Angelo’s net worth is in the low billions. He is one of many quiet criminal billionaires in the world, people who do not flash their wealth around going to space, or getting into home made submarines, but enjoy a level of privacy and privilege that the average person cannot imagine.

 

To a certain extent, he can no longer entirely be considered criminal. His lawful dealings are highly profitable. He could go straight, if he wanted, but Angelo’s tastes are what drive him and those tastes are criminal and perverted. At this point, his criminal dealings are practically recreational.

 

The agency isn’t even officially going after him, but I am. Men like this are a scourge on the Earth. They’re parasites on the population, treating the rest of us like meaningless little NPCs, using us, exploiting us, breaking us for their amusement. I would like nothing better than to see Angelo and all his ilk brought low, his ill-gotten gains taken from him.

 

I don’t know what it is he sees when he looks at me, but I want Angelo’s end more than he wants mine. This job is personal to me, and being captured by him won’t change the nature of my mission.

 

“You are an interesting little thing,” Angelo muses. “I see the way you burn with hatred, Riley. Do you know me? Have I done something to you? Or are you just a righteous little agent who cannot stand the sight of a criminal? Do I turn your stomach with my mere existence?”

 

He’s perceptive, but I plan to keep my secrets.

 

“Perfectly sullen creature brimming with violence,” he says, taking my chin between his thumb and forefinger and inspecting my face. “But you were trespassing, and now you have been caught. Do you know what that means?”

 

I give a brief shake of my head.

 

“It means you have to be punished, Riley. It means I have to make your flesh ache with penitence.”

 

When I look into his eyes as I am being forced to do, it is as though his gaze has opened to me, the darkness of his pupils expanding to give me a full view of the open maw of of his predatory soul.

 

This man means to consume me.

 

The room we are standing in is one of those rooms that only the very rich have, a room which seems to have no purpose, but a lot of furniture. Could be a lounge, I suppose, though it is large enough to be a lobby.

 

“It would be better for you if you did not fight what I intend to do to you,” Angelo says, leading me to a very well stuffed couch with a rounded arm. He pushes me down over that arm, and grips the back of my leggings with one hand, his fingers extending out across my ass in a possessive and powerful grip that gathers the relatively flimsy material and snags it down over my hips, baring me in one motion.

 

I lie with my face against the couch, knowing that there is quite literally no escape from this situation. Even if I were to get up and to run, I would be caught, and then my disobedience, as Angelo will no doubt understand it. Outside any door to the interior likely lurks his brutal lover, Bobby, ready to gun me down. The manicured gardens of the exterior provide little in the way of cover either. These are men who like to see their enemies coming from a long way off.

 

I have never been in this much danger in my life. That danger is almost distracting enough to take my attention away from the fact that I have been bared by a man who intends to destroy me. The sheer vulnerability of my position makes me light headed. With my hips raised, my ass naked, almost every part of a woman a man will exploit is bared and vulnerable.

 

He does not strike me right away. He is looking for something, perhaps. Or maybe he is just looking at me from different angles, considering his plan of attack. I hear him walk away and around the room while I stay obediently in position, knowing I have no choice, my palms and cheeks pressed against fine fabric far nicer than any that would ever grace my own home.

 

Again, my mind wanders to what this room might be called, a hopeless distraction from the primal helplessness I am experiencing. It’s so exposed, with big windows facing the front garden. I almost feel as though I am on display, as Angelo has chosen one of the pieces of furniture closest to the window to hold me half-nude and captive. It is a gorgeous, refined space, but this is a place bad things happen to good people, that’s the only way I can parse it.

 

When Angelo enters my field of vision again, he is standing behind me and off to the side. I can see him by turning my neck and lowering my eyes. He looms over me, a devil in a fine suit, an absolutely refined monster of a man.

 

He has a cane in his hand.

 

“I’m sure you’ve never been properly punished before. I’m sure you’ve always been able to cry your way out of a situation, or earn yourself a lesser punishment through pleading, begging, perhaps even arguing. You have the look of a precious creature.”

 

I let out a little snort at being called a precious creature. It’s because I’m a short blonde woman. He is talking to me as though I am a stereotype. It has been a long time since anybody made life easier for me as a girl. I know a lot of men think being female is easier than being male. They’re wrong.

 

“In my house, you are nothing but a little captive. I will treat you no differently to the way I treat my boy, do you understand?”

 

I know how he treats Bobby. I know the two of them have a twisted, tortured love affair in which Angelo is master and Bobby is the resentful slave. To be treated like Bobby is to be spoiled and ruined.

 

There is a slight note of affection in Angelo’s voice when he calls me his little captive. That worries me. He doesn’t know me. I am a stranger. I am literally an agent of the law. But Angelo has already decided to see me as something else completely.

 

His presence whispers to something inside me. I feel myself vibrating with an unseen malevolence that does not emanate from him, but which rises from slumber inside me.

 

“Yes,” he murmurs, as if he is seeing in my eyes an echo of what I saw in his. “Oh yes. You will be a very good girl for me.”