Kitty Thomas's Blog, page 11

Join us for a party!

I will also be sending this out to the newsletter next week, but here’s the pop-up party group link for The Monster Keeps Me Safe party on February the 23rd: Click here to join

NOTE: Members will be added to the group just before the party starts. Please read rules and details at the above link. Thanks!

Hope to see you there!

Kitty ^.^

The post Join us for a party! appeared first on Kitty Thomas.

Book of the Week: Tender Mercies… Teaser Scene and Bonus Epilogue

Tender Mercies has had a face lift! (rebrand). New ebook cover and Paperback cover! (this will also most likely be the audiobook cover when that becomes available in the future)

There is also a Bonus Epilogue in this new edition (including inside the paperback). If you’ve read Tender Mercies, but not the bonus epilogue, you can join my newsletter to get the bonus epilogue free. There will be new books in this world and the epilogue will give you some hints about that!

You can sign up for my newsletter and download it here

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Here’s the full cover reveal for the paperback:

And here’s the Audio cover (audio will temporarily be “AI” for accessibility for readers with disabilities or who for strong personal preferences will only read audio even if it’s glorified ‘text-to-speech’. A REAL audiobook with human narration is planned for this book when I can afford it):

Teaser Scene (not the bonus epilogue, this is a scene from the book):

(This is the scene where the hero comes and takes her out of the hell hole she’s in. But she doesn’t realize that yet. The “He” we start with is Lucas, the villain. And a fun fact, I got the name “Eleu” (the name of the island), from the Greek word: “Eleutheros” which means Freedom.)

He flipped a switch and the naked bulb overhead snapped to attention. Opening her eyes, she could see the barest smirk playing across his lips. “Good morning, pet. Did you dream about me?”

Dreamed about stabbing you to death, she thought. But she’d never be brave enough to say something like that. He reached outside the door for the tray of food he’d brought down with him. Scraps from last night’s meal. He hadn’t even brought her water. She’d have to drink it from the sink. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on like this, surviving on almost nothing while Lucas used her for his amusement.

He put the food on the ground between them and crouched down next to her, a thoughtful expression on his face. “We are at an impasse.”

She looked up from the plate, dreading whatever might be coming next. She tried not to cringe when he ran his hands over her.

“I can’t finish you. No matter what I do, you hold onto something that I can’t touch. And I refuse to be bested in that way by chattel.”

For a moment, Grace’s life scrolled through her head as if she were trying to hold onto the good memories from before Eleu, because it felt as if something very important were happening. Like something big was ending. The words Lucas spoke were laced with finality. She thought back to the night before, to that house and those men, and the talking in the language she hadn’t been taught.

“I’ve sold you to a harder master. If he doesn’t break you, he might just end you, like his last slave.” Lucas barked out the name, “Asher,” and then the man from the party was filling the doorway to the point where he blocked out all the light from outside the room.

Close up, it was obvious he was a good six inches taller than Lucas. Broader, too. Grace’s eyes drifted to large, strong hands. Hands that could crush her. Then she looked up into the angriest eyes she’d ever seen.

She shook her head. “No, please, no.” Maybe death was better than this life, but faced with the reality of a known killer standing there ready to take her home with him, she couldn’t stop the panic from overflowing. “Master, please. Don’t do this. Don’t sell this slave. She’ll change. She’ll be better.”

“It’s too late. He’s already paid me.” Lucas stood and moved against the wall. Now nothing blocked the path between her and the large, intimidating presence blocking the exit.

Asher took a few steps into the room, and she moved back into the corner, as if her retreat would impede him or slow him down. He reached down and gripped her firmly around one arm, hauling her up to stand. She struggled in his grasp, her brain suddenly stuck in a loop. This is the man who is going to kill me. She’d always believed that eventually she’d die at Lucas’s hands, but now she knew otherwise.

“Do. Not. Fight me,” he snarled.

She froze at the ferocity of those words, her eyes raising to his. Everything stopped for a moment, and she spent a timeless eternity drowning in his eyes. Some wild part of her felt he was trying to communicate in another way beyond words, but she was too scared to hold onto the thought long enough to take it apart and analyze it.

