The Fate of a Love Game || A mafia romance story

Chapter 4

Mae pushed herself slightly further up on the bed and propped some pillows behind her back. She peered inside the bag and saw several wrapped gifts. 

Sighing, she pulled one out. She hated it to admit it, but gifts made her scared. With her father, gifts never meant anything good. They meant a 'special occasion', which meant she was usually required to act as a slave or a slut, one of the two. Or, they were apology presents, but she was usually to upset with him to touch them. Either way, presents always came from something bad. 

Still, this wasn't her father; and Luca was a world away from her father. 

Mae pulled out the largest box and felt its weight in her hand. She opened the end carefully, not wanting to rip the pretty paper. 

She gasped as the cellophane wrapped box fell out. He had bought her a laptop? She knew that this type didn't come cheap, either. She gripped the bag and opened the other gift, which was a brand new phone and headphones. Inside the headphones, there was a note. 

'Because I know you love music.' It was signed from Luca in a beautiful, almost messy scrawl. 

In a way, Mae was a bit annoyed that he thought he could win her over by buying her material gifts. On the other hand, she did love listening to music, and-

Wait, where was her phone?

She opened all the drawers next to her, and didn't find anything. Anything interesting, anyway. Her clothes were nowhere to be seen, not even in the wardrobe on the other side of the room. Not that she wanted that dress back.

Mae went back to her bed in resignation. She turned on the new phone and looked at it in her hand, then allowed a small smile to come onto her face. It was very pretty, she couldn't deny it. 

Once she'd set up both the laptop and the phone, she looked at the headphones. 

"Wireless. Nice," she said to herself. It was true, she did like to listen to music. A text came through on the phone, making her jump. It was details for a Spotify account. She shrugged, downloaded Spotify, and found that the account was a premium one...and in Luca's name. Of course he had bought her something else. 

She started listening to some music, nodding her head, then decided that sitting in bed and listening to music was going to get boring. She stood up, looking for clothes. When there were none in the room, Mae opened the door that she decided was the bathroom and found...a bathroom. With clothes. And toiletries. And a hairdryer.

She showered, dressed in a blue sweater and black jeans, and dried her hair. Mae grabbed her (new) phone and stuck it in her back pocket, put her headphones in and left the room.

Mae wandered along the corridors aimlessly, looking at various ornaments and pictures that lined the walls. It seemed like this was a royal palace or something, by the way it had been decorated. She found a staircase and decided to go up it. 

Upstairs, she found more hallways. Mae rolled her eyes. "I get the biggest palace in the world to explore, and all I find is hallways. Typical."

She turned around to go back down the stairs and was met with a fist to her face. Surprised, she groaned and fell over, her phone and headphones both falling out from their respective places and skidding across the floor. She groaned again at the sight of them. 

"What the..?" she stood up. As she did so, the guy that had hit her grabbed her by the collar and slammed her into the wall. She winced as her back made impact.

"Who are you?!" The guy shouted in her face. She turned her head away and winced. When she didn't answer, the guy slammed her into the wall again. "I said, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?" 

Instead of answering, she drew back her foot and kicked this guy in the nuts as hard as she could. He dropped her, and she fell to the floor.

Not wanting to waste any time, she grabbed her phone and headphones from the floor and charged downstairs. Skidding down hallways and past rooms, Mae sped up as she heard the guy behind her. She saw another set of stairs, going down this time, and ran down them. It got much colder down here, and was dark, so she had to slow down a little to see where she was going. On the plus side, the guy seemed to have stopped following her. 

There was a dodgy smell down here, and Mae realised that it was a little stupid of her to go into the basement of a mafia house. Not wanting to face that guy again, she carried on going. 

She got to the end of the dark hallway and met another set of stairs going down. They were made roughly, and if you didn't look carefully, you'd trip. Mae did trip a couple of times, but carried on going anyway. She'd got curious.

Down here, the ceiling dripped every so often. It was slightly wet and damp. She heard a faint, strangled cry. Not wanting to hear anyone in pain, she hurried to where the sound came from. Soon, shouting happened. 

"Shut up, shut up! You will never touch her, never!" A sickening crack echoed through the room to her left, and she pushed the door slightly. What she saw inside made tears come to her eyes. 

One of her father's friends was sat, tied up in a chair in the middle of the room. Chains lay on the floor, and someone stood in front of him was holding a whip. Both men were sweating, and as the one with the whip moved a little, she realised who it was.

It was Luca.