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“Drago’s sister may be a little high-spirited, but I’m confident you two would make a perfect match.” “A little high-spirited? The woman tried to take my head off with a tray of appetizers. If her brother hadn’t thrown her over his shoulder and hauled her away, I’d have strangled that psycho right where she stood.”
Jesus. If anyone had told me a few years ago that Salvatore Ajello would be such a goner for a woman, I’d have laughed in their face.
Holy fuck, I have never met a more infuriating man in my life. He carries himself as if he’s the most important person in the room. His tone is always authoritative, like every sentence he speaks is an order he expects to be obeyed. And unless you’re a part of his beloved Cosa Nostra, he seems to view you as if you’re somehow beneath him. Everything, every fucking thing that man does irritates me to no end.
“You’re covered in blood!” I yell. “Screw you, DeVille!”
“Let go of me, Satan,” she sneers through her teeth. I raise an eyebrow. “Satan?” “DeVille. Devil. Satan. Suits you to a tee.”
She’s beautiful. A vengeful she-cat, bearing her canines and sharp claws.
“I’m going to make your life a living hell.” “Of that, gattina, I don’t have the slightest doubt.”
“Why are you staring at me, DeVille?” “You should tie your hair back,” I grumble, quickly taking a seat across from her. “It looks wild.” She raises one perfectly arched eyebrow. “Do I look like I give a fuck about how you see me?”
What’s with Ajello and his recent obsession with getting everyone around him hitched? Is arranging marriages a new hobby of his, or is he just bored? A man like Salvatore Ajello, with nothing productive to do, is a serious threat to society. God only knows what crazy ideas might pop into his head. But if he has developed a sudden interest in matchmaking, I can get Adam to contact a buddy of his who runs a local radio station. Maybe Ajello could get his own show?
He wants to play dirty? Game on.
“September ninth. And I don’t believe in astrology.” “Yup, Virgo. Knew it right away. Jesus, I’ve never met a man with such a large stick up his ass.” My lips twitch, and I barely contain my smile. I’ve clearly lost all my marbles because instead of being royally infuriated by her audacity to speak to me in this manner, I’m actually amused. Her constant needling irritates me to no end, but at the same time, I’ve found myself eager to see what she’ll think of next.
I’m Tara DeVille now. Mrs. Arturo DeVille. I am officially the devil’s bride.
“No one has ever defied me as you’d done today,” I murmur into her mouth. “Good,” she mumbles back. “It’s imperative to keep your enormous ego in check.”
However, the truth… the truth I can’t deny, is that in his arms I felt protected. As if having him with me would somehow make everything right. That, even after everything he’s done, the way he’s treated me… something inside me still recognized Arturo DeVille as safe.
“Nice shot,” I holler behind me, aiming at the dying man. The kid has definitely gotten better. “Why, thank you, darling.” My head snaps toward the truck’s rear end. Where my wife is standing in the middle of the road, pointing a gun at the now-dead shooter.
“You’re absolutely unhinged.” “Hmm, maybe.” He grasps my chin between his fingers and leans forward until his lips hover just an inch from mine. “But only around you, it seems.”
Something I’ve believed since I was a little girl. Something the fairy tales taught me. Something that still scares the shit out of me to this day. Utter a monster’s name and you’re left in ruin. And he gets to walk away with a piece of you.
Not possible. Not even she would be this insane. Right?
My impertinent wife bought a damn helicopter! That audacious… ballsy… recklessly clever, crafty woman!
“This is the one and only time you will disrespect my wife,” I growl. “Say another word about her, and I’ll rip out your tongue and shove it up your ass. Mark my words.”
“No other man gets to put his hands on my wife. Just me.”
“If this is hell, gattina”—I blow a warm breath over her sensitive flesh, making her quiver all over again—“I’m never coming back. Ever. I’ll happily spend eternity inside your pussy.”
“I curse the day I met you, Arturo DeVille,” I whisper. Then, drop a kiss on his shoulder and close my eyes.
“Having too much fun to answer my calls, Tara darling?” “You could say that. How was your day?”
While doing my best to make my wife despise me, I’ve managed to fall hopelessly in love with her.
“I refuse to feel anything for a man who is incapable of loving me back.” “Yeah, it doesn’t work like that, girly. And for the record, Arturo is head over heels smitten with you.”
I’m not going anywhere without my wife. Even if it means we both burn to ash inside the damn house.
“Why are you crying?” He smiles. A sad smile. A smile that never reaches his dark, glossy eyes. “I can’t imagine my life without you, gattina. Please, don’t leave me,” he rasps.
This man risked his life for me.
“You died.” His voice is so quiet, it hardly qualifies as a whisper. “For a minute and forty-seven seconds, your heart stopped. And during each of those one hundred and seven seconds, I died a thousand deaths. It fucking broke me, gattina.”
Never in a million years did I expect that my death would break the mighty Arturo DeVille.
“Tara, for over a decade, aside from my sisters, the Cosa Nostra Family was the most important thing in my life. But then you thundered into it like a beautiful storm. My precious hazard. And I realized that you eclipsed everything. The Family—if I had to make a choice, I would have betrayed them for you. My life—I would have given it to save yours in a nanosecond. I would give up everything for you, baby, everything. And that thought scared the living shit out of me. Having that kind of weakness, it was simply incomprehensible. But that’s what you became. My Achilles’ heel.