When he guided her out of the room, she didn’t give him further trouble.

At the front door, he draped a cloak around her and led her outside. She had to blink and squint against the sunlight. Birds chirped in the distance, bathing the day in happiness she knew she’d never feel again.

Though Lucas had taken her out some in the time he’d had her, it had always been at night, to parties and clubs, to show her off, or, more recently, to arrange her sale. The day she’d first walked into his home had been the last she’d seen the sun––until now.

Asher pulled her into the backseat with him, and the driver started the car. She avoided his eyes, too afraid to see that fierce anger blazing behind them, an emotion more intense than she’d ever gotten from Lucas.

Her former master had been a great mimic of humanity when he’d only had to be behind a webcam, but the truth was clear once she’d stepped into his house. He was empty inside. Asher was the opposite of empty. That kind of intensity ignited new fears. What was a man with that kind of emotion capable of? How easy would it be to set him off, and what would be the consequences when she did?

Want more?

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Thanks so much for reading and supporting my work!

Kitty ^.^

The post Book of the Week: Tender Mercies… Teaser Scene and Bonus Epilogue appeared first on Kitty Thomas.

Kitty Thomas Seeks Personal Assistant

I’m looking for a personal assistant. The initial job is fairly small with limited duties, but may expand and grow over time for the right fit. Application here: https://kittythomas.wufoo.com/forms/r...

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Book of The Week: PERFECTION: First Scene Free

This week’s book of the week is Perfection. This is one of my favorites! First scene Free below the buy links! Also available in audio!

BLURB:

Everyone said I married the perfect man. But if Conall Walsh were perfect, I wouldn’t have killed him. 

I thought I got away with it until I received an anonymous note at the ballet company I dance for. A mysterious stranger threatens to spill all my secrets. To ruin my life. To put me in prison for my crime.

I’m meeting him tonight at the abandoned opera house to beg him to spare me.

I can pay him. I have money. But his price isn’t money. It’s me.

This book is a standalone contemporary dark romance with an HEA and no cliffhangers.

“A hot dark story with a twist you won’t see coming. Perfection lives up to its name!” – Anna Zaires, New York Times bestselling author of TWIST ME

“So raw, sexy, and twisted, I couldn’t stop reading. The combination of mystery, fear, and eroticism is what Kitty Thomas does best.” – Annabel Joseph, NYT and USA Today bestselling author of MERCY

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iTunes Audiobook

First Scene Free!

(c) Copyright 2020 Kitty Thomas. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Today is the happiest day of my life. For a short time, I defined the happiest day of my life as the day I married the perfect man, the wealthy and beautiful Conall Walsh. In the months that followed, I learned just how imperfect he was, until today, three years later, when I’d had enough of this perfection.

I just killed him. The body lies at my feet, more blood and gore than I’d expected to be honest. I’m not sure what I thought cutting up a body entailed, but I had to get rid of it.

Obviously, I know there is the tub-of-acid option. And I considered that. I really did. But all I could think was wouldn’t it be fucked up if I ended up burning my own skin away while trying to destroy the body?

I don’t think I processed the idea that I could also have a chainsaw accident. And by the time I had that harrowing thought, he was already in nineteen pieces while I contemplated if I needed to make his torso any smaller or was this enough?

Now the possibility that I could injure myself with the chainsaw has squirreled its way into my brain. No, we’re done here. Nineteen pieces. It’ll have to do.

I put what’s left of the perfect man into several black heavy duty garbage bags. I take down all the plastic wrap I’d taped up and laid down to catch everything. I’ve seen enough TV to know how this is done. Except on TV you don’t really see everything about clean-up, do you? If I had, blood wouldn’t have slipped out of the plastic onto the white tile floor of the master bathroom.

Fuck me. That is never coming out of the grout.

I take him out to the ocean… in his own boat. He named that boat after some side piece he was fucking. Probably fucked her yesterday. There’s something really satisfying about taking him on his last ride on the boat he used to rub Stella Crenshaw in my face.

