The Stories We Whisper at Night Read online

  The Stories We Whisper at Night

  SKY CORGAN

  Text copyright 2021 by Sky Corgan

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  Contents

  His Possession

  The Cabin

  The Virgin Dating Game

  Two Much for You

  The Death of a Call Girl

  The Snowman

  Operation Resolution

  Touch of the Alpha

  His Possession

  SKY CORGAN

  ROXY SINCLAIRE

  CHAPTER ONE

  AMORY

  I've been in this room a million times before, but for the first time ever, it feels like a prison. Maybe because I'm sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. It's an odd place to put a chair, but it seemed appropriate considering the exchange.

  I look at all of the boxes stacked around me yearning for the comfort of familiarity. The stock in the store rotates weekly, but I can still expect to see these boxes here. Chips and candy and pop—the typical stuff that people come to my parents' small grocery store for.

  Today, everything seems foreign to me. Right now, I'm the only one in the room, and the mood is so tense that I feel like I'm suffocating. The cool air snakes up my lungs to choke me. There's a vice grip on my heart. I've never been more nervous in my entire life.

  I smooth down the front of the floral skirt I'm wearing over my knees, trying to cover myself down to my ankles. There were about a dozen different outfits that I could have worn today, but I wanted to give off an air of modesty. Long high-waisted skirt. Long sleeve red shirt to match the roses on the skirt. I even put on white opaque stockings so that there would be nothing to see beyond the skirt. I'm wearing large round-framed sunglasses even though I'm indoors. I can barely see a thing, but I need them to hide the bags under my eyes from the lack of sleep. That and the fact that my makeup is probably smeared from the silent sobbing I've been doing. Concealer can only hide so much, and I swear there's no such thing as waterproof mascara.

  Now that I'm thinking about it, I shouldn't have worn makeup at all. It doesn't really matter, though. It wouldn't make Giovanni Bianchi magically decide not to take me. He's seen me in a full range of clothing, with and without makeup. I should count it as a blessing that he wanted me in the first place. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened to my parents—to their store. I would not want them to lose it. It's their life's work.

  I remember the story my father used to tell me when I was a child about how hard he and Mom had worked to accomplish their goal of owning their own grocery story. It was a story full of romance and wonder. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a part of that story, so I volunteered to work at the store every free chance that I got. The store became just as much a part of me as it was for them. It had evolved from being bricks and tile and windows to becoming a part of our family. If we lost it, we'd all be devastated.

  My parents had moved here long before I was born. As the story goes, my mother's parents hated my father—to this day I haven't met my grandparents on either side. They refused to let the two marry, so my father used all the money he had saved up from his job as a janitor to fly them to the United States. My mother had always dreamed of going to New York City, so that's where they landed, but they ended up settling down in the Bronx. Neither of them spoke a lick of English when they got here, so they had a difficult time establishing themselves. Initially, they lived off of what little money my father had left. Then they both had to start picking up odd jobs. My mother is a wonderful seamstress, so she put those skills to use. My father worked manual labor gigs whenever he found them. He said that after a few years of struggling to make ends meet, it became a running joke that one day they would open up a grocery store so that they'd never have to worry about food again.

  Eventually, my father found steady work at a gas station and my mother settled in at a tailoring shop. They lived a meager life, sharing a 525 square foot one bedroom apartment and pinching every penny they had. It wasn't until two years after I was born that they had saved up enough money to turn their joke into a reality. Wanting a better life for us, they decided to go into business for themselves. They bought a small store on the corner of Arlington Avenue and W 254th Street and poured all of their time into making it the best neighborhood grocery store that they could.

  The store did well for a while. Only two years after opening, my parents had made enough money to move from the apartment into a proper two bedroom home. Still, we spent more time at the store than we did in our house. I was practically raised there. Some of my earliest memories include helping my mother stock shelves and playing in the water from a busted pipe behind the building.

  My parents never made enough money from the store for us to be considered wealthy, but we had everything we needed. Things were good throughout my childhood, but by the time I hit my teen years, the neighborhood that the store was in started to go downhill. Most of our regular customers began moving away. Ruffians came to take their place. Not only did we have to deal with the decline of business, but we also had to worry about getting robbed. My father finally began pouring money into tightening security around the place when my mother got robbed at gunpoint. It was such a traumatic event that my father even talked about closing down the store. In hindsight, they probably should have. Because if they had, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. But my mother, with her big heart, convinced him to keep it open—that things change all the time and they just needed to weather the area's economic decline. She insisted that business would eventually get better, so they decided to stick it out.

