her. "Every stroke out loud. If you miss one we start from the beginning. There are fifty."

Hella closed her eyes for exactly one second and opened them.

"I hate you," she said quietly.

"I know," Nero replied, and brought the first stroke down.

The sound it made was nothing like she expected and she felt the acid in it immediately, a secondary burning that came after the impact like a second punishment inside the first one.

"Count," he ordered.

"One," she said through her teeth.

The second came before she had finished saying it and she stumbled forward a step and caught herself.

"Two."

By the tenth she was shaking and by the thirtieth her asthma started, not a full attack, just the tightening at the base of her throat and the first whisper of panic underneath the pain and he stopped..

The room was quiet except for her breathing.

He waited.

When her breathing steadied the thirty-first came down and she cried out and bit down on her lip hard.

"Thirty-one," she said.

"You're a monster!" she screamed at him at the forty fifth "You're an absolute monster and I hate you, I hate you, I hate every single thing about you...."

Nero stopped.

She heard him set the whip down on the table.

She heard his footsteps and then he crouched down in front of her because she had gone to her knees at some point during the screaming without noticing and he looked at her face from that level and she looked back at him with her face completely ruined, tears and blood from where she'd bitten her lip and her whole body shaking.

Then he stood and straightened his shirt and walked out of the room.

She was still there when the guards came to take her back to her room..

******

Hella's Room

Hella was lying face down on the bed in the dark when the door opened and she lifted her head immediately.

"I swear if you're here to continue that nonsense....." she started, pushing herself up on shaking arms, wincing as her back screamed at the movement. "What did I even do, what exactly did I do that was so terrible that you had to...."

Nero crossed the room, grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her back down onto the bed face first and she hit the mattress and tried to turn over immediately.

"Get off...."

He put one hand firmly on the back of her neck before reaching down with the other and unhooked her bra in one swift movement. He threw it somewhere behind him and she shrieked and cupped both hands over her chest, her back still facing him.

"Are you insane! What are you...."

"Shut it," he said.

"Don't tell me to shut it, you whipped me with acid, you absolute..."

"Shut it," he said again as she heard him open something behind her and then his hands came down on her back. Hella flinched and gasped and went completely still.

The ointment was cold. Shockingly cold against the burning and she lay there with both hands pressed to her chest and her face turned sideways on the pillow and her teeth clamped together. She could feel the burning beginning to quiet everywhere his fingers moved and she hated it, hated that it was working, hated that his hands knew exactly where every stroke had landed because of course they did, he had put them there.

"I hate you," she said into the pillow.

He said nothing and kept moving his hands and she lay there with her teeth clamped together and said nothing else because the ointment was soothing.

He finished and she heard him stand and recap the bottle and he left.

She felt the pain reduce as she laid but her hand found something on the pillow beside her face.

It was an inhaler. The one she had ran out two days ago.