The Delectable Stella it’s called. That fake-titted bimbo he was fucking in his office. I imagine him bending her over the copy machine after office hours, her fake nails digging into the hard plastic of the machine while she fakes her orgasm. Because there is no way she wasn’t faking it. Part of that is because Conall is bad in bed, and the other part is… well, everything else about her is fake. What’s one more thing?

My husband was a real piece of work, and if fucking his secretary had been the worst thing he’d done to me, we’d just be looking at a divorce. I asked for a divorce; he told me if I left him, he’d kill me. I don’t know why. After all, he had The Delectable Stella. But some men just need a Delectable Stella and a Punching Bag Cassia.

I’m not sure how far out to take him. You never see that part on TV. You just see the murder, then suddenly there’s a boat out on the ocean, and the bags are going into the water in the dead of night. I wonder suddenly if beachfront property is so expensive because of the ease of body disposal. That’s a perk you can’t get in the heartland.

I finally decide I’m probably out far enough and dump the bags over the edge. I remembered to weigh them down with heavy rocks. Otherwise, the bags will float to the top, some deep sea fisherman will pull it in with his haul, and then the investigation starts.

It’s three a.m. when I finally get back home. The house is so quiet. No yelling. No glass crashing against the wall. No screams (mine). No sound of my body being slammed against the wall. I really don’t know how I’ve survived this long. I guess a dancer’s body is built for a certain amount of abuse. But not this much. And not this kind. One of our more recent fights pops into my mind.

“Are you fucking him?”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“He’s my dance partner. And he has a boyfriend. I didn’t date other dancers in the company even before we met. You know that.”

I spend another half hour standing in the bathroom staring at the bloodstains in the grout. Am I in shock? Am I a sociopath?

Why don’t I feel anything? I just feel… numb. Relieved and numb. But I don’t feel free. What if I get caught? What if I go to prison for this? I couldn’t live another day with him, and there was no other way out. He closed off all my other options.

A jury wouldn’t care about that.

What is wrong with me? I still can’t believe I was able to just cut up a body like that… the body of a man I once thought I loved. I think it was the adrenaline. The poison worked fast, and then there was no backing out. I just had to get rid of the body. I couldn’t think about it. I just did it.

And now I can’t stop staring at the grout—the last evidence of the man who sold me all the lies of a perfect life. He’d come in and rescued me out of poverty. He’d given me everything—or at least that’s how it looked to everyone else.

Professional dance pays shit, especially when you aren’t a principal. You have to work your way up through the hierarchy, and a lot of dancers never get out of the corps de ballet. And in truth, the dance world is SO competitive that being in the corps of a decent company is still the dream and much more than many can ever hope for. So I don’t complain. I’m lucky.

I sometimes get a small solo, and I often have a pas de deux partner in some of the group scenes who lets me pretend for a moment out on that stage that I have some greater role, some greater career and that those screaming cheers from the audience at the end of everything are for me and me alone. I just want someone to really see me.

But I’m background. Nobody notices me. They don’t know my name. I’m there to make the principals look more epic because of all the background dancers swirling around them in perfect time.

I’m lucky I get to do what I love, even if I’ll never be known for it or ever make any real money at it. In a way, Conall was my patron. He funded my ability to keep dancing without worrying how I would also keep eating.

I’m supposed to be in the studio for rehearsal at eight in the morning. We’re opening with Swan Lake in the repertoire this season. I’ll probably be dancing the same part in the corps that I always dance. I know this part. I’ve known it for ages, but we still have to rehearse. I have to get my shit together, get a few hours’ sleep, and dance like I didn’t just kill a man.

Want more?

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iTunes Audiobook

Thanks for reading and supporting my work!

Kitty ^.^

The post Book of The Week: PERFECTION: First Scene Free appeared first on Kitty Thomas.

UPDATE: The Monster Keeps Me Safe: Dark Contemporary Romance Standalone

NEW COVER, BONUS CONTENT, NEW AUDIO ADDITIONS COMING NEXT MONTH! (Well, the audio may be a little later, I don’t have those details yet.)

This is a title I released originally in 2015 as Tabula Rasa. The title was confusing and the blurb was confusing. This is one of my absolute favorite books I’ve written but I was really really off brand with the marketing. With so many books out in the world, if the reader is confused, the reader doesn’t buy.