  Eventually, business stabilized, though it was barely enough to keep the store and my family afloat. For a while, we thought that everything would be okay, but then a new threat rolled into town. It started with thugs at our door, making threats and breaking things. My parents called the police several times, but they turned a blind eye. Then the source of the discord rolled in. Giovanni Bianchi. Don of the mafia. Pervert. Asshole. The thugs were his, sent to instill fear into my parents. He offered my parents 'protection' for a not so small fee. And by 'protection' I mean that he'd stop sending his thugs to harass our store. If my parents didn't pay up, he promised to destroy them.

  Of course, my parents told all of this to the police. But what they didn't find out until later was that Giovanni had guys on the inside. The police department didn't give a shit about what he was doing as long as no one got killed and big businesses with actual influence were left out of it. So basically, Giovanni had all of the power.

  My parents had no choice but to pay up or move. Fed up with all of the misfortune they had encountered in the past several years, my father finally decided to put the store up for sale. No one was interested in buying a struggling business in a bad area of town, though. So we were stuck. We were stuck, and Giovanni's fees for protection gradually increased while the profits dwindled into nothing and we were plunged into debt.

  And that brings us up to two weeks ago. Giovanni's goons stopped by for their monthly visit. My father refused to pay—couldn't afford to pay. Giovanni himself made a grand appearance a few days later, threatening to loot the store and break every bone in my father's body. He made a halfhearted joke about how they'd take me instead of the money. I had been standing there behind th
e counter. Seeing a man twice my father's size with his fist balled, clutching the front of my father's shirt, had spiked fear into my heart the likes of which I had never experienced before. And at that moment, all I cared about was saving my father. I hadn't even thought before I had spoken the words, “Take me.” They came out in begging and pleading tones over and over again until the goon let go of my father.

  Giovanni sauntered around the counter to approach me. I shrunk back, which seemed to amuse him greatly. He gripped my chin and forced me to face him, looking me over. He nodded in approval before walking away, nonchalantly telling my father that he'd return in a week and that if we didn't have the money they were going to take me instead.

  After they had left, my mother and I had rushed to my father's side. He was so shaken that he was crying. It took us a good fifteen minutes before we were able to pull him together. All he kept repeating was, “What are we going to do?”

  I had the answer though. I had made up my mind the moment that my father was in danger. We were going to negotiate. Me in exchange for them leaving the store alone. Permanently. Because one life is surely worth a lifetime of payments.

  When I had told my parents about my plan, they were both adamantly against it. They had done so much for me though. Raised me the best that they knew how. Provided for me even when they barely had enough to provide for themselves. They were good parents. Loving parents. Some of the best parents that a girl could ever hope for. I owed them this. At least, I felt like I did.

  “We don't know what they're going to do with you. They might kill you,” my father had said, putting emphasis on the kill part to drive home the insanity of my decision.

  “They won't kill me.” They wouldn't. It wouldn't make sense for them to. But there were a whole lot of other horrible things that they could do to me. Sell me off as a sex slave. Use me as a prostitute to make more money for them. Those were the two most probable things that came to mind. And I would have no choice but to accept it because they could always just return to the store and make good on their threats if I didn't follow through with my end.

  “I won't allow it,” my mother insisted. But my mind was already made up. I was an adult. It was my body to do with what I wanted, and while I didn't want this...I knew that I had to do it.

  “It won't be forever,” I told them with a weak smile. “Just until you can sell the store and save up enough money for us to move far away from here. Then I'll come back to you.”

  I knew I wouldn't come back the same person. My years of being sheltered and living a happy life were about to be over. When I finally returned to my parents, I would be irreparably damaged. But they would be safe. We would all be safe, and that's all that mattered.

  My breath hitches as the electronic bell installed in the front door chimes. It could just be a customer. It could be, but I know that it's not. It's Giovanni Bianchi, and he's come to collect on my parents' debt.

  CHAPTER TWO

  RYDER

  “My little boy is finally all grown up.” My father hooks his meaty arm around my shoulder, and I groan internally. I hate it when he treats me like a kid in front of other people, though I know he probably doesn't even realize he's doing it. He's beaming with pride after handing over a ring of keys to the high-rise that I've been living in ever since I was eighteen. I have prominent placement on the top floor. The entire floor is my loft. Now I also own the entire building. The rent from all of the tenants will be going into my pockets now instead of his. It's my first business and my first taste of helping to continue his legacy.

  I'm proud to be a part of the Bianchi family. Through my father's tireless efforts, we're one of the wealthiest families in Manhattan, though his reach extends far beyond. This high-rise is one of many that he owns. In fact, he owns so many that he's been traditionally giving them out to his kids on their twenty-fifth birthday. This one is mine. The only handout he'll ever give me. With the money that I earn from this high-rise, I'm expected to go out and make a life for myself. Or I could just continue to leech off of the wealth that he's built and simply live off of the rental income from this place for the rest of my life. It's my choice. But if I squander everything away, sell the high-rise and somehow manage to blunder my way into poverty, he won't be there to put me back on my feet. That already happened to my older brother Moe, who he always makes sure to point out as an example.

