The Don's Rebel Pet

The next morning, I went to the gallery.

Not to pick a gift for Bianca, of course. I was there to finish one last job.

Restoring the only piece of my mother I had left. A portrait of her.

Damon had pulled strings to get it back for me from a failing pawnshop two months ago.

The smell of turpentine hit me like a hook, dragging me back five years.

I was just a poor art student then, an orphan working shifts at a coffee shop to pay tuition.

I painted in my spare time, dreaming of my own gallery show.

Then one day, a rich bitch from school poured a scalding latte all over my final project.

"Oops," she sneered. "Something this pathetic was never going to hang in a gallery. I was just helping you take out the trash."

I tried to fight back, but her friends cornered me, and a slap stung my face.

That's when Damon appeared.

He wasn't the monster he is today. Back then, he wore an expensive, handmade suit. A god who’d stumbled into the wrong part of town.

He was just passing by, talking about an art exhibition, but he stopped.

He didn't touch her. He just looked at her. A single, chilling glance. The next day, her family vanished from New York.

I thought he was my knight.

He gave me a job at his gallery, a chance to be around the kind of art I’d only ever dreamed of in the slums.

Then, three months later, I was working a late shift when a few guys from a rival family cornered me.

They thought I was just some girl he was screwing, a way to humiliate the new boss on the block.

Damon came.

This time, he was no gentleman.

He was a demon straight from hell. No words, no negotiation. Just violence.

I watched him snap the leader's arm with his bare hands. After a bloody fight, we escaped.

That night, he threw me, still shaking, into his sports car.

He pushed the car to 120 mph.

The roar of the engine drowned out my screams.

"Scared?" he asked. The car was parked on a cliff edge. One hand was on the wheel, the other was stroking my lips.

"Damon… please stop…"

"No. You need to remember this feeling." His eyes were wild, manic. The adrenaline from the near-death fight had lit a fire in him.

He took me right there, on the edge of a cliff, the car still humming with speed. It wasn't love. It was a conquest, suspended between death and a pleasure so sharp it felt like pain.

"You're mine, Nora," he said, biting my neck as he came.

Ding.

The sound of the shop's bell snapped me back to the present.

I looked up. A woman was standing in the doorway.

Bianca Torrino.

She wore a white Valentino dress, a pearl necklace gleaming under the lights.

She wasn't here to buy art. I could see it in her eyes.

She was here to mark her territory.

"So this is Damon's little painter?" she said, looking me up and down like I was a piece of furniture. "I hear you're good at fixing old things."

She walked over to my mother's portrait.

"It’s a shame old things are so worthless," she said with a smirk. "I hear this pathetic painting is all you have left. The only link to your pathetic past."

My fists clenched.

"Don't look at me like that," Bianca said, pulling out her phone with a vicious smile. "This is his idea."

She made a video call.

The screen lit up with Damon's face. He was sitting in the Torrino family mansion. I could even see Bianca's father in the background.

"Nora," Damon's voice crackled through the speaker, cold and dead. "Show your future queen some loyalty. Destroy the painting. Do it yourself."

My blood ran cold.

"Don't make me repeat myself," he said, swirling the whiskey in his glass. His tone was the one he used to command his dogs. "Or I'll have my men burn it down. Along with the gallery."

I stared at the face of the man I’d loved for five years.

For business. For a deal. He was going to make me snuff out the last light in my world with my own hands.

"What? Cat got your tongue?" Bianca taunted. "Looks like Damon's 'creation' isn't so obedient after all."

I took a deep breath, swallowed my tears, and smiled.

I looked at Damon through the screen. "Fine," I said, my voice even. "As you wish."

With Bianca’s triumphant gaze and Damon’s cold stare watching me, I picked up a palette knife.

A tool meant for creation, now an executioner's blade.

I slashed the blade across my mother's face.

Once. Twice. Three times.

With every cut, I wasn't just tearing the canvas. I was severing the last thread of love I had for him.

Bianca hung up, satisfied. She scoffed and turned to leave. "Make sure you clean this up. I don't want Damon's places to have this kind of filth lying around."

The sound of her heels faded away.

I was alone. I didn't cry. I just knelt in the ruins of my past, picking up the pieces. One by one. Like I was burying a body. Just like I did with my mother.

My phone vibrated.

[Come to the Safe House tonight. I'm hurt. I need you.]

I stared at the message, at the casual command, "I need you."

The old me would have dropped everything, run to his side, ready to take another bullet for him.

But now, looking at my hands covered in red paint, the man who had made my heart race for five years felt like a complete stranger.

He wasn't hurt.

He just needed to make sure his dog was still on its leash.

I stood up and threw the paint-soaked rag in the trash.

"I'll be there, Damon," I whispered to the empty room.

This is the last time I'll ever patch you up.