So I re-released it in 2021 with a better title: The Monster Keeps Me Safe. That’s definitely a less confusing title than “Tabula Rasa”.

The only problem was… the book cover, though beautiful, looks like modern PNR (kind of like “Friends with the Monsters” if you’re familiar with that book or have seen that cover, it has a similar vibe.)

The blurb was also similarly metaphorical with terms like “monster,” “castle”, “cage”. So any reasonable person would look at the book and think it’s a Paranormal book.

And I wouldn’t blame them. But this book is a contemporary dark romance.

So let’s try this ONE MORE TIME. I really believe in this book and don’t want my own marketing mistakes to keep it from reaching the kind of audience it otherwise could. Maybe you are a part of that potential audience, someone who saw it and thought “meh” because I didn’t package it right so you’d know this is a book you’d love!

And if you like dark contemporary romance with a contract killer and kidnapping element you will love it! If you enjoyed my novella, Trust Game, the hero in this has very similar vibes to the hero in that (though they are distinct characters, not copies of each other.)

SO… here’s what’s happening with The Monster Keeps Me Safe… it’s being re-released next month…Cover reveal coming soon… (though I’m sure you can make some educated guesses about the cover if you’ve seen my Facebook Page or Twitter Profile recently).

The book has a new cover, a new blurb, and a prologue and bonus epilogue from Shannon’s POV which will be put into the new print version.

AND… I have a new audiobook cover AND I’m adding the bonus epilogue and the new prologue to the audiobook. I will announce the narrator soon!

If you already purchased The Monster Keeps Me Safe in audiobook on Audible, you will be able to get the updates for FREE!

When it’s ready, all you need to do is delete it from your device and then go back into your library and re-download and you’ll have the newest version. I don’t know yet what the release date will be on the audio but you can stay informed either by subscribing to this blog (check the grey box at the bottom of this post), OR by subscribing to my Newsletter (you can either use the popup at kittythomas.com or you can scroll down to the bottom on the homepage and there is a subscribe button there.)

You can’t count on social media to inform you when I have something new. Social Media platforms generally only show content to 1% of a person’s followers, so it’s not a reliable way to stay on top of new things from me.

I’ll keep you updated as this re-release develops with the cover reveal, narrator announcement, etc.

If you’d like to apply for the ARC team for this one, you can find the application here.

Thanks so much for reading and supporting my work!

Kitty ^.^

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ARC TEAM APPLIATION (REPOST: CORRECT LINK)

Sorry, the link got corrupted so I deleted the post so I could resend the proper link out to blog subscribers again.

Have you ever wanted to be on my ARC team? I have an application sign up for The Monster Keeps Me Safe, re-releasing next month: ARC APPLICATION FORM LINK

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“My Characters Tell Me What To Write”

Early on in my writing career, like EARLY on, back in 2008, I would always get SO irritated when people talked about “The Muse” or their characters telling them what to write or any other woo woo magical explanation for what I felt was THEIR hard work and talent.

It just felt like an excuse to not work. Or like they were being “fake humble” about their talent. But now, 14 years later, I understand what they were talking about.

I don’t want to be an asshole here, because I’m sure there are exceptions. I’m sure there are published authors with long and storied careers making tons of money and connecting to readers hearts who think “the muse” is nonsense or “the characters made me write it” is stupid, etc. And that is fine. I’m not going to tell someone they have to believe or think a certain way to make art.

What I will say is… the vast vast majority of writers who think this is “stupid”, are very new. They’ve been writing either a very short time, or sporadically. Again, this is not about anybody’s “talent or ability.”

This is about surrender and the things you learn and the wisdom you gain with a lot of time and experience.

I can be REALLY bad at “surrender” when it comes to a lot of things, but the one area I’m a fucking pro at surrender is the writing process.

Because I’m here to tell you it is NOT all me. It is a co-creation with something spiritual. You can touch this magic casually, or on and off, or in the early years you can lie to yourself about it… but at a certain point you come to understand that art is a spiritual act and that you are in contact with something greater than yourself and that something helps you form your art.