  I won't be like that guy. Everyone knows that Moe is an idiot. The rest of my siblings and I have always joked that he was born with half a brain. He sold the high-rise that my father gave him almost as soon as the keys were handed over and squandered the money on drugs and prostitutes. For a few years, he lived the fast life, partying hard like the money would never run out. It did run out, though. Now you can find him on one of the many street corners in Brooklyn panhandling for pocket change to support his alcohol addiction.

  I definitely won't be like that guy. While I won't inherit the entire family business like my eldest brother Antonio, I still have big plans for myself. I want to invest in real estate. Own so many apartment complexes and rental homes that I'll never have to work a day in my life. Well, I'll still have to work, but not very hard. The goal is to amass a fortune, to branch out like my father did, but on a much larger scale and in legit ways.

  Everyone knows that my father is a bad-ass. He didn't build his fortune the clean way. And he raised us all to be bad-asses too. I was a thug before anything else. I've bled for my father's business. Looked down the barrel of a loaded gun for my father's business. He always insisted on getting my siblings and me involved early on so that we wouldn't grow up to be pussies, but he never made us stay. Once we hit eighteen, we were free to pursue our own dreams, to get immersed in the underbelly of what he had built or take the straight and narrow path and make a way for ourselves. Except the way for ourselves was paved without financial assistance. If we wanted to go to college, we had to work for it. Pop has always been funny about what he will and won't fork out money for.

  After spending my teenage years hustling people for what they owed my father, it was hard getting back on a clean track. Being an alpha was so deeply ingrained into me that I didn't take shit from anyone. It probably shouldn't be surprising that I got fired from almost every job I've ever had. I couldn't even cut it as a bouncer because I was too rough with the people who got out of hand. Always the one to throw the first punch. Didn't give many chances.

  I had dreamed of going to college. My original plan when I had graduated from high school was to become a doctor. That quickly went down the drain when I could barely hold down a job long enough to keep myself fed. Thank God, Pop put me up in the high-rise or else I'd still be living at home.

  My worries about finances are all over now though. In the span of a few hours, I've gone from being a poor little rich boy eating ramen for dinner almost every night to owning a building that produces nearly $100,000 a month in pure profits. I'll be living like a king from now on if I play my cards right. And I plan on playing my cards right.

  “Oh, and I've got another surprise for you,” my father says as I walk him out of the building to his limo.

  “Another surprise?” He's done way more for me than I could ever ask for. And I didn't ask for this. He just gave it to me because I'm his son.

  “Yeah. You're really going to like this one.” He raises up his hand between us as if whispering a secret to me. “But don't tell your other brothers, because I didn't get them one.”

  I smirk, certain that I know what it is. “You got me a new car, didn't you?”

  He guffaws. “Lord no. You can go buy yourself a new car with the first month of checks. I got you something better.”

  “What's better than a new car?” I stop next to his limo. Pop's driver opens the door, but he doesn't step in.

  “I got you a Russian princess.” The grin on his face is infectious, but I still have no idea what he's talking about.

  “A Russian princess?” I parrot.

  “
Yeah. She's got nice lush lips, big tits,” he holds his hands out in front of him to show me the size, “and legs that go on for miles. You'll love her.”

  “You're kidding, right?” I put my hand on the open door and rest some of my weight on it.

  “Nope. I'm going to pick her up right now. The guys should be delivering her to you in about an hour.”

  I fight back the urge to frown. The last time I didn't accept a gift with full appreciation, I got backhanded. I swear I wore the imprint of his class ring on my cheek for an entire week. Ever since then, I've learned that whatever my father gives me, whether it's good or bad, I have to accept it with the utmost enthusiasm.

  A girl is the last thing that I need. I've spent the last several years financially struggling. Now I have enough money to do whatever I want, and I plan to do just that. Saddling me with some chick is just going to slow me down and make me miserable. Besides, if I wanted pussy, I can get it with no strings attached any night of the week at one of the clubs in New York City. Getting women has never been an issue for me, and I've never been interested in dating long-term. I'm young, attractive, and now rich. Why should I have to settle for just one girl?

  “What am I suppose to do with this girl?” I look past my father to the street. Apprehension is leaking into my tone, and I hope he's not reading it as what it is...dread.

  The happiness on his face fades slightly, and I feel the first tremor of tension between us. But then he smiles. “Do whatever you want with her. Fuck her. Make her cook for you. Lock her in a closet for all I care. She's a gift. I just need for you to hold her for me for a while.”

  “Ah.” Realization hits me. “So, this is about business.”