You learn the skills. You develop your voice. You bring your own talent to the page. The “other side/writing gods/muse/whatever you want to call it” would not create the same book with another person, but it’s like making a baby, you can’t do it by yourself.

I mean you can do it with a turkey baster, but you still aren’t doing it by yourself.

All creation requires polarity, the masculine and feminine divine. Writers who surrender to the process and allow story to channel through them and get out of the way to create something great, are functioning in the magical feminine energy.

Again, I’m sure there is some exception or maybe you’re working with the magic but your writing process obscures it, but… after writing for decades and publishing for fourteen years, I no longer have the luxury of pretending it’s “all me”.

It’s not.

Now “what” it is, is a question as old as time, and it’s why we have so many different religions, because people have a spiritual experience, attach a story to it, then start “believing” the story as though the story itself (the myth or text) must exist in THAT form or the magic won’t. To me, this is a lack of trust in the higher thing–in the mystery that makes human life even worth the journey in the first place.

As humans, though, we really like labels. We like to understand things and put them in neat little boxes and drawers. And even if we don’t understand things, as long as we have a story where we THINK we understand how it all works, we’re good to go.

So you can call it the muse. You can say your characters are alive. You can think it’s an egregore/thought form. Maybe it’s a manifestation of archetypes. Maybe it’s your higher self. Maybe it’s your spirit guides. Who the fuck knows? We all have a different way to describe it but big magic and great art all come from a higher source than just our little human ego.

It doesn’t live in the land of the $5 word, or “look how brilliant I am.” It lives in surrender to the magic and creating in a partnered way instead of all by yourself.

Also this is not a rant against “plotters”. You can plot, but STILL follow the story when it takes you. You can plot but still listen to inner wisdom, intuition, and those nudges from the universe. So this isn’t about method or how you organize your thoughts or process. It’s about ego.

Writers have a lot of ego. We have to. There are definitely areas I have a giant boat load of it, but where I don’t have it is in pretending that I’m not guided and helped in my story by something magic I don’t fully have the ability to label.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

The post “My Characters Tell Me What To Write” appeared first on Kitty Thomas.

An Author’s Adventures in AI

I started publishing in 2008 under the name Zoe Winters back during the Great Ebook Debate. Ebooks were going to destroy literature as we knew it! Ebooks weren’t real books! No “real author” was published that way. No one will ever read on a screen! “I” will never read on a screen! (I, personally don’t read ebooks, but I don’t really read print books either. I’m an audio girl and that’s a whole other debate over whether or not I’m “really reading”).

Ebooks were going to replace print books! No one paused to wonder how on earth if they weren’t “real books” and “no one would ever read on a screen” how they were supposed to replace print books. It was just a lot of panic and fury.

Now, here in 2023, print books are still quite popular and when I see Bookstagrammers and Booktokkers they are always showing pictures of all their real physical books and holding them in their hands. (I’ve also recently found a place where I can have special edition books made… like raised lettering, gold foil, all that fancy stuff that you see in a bookstore. I’m super excited about these possibilities!)

Imagine if I had said the same things about digital publishing? I would have missed a huge opportunity and I wouldn’t be an author today. I see the AI fight as very similar. It’s another hugely disruptive technology to several industries and there are two ways to look at it… like Chicken Little or like Willy Wonka (you know, with wonder, and a dark sense of humor and shit.)

So this is going to be a post about AI. I prefer to look at AI much the way I looked at the ebook revolution, as an opportunity, or many opportunities. Joanna Penn has a similar tech-optimist perspective. Look, we all know bad things will be done with AI, just like with every other technology, but the tech is here and it’s not going away. It’s my opinion we should learn to work with it instead of against it with our moral outrage fluttering.

I have a LOT of opinions about AI in all the different ways it exists, but this blog post would be the length of a novel if I tried to talk about all of it. So today, I want to talk about the funny side of generative text AI.

Before I get into that I will say I do not have a smart phone. I hate smart phones. I can be a MAJOR Luddite about some things. But then on the other side I’m like… “oooh AI, let’s explore this.” So I’m a giant contradiction of a person. But that was true when the Kindle first came out. I’m just grateful my Tech-embracing side, rather than my Luddite “Screw you, Smart Phone” side is in the driver’s seat when it comes to my career.

Okay… so here’s what I really wrote this blog post to say:

I’m working on re-writing some blurb copy for one of my books, The Monster Keeps Me Safe, so I decided to experiment with CopyAI. I do think if those mad or scared about AI in whatever category that affects them personally would take a look at it and play with it a bit, they would find that the robots are FAR from taking over (even in audio, but that’s a whole other post). They might also see ways they can personally capitalize on these tools for their own work.

A great example would be narrators. The BEST AI is going to be copying real narrator voices. Places like DeepZen license these voices and pay narrators a fee every time their voice is used. Before, narrators had a ceiling on what they could make because they were working per hour. No matter how many hours you work, there is a cap on what you can make. But if you licensed your voice for something like this? The sky isn’t even the limit.

So anyway, I’m rambling, the idea with generative text AI, is that you feed the AI some text and it spits out some options back to you. I will say that I wouldn’t ever use AI in whole to write even marketing copy because the entire point of art is… well… art. And I’m definitely in it for the art. Even though marketing copy isn’t technically “the art”.

One of the things that has held me back is that I’ve treated EVERYTHING like the art. The title, the cover, the blurb, all the things, and all that is marketing. Yes book covers are art, but… they are also marketing packaging, and they aren’t MY art. My art is the story.

So here are some funny things the AI spit out:

For reference, the first time I gave the AI a description of the book, and it gave me this (Note, the name Hugo appears nowhere in my book. The AI just gave him that name):

The world has ended. That is what Elodie believes when she finds herself living in an abandoned theme park, with her husband Hugo. And then comes a dark stranger, one who will do anything to take what she loves most. A contract killer, he kills Hugo and kidnaps Elodie, taking her on a journey through his twisted mind as he tries to come to terms with the horrors that haunt him. Desperate and afraid, Elodie must trust in the unlikely hero when she discovers that the only way he can save her is by killing her too.

o.O. And you guys thought *I* wrote dark. Okay, it’s possible the AI is coming for my job. I am afraid.

Then, I input my current blurb just to see what it would spit back out at me. My current blurb (which I wrote a couple of years ago):

At some point, right before my memory clicked off, the nightmare fairy must have paid the world a visit. Everything is just… gone, a tangle of blank confusion.

And now I live in a castle. Every little girl’s dream, right? Except it’s not. It’s twisted and abandoned and fake. I’m supposed to be safe here with my husband, but how can I be safe when I don’t remember him? How can I be safe when he feels so wrong?

Then a new monster comes to take me to a new life and a new cage far from the castle and the promise of safety.

Here’s one of the things the AI gave me in response:

This is not a fairy tale. The ballrooms were never shining and the monster fairy never came to comfort the princess and make her dreams come true. This is just how it is…

And also…

Imagine having a memory that is gone. A memory that suddenly vanishes, leaving you desperate. A creature known as a fairy appeared and took your memories away. They are the ones who listen in on your deepest thoughts, images and dreams and tell others about it for a price.

Obviously the AI is not up for genuine blurb writing, though more nonfiction copy, maybe. But it can be a way to get some ideas that can be spun out into something else. I would think of it more as a brainstorming tool, though when you feel frustrated with progress, letting the AI tell you how it would write it, is kind of hilarious.

There is a book about these kinds of AI mishaps called: “You Look Like a Thing, and I Love You”.(Oh, baby, talk AI to me.) It’s on my Audible wish list.

The post An Author’s Adventures in AI appeared first on Kitty Thomas.

Special Signed Book Sale

I have a special exclusive signed book sale going on at my store right now. The store is only open for specific limited periods of time throughout the year. I do an annual signed sale in August where you can order anything in my catalog. This one is only for new never-before-released editions.

You can order signed books through January 21st.

The books currently for sale are books I’ve never released into paperback before:

Berserker: (First time in print at all)

Mafia Captive Rebrand With Bonus Epilogue Printed in the back of the book (first time for this rebrand or the new bonus epilogue in print)

Both Berserker and Mafia Captive will also be available at online retailers.

Three Words: This is the first time in print and also EXCLUSIVE to my web store.

Comfort Food: This is the first time in paperback and also EXCLUSIVE to my web store. (the hardcover is available at online retailers.)

Thanks!

Kitty ^.^

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Holiday Teaser Scene from Mafia Captive: A Dangerous Fake Holiday Engagement: Mob Style:

Be sure to grab my Re-release of Mafia Captive (A Dark Holiday Mafia Romance) at the introductory 99 cent sale. Limited Time Only! And NEW Bonus Epilogue:

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Holiday Teaser Scene from Mafia Captive:

A Dangerous Fake Holiday Engagement: Mob Style:

Leo took the phone. What fresh hell was this? “Hey, Ma.”

He’d barely gotten the phrase out when she began a nonstop string of excited sentences, some of them running on top of each other.

“Angelo tells me you’ve got a girl, now. Says you’re getting married. When were you going to tell your poor old mother? When we all got there? The whole family is dying to meet her now. What’s her name? Faith? Is she Catholic? Is she a good girl, Leo? What’s her family like?”

“Ma…” Leo said, trying to calm her. This wasn’t good. His family would all be here for a week for Christmas. He hadn’t known exactly what he was going to do with Faith. As horrible as it would be for her, he’d considered locking her downstairs in the dungeon for the duration and having Demitri take her meals down. At least he wouldn’t risk questions that way. Maybe by next year he could trust her enough to let her be with the family under one pretense or another—maybe as a new household servant or nurse for his practice.

But he’d already known sending her to the dungeon would terrify her and make him feel like an even bigger monster. He was almost glad hiding her wasn’t an option now. Surely Angelo hadn’t implied Leo had known Faith long enough to propose marriage? That had to be something that had gotten into her head from somewhere else.

The women in his family were a bunch of gossips. You could start out with the simplest story and end up with illicit affairs, murders, and a funeral with a missing body by lunchtime.

“I mean it, Leo. I’m very unhappy you didn’t tell me about this. And if she’s living at your house like Angelo said, you better be marrying her! You know I don’t like my boys living in sin.”

He knew she was thinking of Angelo and Davide. He could practically hear her crossing herself over the phone. The shock of his brother coming out had about killed her and she still wasn’t over it. Of course. That was why Angelo had told her Leo was getting married—to take the heat and attention off him this year.

He suppressed a growl. “Yes, Ma. We’re getting married. I already proposed.” If they knew about Faith, he may as well have a sham marriage. He’d never get his mother off his back if she thought they were ‘living in sin’. He wondered what she’d think if she knew Faith was being held here against her will? Nothing good.

“Without us meeting her!?! We raised you better than that! I can’t believe you’d get engaged without so much as calling your poor mother! Is she Catholic? Please tell me she’s at least Catholic.”

He had no idea one way or the other, but what was another lie on top of the rest of it? “Yes, Ma. Of course she’s a good Catholic girl.”

“What about her family? Are they a good family?”

“She doesn’t have any family,” he said, injecting a drop of honesty into the conversation.

“Oh, that poor girl. Well she’ll have a big family, now.” It was all it had taken for his mother to switch gears. “Is she Irish? I know you’ve dated your redheads, but Sal won’t like Irish blood in the family. Please tell me she’s not Irish.”

“Yes, she’s a redhead.”

“Benedica la vergine Maria,” she whispered. Blessing the virgin mother was Gina’s response to anything scandalous. If his mother knew the full weight of the scandal, she’d be praying the rosary nonstop until the New Year.

“Ma, I’ve got to run, but I’ll see you next weekend.”

They exchanged the normal end of conversation pleasantries, and he disconnected the call. Demetri’s eyebrow rose.

“Don’t say it,” Leo said. “Go to Tiffany and get me an engagement ring. Something that looks convincing… like I bought it for someone I deeply love.”

“What if the girl won’t go along with it, Sir?”

With Faith being moved to the other end of the house, the staff knew he’d gone soft and left her alone.

Leo allowed his gaze to harden. “If she won’t go along with it, she’ll spend Christmas in the dungeon.”

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Kitty ^.^

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